San Francisco police arrested seven people on suspicion of shoplifting during a one-day operation on Tuesday at a store on Polk Street, officials said. These arrests come about a week after the San Francisco Police Department arrested 17 other individuals on suspicion of shoplifting at a downtown store on Mission Street.
Both of these busts, each conducted in a single day, are part of a larger SFPD “blitz” operation that’s aimed at cracking down on retail theft in San Francisco. The department said it will continue to conduct these one-day operations.
“referencing the persistent lack of consequences for these crimes” ?
As others showed elsewhere, a lot of what was reported was repeated and exaggerated by the media and retailers blaming other things rather than many companies leaving downtown for other reasons and retailers not wanting to acknowledge that they missed what was going on.
@wolfpup, this is a totally sincere question, and sorry if someone asked something similar. Is he your cousin or something? Why do you have so much invested in defending a cable talk show host?
If I was a fan of such a personality, after I made my point (maybe twice), I just wouldn’t care if I convinced anyone. You do you, of course, but I’m curious.
No, you did not. There’s a link to a Snopes article cited several times earlier in this thread that debunked the claim that in California, Prop 47 had “legalized theft under $950”. Of course this is false. No one has ever claimed otherwise except perhaps lunatics in the right-wing blogosphere.
What really irks me is that when Maher uses hyperbolic language to refer to the serious shoplifting problems in San Francisco and pervasive lack of consequences, he’s slammed for “lying” when in fact the problems are very real and hugely disruptive to the retail sector. It’s neither his fault nor mine if right-wing loons drop qualifiers like “basically” and assert that in SF, you can shoplift all you like and the law can’t touch you. No sane person would believe that, and I guess Maher assumes that his viewers are sane.
Meh, just typical social media type escalation. But beyond this trivial issue, Real Time with Bill Maher has been on HBO – a network known for the generally high quality of its programming – for 21 years and has been renewed again for its 22nd season, and after many years of Maher’s late-night chats with interesting people he’s become a kind of fixture in my mostly television-free life. I’ve never met the man but as with anyone whose views you’ve come to know, a few of which are stupid but many of which are insightful, you become accustomed to ignoring the stupid ones and appreciating the insightful ones. Dismissing Maher altogether is, for me, too blunt an instrument as you lose too much informative and entertaining discussion.
I worked at the erstwhile K-Mart for a miserable year. Loss prevention is the department in charge of shop lifting and watching the other employees for theft. We were trained to watch customers. If we saw them stealing we were not to intervene but call loss prevention. Most often they tried to gently be visible so the person would be deterred. If we were working as cashiers we needed to check anything: backpacks, suitcases, handbags, etc. for merchandise inside. If we found it we were to play dumb, and say things like, “Oh my I wonder how that got in there. Do you want this?” If someone got out the door with an item the police were called. No employee including loss prevention was to chase, confront, or otherwise try to stop the shop lifter. Why? You ask. Liability. If the person who took an item is injured or we were mistaken the could, would, and did sue the begeesus out of the store/company. At another retailer with a huge name in out area a guy was paralyzed because he was tackled by security. He won a huge settlement. This stuff is not because of Liberul sympathy or whatever, it’s purely cya.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I thought the issue was that San Fransisco has made shoplifting under $950 a misdemeanor, and the police generally won’t respond to misdemeanor calls. Therefore, people can shoplift with near inpugnity if they keep the theft under $950. It’s a kind of de facto legalization.
And now they are making arrests because shoplifting has gotten completely out of control. That’s what it looks like to me, anyway. The problem is exacerbated by a criminal justice system that often refuses to prosecute such crimes, or gives out a slap on the wrist.
How can anyone claim that shoplifting isn’t a problem when so many stores have packed up and left, citing out of control shoplifting and worker safety as a major reason? Downtown San Fransisco has seen half its retail stores close from a combination of loss of foot traffic, shoplifting, and worker safety issues.
One piece of this discussion (tangent) that often gets overlooked in discussions of crime and gun violence is:
We always hear how prosecutors and judges are too “soft on criminals.” One reason for that is the overcrowding of prisons in many/most parts of the US, including California.
Prisons and incarceration cost money.
That money comes from tax dollars.
Cost to house the average prisoner in the US: $45,771.
The people shrieking the loudest are also generally the ones who concurrently shriek about their taxes being too high.
That’s absurd. Most calls police respond to (usually involving drunk people) are misdemeanors.
IIRC, the bullshit arose not just because the threshold for misdemeanors was reduced to the $950 figure, but also because there was a diversion program for first time offenders; meaning, they could get their charges dismissed if they completed some form of probation (probably fines, community service, and maybe some sort of class).
That got morphed into “they aren’t prosecuting these theft cases”, which isn’t true. Diversion programs are common throughout the country for small offenses committed by people with no prior record. But political spin turned it into a “soft on crime” narrative.
I had that exact situation once. I worked 2 1/2 years at Toys R Us, mostly in the back (large ticket items) but I was on the floor plenty of times and was a cashier now and then.
