Pro-Crime Policies Have Made San Francisco a Dangerous Place
April 25, 2016
Daniel Greenfield
http://www.frontpagemag.com/point/262627/pro-crime-policies-have-made-san-francisco-daniel-greenfieldWhile Obama and his leftist allies insist that we're so safe now that we can free all the criminals, San Francisco's street level examples appears to tell a very different story.
From her apartment at the foot of the celebrated zigzags of Lombard Street, Judith Calson has twice peered out her window as thieves smashed their way into cars and snatched whatever they could. She has seen foreign tourists cry after cash and passports were stolen. She shudders when she recounts the story of the Thai tourist who was shot because he resisted thieves taking his camera.
And that is her tally from the last year alone.
“I never thought of this area as a high-crime neighborhood,” Ms. Calson, a retired photographer, said of this leafy part of the city, where tourists flock to view the steeply sloped, crooked street adorned with flower beds.
Any neighborhood can become high crime without aggressive law enforcement intervention in a big city. That's the lesson of the 70s that everyone just decided to forget.
Recent data from the F.B.I. show that San Francisco has the highest per-capita property crime rate of the nation’s top 50 cities. About half the cases here are thefts from vehicles, smash-and-grabs that scatter glittering broken glass onto the sidewalks.
The city, known for a political tradition of empathy for the downtrodden, is now divided over whether to respond with more muscular law enforcement or stick to its forgiving attitudes.
Criminals aren't the downtrodden. Their victims are. This kind of distortion of language is typical of the left's spin when it comes to crime.
The guy robbing a person on the street isn't downtrodden. His victim who is lying on the ground, literally is downtrodden.
The chamber of commerce recently released the results of an opinion poll that showed that homelessness and “street behavior” were the primary concerns of residents here.
Street behavior being a euphemism.
At TLC Glass, a repair shop on the edge of San Francisco’s business district, the more prosaic consequences of the rise in car break-ins are on display. Customers regularly file in to repair car windows that have been smashed by thieves.
“Every day we are full,” the shop’s owner, Louie Chen, said. One customer came in four times in six weeks.
A customer who came to have a broken window fixed, Dan Edmonds-Waters, showed San Franciscan forgiveness. He said he felt sorry for whoever broke a window of his limited-edition BMW twice, stealing his gym bag both times.
Here's to Number 3.
On Wednesday, another car was broken into below her window. A woman who was dropping off her daughter at a day care center had parked for 10 minutes and returned to find her window smashed and her purse gone.
“It’s just insane,” Ms. Calson said. “On and on and on it goes.”
This is what having pro-crime policies does.
