Talk:Crime in San Francisco

Public Health

"Crime in San Francisco is a public health issue"? Perhaps the excrement on the streets is, but this hardly seems like the right lead for this article. Alistoriv (talk) 23:40, 3 September 2022 (UTC)

Context?

This article about 2018 San Francisco crime statistics is devoid of context or comparisons. Are these rates higher or lower than other, similar cities? This reads like a hit job, certainly not NPOV. 47.185.0.177 (talk) 21:37, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

Per capita crime rates

Someone keeps reverting my correction to the per capita crime rates. They previously reported on crimes in January through July but described them as yearly, thus undercounting by half. I fixed it, but someone reverts the fix on the basis that calculating per capita rates (by dividing crime rate by population) is "original research". Routine calculations such as this are explicitly regarded as not original research - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research#Routine_calculations . And even if it was, the reversion is still doing the same thing, only using the wrong numbers. Hi! (talk) 07:00, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

Pinging Fred Zepelin – Just to bring your attention to this discussion, so that you can discuss the edits/reversions in questions. — LauritzT (talk) 09:32, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

Took me about 10 seconds to find more current numbers from a more recent year. I'll add them with the source and get rid of the previous numbers entirely, and be rid of this nonsense. Note, I only became aware of this user's edit history after they were reverted by multiple editors when they tried to scrub Harlan Crow's article of any mention of his Nazi memorabilia collection. That raised an eyebrow. Fred Zepelin (talk) 18:45, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

Adding numbers from a more recent year, with a source, is exactly what I did and you reverted. It's been more than a week and you haven't added these new numbers. And your claim about Crow's page is provably false - all versions of the page I made included mention of the Nazi artifacts. Your edits to that page attracted extensive criticism from more senior editors, which you wiped from your own talk page. Hi! (talk) 23:15, 14 May 2023 (UTC)

Chiming in based on the notice to the WP:3O board - I see no problem with Oort1's edits to the crime rates. It uses official data properly sourced. Also, they correctly cited WP:CALC to explain why this isn't WP:OR, so let's take a look at the criteria there:

Routine calculations do not count as original research, provided there is consensus among editors that

1. the results of the calculations are correct - I double-checked, and they're accurate
2. and, a meaningful reflection of the sources - They very obviously are meaningful/relevant to the article. The statistics were there even before the edit in contention. Also, this is an article about crime.

Moreover, Fred Zepelin, this is decidedly not an "extrapolation" of data - the data is from the entire year of 2019, and is simply divided by population. No extrapolation has been done. PhotogenicScientist (talk) 16:18, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

Here from WP:ORN. I'd also agree this isn't original research, WP:CALC covers dividing one number by another. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 22:07, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

Removing quotes talking about specific area being too dangerous2

The three quotes (from 2023) are location specific and not relevant to San Francisco as a whole. In contrast, the quotes from 2021 and 2022 are pertinent to San Francisco in general. I recommend the three paragraphs be deleted or revised to include generality. Song12301 (talk) 11:58, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

I'm the person who added that content.

This is your deletion of the content.

This is the content in question. I'm curious to know what other editors think:

In June, 2023, ABC News reported, "We are not at Union Square or the Westfield Mall this morning because we have been advised it is simply too dangerous."

In July 2023, the Toronto Sun reported that CNN senior national correspondent Kyung Lah had tweeted, "In San Francisco, we went to the Walgreens that is the #1 spot for theft in all the 9000 US stores, per Walgreens. This is where chains once shut the freezer section. And we saw 3 thefts right in front of us. But across SF, coffee, mustard, nail polish-- are all locked up."

In August 2023, the San Francisco Chronicle published an article called, "Crime is so bad near S.F. Federal building employees are told to work from home, officials said."

SquirrelHill1971 (talk) 10:55, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

References

On a related note

I added the following:

In May 2023, SFGATE published the name of a suspected serial car burglar that the city of San Francisco had repeatedly arrested and released. The article said that he had even been released after the police found him with 130 boxes of stolen electronics.

In September 2023, ABC7 News Bay Area reported that the San Francisco government was knowingly allowing a major fencing operation to buy and sell stolen goods just one-and-a-half blocks from a police station. The TV station interviewed a victim of a car break-in who had used GPS trackers to track items that had been stolen from his car. When he told a police officer, the police officer said they already knew about the fencing operation, but didn’t do anything to help him get his possessions back.