Once I was warned that a known scammer was coming through when I was on register. She had a family with her (another adult woman and 3-4 kids). Her scam is to take price stickers from similar, cheaper items and put them over the real stickers. I was told not to confront her but to not let her get away with it either.
So I would scan an item, see the description as it came up on the register, say, “That’s weird,” then peel off the sticker. Then scan the right sticker. I did that for multiple items, and even apologized to the lady saying someone must have been messing around with the items back there. “Kids, you know what I mean?”
She was not happy with me, glaring the whole time because she knew I caught her, but couldn’t say anything; she knew she wasn’t going to get in trouble and I was saving her from being embarrassed too. She paid the correct amount while scowling at me and left with her goods.
My manager said I’d handled that perfectly.
The store doesn’t want people stealing but even more it doesn’t want drama or for any chance of someone getting hurt. You tackle a shoplifter and they get hurt, you maybe stopped a theft of a hundred dollars of goods but then get sued for thousands in hospital bills.
In the “debunking” you claim doesn’t exist, I addressed this. What you claim was hyperbole was, in fact, Bill Maher repeating a right wing talking point. It was something he knew that at least half his audience genuinely believed.
And he was not addressing what was actually going on in San Francisco. The point of his rant was to say that this is why people think the Democrats are nuts. He was addressing the law that the Democrats passed.
It’s not your fault. But it is his. He knew it was something the right wingers in his audience already believed. Only right wing news sources were saying it. He repeated it to get them on board.
Don’t believe me? Check out his clips on YouTube. Look at the comments. It’s right wingers. It’s right wing conspiracy theorists and MAGA heads and all of them. They’re agreeing with him. That’s who he is appealing to.
Democrats generaly tend to think of him like Joe Rogan. He’s an “alt light” guy who has on loons and right wingers but won’t debunk them, and thus only helps them spread their message.
That’s what I find irksome. You just seemingly can’t get through your head that Maher is no longer a liberal who courts liberals. He’s a “centrist” who is actively courting righg winders. That’s why he has on right wing guests and says he was wrong about them. He’s trying to change his image from “asshole liberal” to “asshole conservatives can agree with.”
What irks me is that this is obvious to everyone else, but you ignore this. You keep acting like Maher is still the guy he was years ago. You talk about the fact he has been on HBO for two decades, but ignore that he used to be pro-left. Now he’s supports Ted Cruise.
Instead of being irked by this idea that we aren’t giving Maher a fair shake, you should be considering why everyone else disagrees with you. You should be thinking “Maybe wolfpup is wrong.”
There’s a reason I mentioned Sam_Stone and Musk. You’re doing the same thing he did. The same thing you mocked him for.
And that’s it. That’s the last I will discuss this with you. You’re acting the same way you did in the union threads, and getting through to you seems impossible. Other people explained to me how this wasn’t trolling, but just an inability to accept you might be wrong.
It’s not worth the rise in my blood pressure. You’re not actually convincing anyone. And you seem to be gradually deconstructing your love of Maher anyways. The next time he does something unquestionably horrible, maybe you’ll finally be able to quit him.
Bullshit, and stop yelling. Repeating this over and over doesn’t make it true. Did it ever occur to you that a factually supportable position on a particular issue just might happen to line up with the views and interests of a particular political ideology, without the person stating those facts necessarily being partisan or mendacious? Am I being a “right-wing asshole” when I state that LA and San Franscisco are the worst two cities for shoplifting in the whole of the USA?
For every claim Maher makes that the right agrees with, he’s probably made ten that the left agrees with. He’s simply a cranky old-school liberal who condemns extremism on both sides.
It’s “Ted Cruz”, and this is just crazy bullshit. Just because Maher had him on his show and didn’t attack him viciously enough for the satisfaction of some folks doesn’t mean he “supports” him. We heard the same thing when DeSantis was on the show, and Elon Musk, and pretty much everyone else that most of us don’t like. Does Maher “support” all of them? Maher does challenge those he doesn’t agree with, but he’s not overtly hostile when they’re his guests. If you don’t like it take it up with Maher or with his PR person, which is not me.
“Wrong” about what? I’m supposed to admit that I was “wrong” in interpreting a remark about SF shoplifting from a comedic pundit as being comedic punditry? I’m supposed to agree with your bizarre other-worldly interpretation that Maher is scrambling to appeal to the far right? The same guy who said that in recent years “the Democratic Party has moved to the right, and the Republican Party has moved into a mental hospital”? That’s the guy who’s trying to appeal to the right?
As for “everybody” disagreeing with me, who’s “everybody”? There’s a bunch of posters here who really don’t like Bill Maher, and that’s fine, he’s a very divisive figure. But as he prepares for the start of his 22nd season in January, Real Time with Bill Maher remains the #1 top show on HBO by a substantial margin (among all shows in all categories) with nearly twice as many viewers on average as Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. Which is too bad because frankly I usually enjoy the John Oliver show more. But I get a lot of good information by watching both, and obviously so do a lot of other viewers.
Bolding isn’t generally considered yelling in online discourse. ALL CAPS is more usually considered yelling.
