In “progressive” San Francisco, security is for the rich.
That’s the reality of what’s happening in the San Francisco Bay Area, as bad politics and anti-police attitudes have created a haven for crime. Like many other urban parts of the United States, San Francisco has been hit by a historic increase in violent crime in recent years.
However, unlike many other parts of the country, San Francisco has also been hit by a huge increase in car theft, property crimes and shoplifting.
One would think that this would require a vigorous response from city leaders and the police department to curb the rise in crime.
Instead, San Francisco tried to disfinance the police after the death of George Floyd in May of last year. Unsurprisingly, it now has a huge shortage of officers and cannot find replacements for a department where more than a third of its officers have retired.
I wonder why. Truly a mystery.
In addition, San Francisco has a district attorney, Chesa Boudin, whose plan for “radical change” and equality has been primarily to free criminals and not prosecute repeat offenders of serious crimes.
Boudin was so radical that dozens of his prosecutors, mostly leftists, resigned.
“Chesa takes a radical approach that involves not prosecuting the crimes in the first place and simply releasing individuals without rehabilitation and putting them in situations where they are more likely to reoffend,” prosecutor Brooke Jenkins told NBC. “As an African American and Latino woman, I would wholeheartedly agree that the criminal justice system needs a lot of work, but when you’re a public prosecutor, your job is to strike a balance.”
The result of this series of policies has been an exponential increase in crime and lawlessness.
In October, CBS San Francisco reported that a group of families in the Marina district, an affluent San Francisco neighborhood, banded together to pay for private security in their neighborhood.
“We don’t feel safe in our neighborhood,” said resident Katie Lyons, according to CBS San Francisco. “And we have alarms, we have cameras on our property, but we want the extra security of having someone keep an eye on our home.”
People are understandably trying to protect themselves. Given the level of crime, private security looks like a good investment.
“It’s a good neighborhood here, people are scared of what’s going on,” said Special Patrol Officer Alan Byard. “They want a safe place to raise their children. Last year, ten of my clients moved out of town.”
This is not an isolated problem in the Bay Area, which is filled with leaders of the same ideological bent as San Francisco.
My parents, who live in Oakland, have had the same car stolen twice in the past six months, and their neighborhood has been plagued by constant theft and property crime. The number of “for sale” signs in front of houses on its streets is remarkable.
It’s not just homeowners, businesses are also being hit hard.
Walgreens, a large drugstore chain, has given up and will close its doors in San Francisco, due, he says, to rampant robberies not controlled by organized thieves.
The San Francisco Chronicle, which is apparently eager to tell Bay Area residents that their lying eyes are deceiving them, has done a “fact check,” claiming the “data” does not support the claim that thefts are on the rise. The figures quoted are from reported robberies, which in some stores were not high compared to previous years. Although in some places they were, according to Chronicle numbers.
Of course, Chronicle graphs don’t show unreported thefts. What incentive do stores have to report crimes if nothing is done to stop them?
According to The New York Times, Walgreens said that in San Francisco, the company spends on security “46 times the average of our network in an effort to provide a secure environment.”
There could certainly be other factors in Walgreens’ departure from San Francisco—hardly a business-friendly environment—but typically companies don’t spend money on security or shut down stores en masse for no good reason.
Also, Walgreens is not alone. Other retail stores were destroyed and are also closing stores in the area.
Despite these attempts to make everything look good, the Chronicle tipped off Bay Area crime when asked the readers whether they should just accept high crime as an inevitable part of criminal justice reform and focus on strengthening the security of their homes.
Somehow this wasn’t satire.
The San Francisco mess highlights one of the anti-police movement’s biggest problems. In fact, the middle class, the poor and minorities suffer most. Neighborhoods and wealthy people will find a way to afford their own private security, but everyone else will be left to fend for themselves.
In an article for the The Wall Street Journal, columnist Jason Riley explained perfectly why this catastrophe hits the heart of left-wing policies, which are sold as countermeasures to “inequality”:
As tempting as it may be to attribute social dysfunction in poorer communities to heartless business owners or racist police officers, the biggest blame certainly lies with public policies that condone counterproductive behavior and make successful companies much harder to operate. The consequences of the anti-police protests in recent years have been very predictable, as has the left’s response to them. Large employers also fled urban areas after the riots of the 1960s, and some of these communities have yet to fully recover. Until the rule of law is restored and enforced, they likely never will.
Well said. It seems that history is repeating itself.
As I’ve written before, when law and order collapses—as it did in the San Francisco Bay Area—beyond criminals, only the rich and powerful can prosper.
A landscape dotted with prosperous gated communities surrounded by lawlessness, poverty and crime is typical in many third world countries. Unfortunately, if this continues, we will have more and more in the United States as well.
What’s happening in San Francisco is an excellent example of how to transform something that’s great — a beautiful city in a perfect, economically prosperous location — into an undesirable and dangerous environment where residents dream of escaping to just about anywhere else.
Sadly, in the midst of this catastrophe, San Francisco’s leaders have higher priorities than making the city a livable place for all residents.
They are too busy looking for people to blame, statues to tear down, and school names to change.
Don’t worry, everything will be fine. It’s for equality or something.
©2021 The Daily Signal. Published with permission. Original in English.
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