User:StephenMacky1 removed it, and commented, "(Reverted good faith edits by SquirrelHill1971 (talk): WP:NOTNEWS. This article is only a general overview of crime in SF. We are not gonna include every incident here."

What do other editors think of this?

SquirrelHill1971 (talk) 01:59, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

You can ask for the opinions of other editors, but policy and guidelines are clear that such content does not belong on Wikipedia. Routine crimes are not to be published on Wikipedia, because they are not notable. I think WP:EVENTCRITERIA (particularly point four) has the best explanation regarding this: Routine kinds of news events (including most crimes, accidents, deaths, celebrity or political news, "shock" news, stories lacking lasting value such as "water cooler stories," and viral phenomena) – whether or not tragic or widely reported at the time – are usually not notable unless something further gives them additional enduring significance. Only crimes which are notable can be included here, and any other relevant data, like statistics. Also, your sources do not mention anything about SF being "soft on crime", so you gotta be careful not to do original research too. All content has to be supported by sources. StephenMacky1 (talk) 14:52, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

I wasn't trying to write about any specific crimes per se. I was trying to write about the fact that the city doesn't prosecute criminals. Car burglaries are a huge problem in this city. The government could stop it if they wanted to. But they don't want to. They knowingly and deliberately allow it to continue. That is notable, and should be included in the article. SquirrelHill1971 (talk) 01:22, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

References

My main point

Reliable sources show that the people in charge of the city have chosen not to prosecute a lot of the criminals in the city. Since this article is about crime in San Francisco, it's highly relevant and notable that city leaders are knowingly and deliberately not prosecuting these criminals. I wasn't trying to highly any specific crime per se. Instead, I was trying to show that city leaders have knowingly and deliberately not prosecuted these criminals. Since this article is about crime in San Francisco, this information should be included in the article. SquirrelHill1971 (talk) 12:43, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

Hello. All your sources are about specific crimes. If the city isn't prosecuting crime, then this should be covered in a reliable source (i.e an academic source). You can't really establish notability with the current sources. If you need another editor's opinion, you can always request for one at WP:3O. StephenMacky1 (talk) 14:42, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for your suggestion. I have done what you suggested. SquirrelHill1971 (talk) 02:13, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

(show) 3O Response: This discussion was listed at Wikipedia:Third opinion and I am commenting in response to that request. I have never edited this article before nor have I (to the best of my knowledge) interacted with either editor. Regarding the sources and this edit, the sources do not verify the claim that the city is known for being soft on crime. In American cities, DAs routinely drop charges or otherwise choose not to pursue prosecution in some cases, so individual examples of that routine practice happening is not an indicative of any sort of tendency or practice in the aggregate. In order for the article to say anything like the city is known for being soft on crime, reliable sources would need to explicitly and unambiguously show that, and even then it would likely need in-text attribution showing who considers it as such. - Aoidh (talk) 02:22, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

I propose adding the following 5 things to the article

In May 2023, SFGATE published the name of a suspected serial car burglar that the city of San Francisco had repeatedly arrested and released. The article said that he had even been released after the police found him with 130 boxes of stolen electronics.

In June, 2023, ABC News reported, "We are not at Union Square or the Westfield Mall this morning because we have been advised it is simply too dangerous."

In July 2023, the Toronto Sun reported that CNN senior national correspondent Kyung Lah had tweeted, "In San Francisco, we went to the Walgreens that is the #1 spot for theft in all the 9000 US stores, per Walgreens. This is where chains once shut the freezer section. And we saw 3 thefts right in front of us. But across SF, coffee, mustard, nail polish-- are all locked up."

In August 2023, the San Francisco Chronicle published an article called, "Crime is so bad near S.F. Federal building employees are told to work from home, officials said."

In September 2023, ABC7 News Bay Area reported that the San Francisco government was knowingly allowing a major fencing operation to buy and sell stolen goods just one-and-a-half blocks from a police station. The TV station interviewed a victim of a car break-in who had used GPS trackers to track items that had been stolen from his car. When he told a police officer, the police officer said they already knew about the fencing operation, but didn’t do anything to help him get his possessions back.

SquirrelHill1971 (talk) 02:21, 1 December 2023 (UTC)