Also for the record (and not directed towards anybody) I’ve very low-key disliked Maher since before he ever had a TV show of any kind, so I can at least claim some modest consistency here . Even back in his standup comedian days he had a reputation for being a little bit of a pompous asshole in person and I’ve always found his public persona to be a bit…smarmy. Didn’t care for him twenty-five years ago when the popular perception was he skewed slightly left, still don’t care for him now when the perception has become that he skews slightly right. The nuances of his politics actually bothers me a lot less than his personality.
Rogan has defenders* who, like Maher fans, claim he’s a reasonable fellow who just wants to present “both sides”. They professed outrage and viciously attacked pro-vaccine advocate Dr. Peter Hotez when he declined an invitation to “debate” RFK Jr. on Rogan’s show.
Then Rogan came out and endorsed MAGA Jr.'s presidential bid. So much for an unbiased “debate” setting.
Dr. Drew is another example of a host who used to have somewhat of a decent reputation, but has descended into full-bore Covid/antivax crankery.
What Drew, Rogan and Maher all have in common is a shrewd recognition that much of their fan base finds endorsement of sane consensus to be booring. There are many more clicks and views to be had if you’re perceived as edgy and nonconformist.
The degree to which they believe the slobber they put out is relatively unimportant. That they promote and enable it is what counts.
*I once made the mistake of thinking that Rogan’s show had worthwhile aspects. Those days are long gone.
As pointed before, this issue works a lot like a dog whistle, A right wing talking point that is repeated by moderates too… who don’t notice the high frequency misleading or false bit coming from the ones that came with that talking point.
“Shoplifting in Great Department Stores.” “The Shoplifting Profession.” “No Mercy to Shoplifters.”
These headlines could be from articles today. But they’re from the early 1900s.
While shoplifting has seemingly never been a bigger problem than it is now, shoplifting has long captured the public’s attention. Anxiety over shoplifting is an enduring phenomenon and is often a stand-in for larger concerns of cultural, economic or political changes.
“The figure of a shoplifter may provide for a scapegoat for deeper problems that are more complex and intractable,” James Walsh, who directs the University of Ontario Institute of Technology’s graduate program on criminology and justice, told CNN. “It resonates with broader concerns about law and disorder.”
When compared with shoplifting rates in 23 other major U.S. cities, San Francisco’s monthly shoplifting rate ranks somewhere in the middle, according to a new analysis of shoplifting data from the Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan criminal justice think tank.
The council’s analysis, released this month, used law enforcement data to calculate the per capita rates and total number of shoplifting incidents reported to police in 24 different cities between 2018 and the first half of this year. The goal of the study was to assess how current shoplifting trends compare with prepandemic trends.
The study results may surprise people who are used to seeing San Francisco painted as an ongoing hotbed of theft. In fact, between January 2019 and June 2023, San Francisco’s reported shoplifting rate decreased by about 5%; in the first half of this year, reported incidents were down 35% compared with the first half of 2022, representing the largest percentage decrease among the 24 cities included in the study over the same time period.
There are huge problems with that line of argument, GIGO, and I’m surprised to see you making it. First of all, the study you cite that makes San Francisco shoplifting look less bad is based only on incidents reported to police. The study itself points out that its numbers don’t represent the full picture. This should be a huge red flag in a situation where shoplifting is so rampant that, as previously noted, not only are many incidents NOT being reported to police, they’re not even being enforced by the stores’ own security guards. This makes these statistics pretty much useless compared to those from the National Retail Federation, which concluded from a survey of 97,000 retail locations across the country that LA and San Franscisco had the highest rates of shoplifting in the country, in that order.
Secondly, this discussion is not about San Francisco per se, what is at issue is what Maher said about it and whether he was “lying”. For that purpose it suffices only to show that there is lots of evidence supporting what he said. Given the numbers from the NRF and all the news stories about the shoplifting epidemic, the lack of enforcement and relative lack of consequences for shoplifting, clearly Maher was referencing a widely reported reality.
There is no evidence that his statement was a “dog whistle” to appeal to wingnuts on the far right, which appears to be a baseless fiction constructed by the same Maher-haters who choose to ignore the qualifier “basically” in “SF has basically legalized shoplifting”, focus only on the last two words, and accuse Maher of “lying”. What Maher routinely does is criticize extremism on both sides – not that there’s anywhere near the same level of crazy on the left, but as noted earlier in quoting two far-left Congresswomen, the left isn’t immune to it, either.
As I said before, Maher famously commented on the rightward shift in American politics by saying that “Democrats have moved to the right, and Republicans have moved into a mental hospital”. This is not a guy who panders to the far right. Incidentally, for those so obdurately literal-minded that they think “SF has basically legalized shoplifting” is a lie, I should point out that Maher isn’t saying that Republicans are literally in a mental hospital. Yeah, hyperbole for comedic effect is actually a thing.
. Even back in his standup comedian days he had a reputation for being a little bit of a pompous asshole in person and I’ve always found his public persona to be a bit…