12/21/2014   English German

  Edition # 109  
San Francisco, 12-21-2014


Figure [1]: Homeless guy stealing succulent plants from someone's sidewalk flower bed.

Michael Reactions differ significantly. Some residents stoically ignore the rising crime rate, while others go ballistic even with petty crime, like when homeless people steal their potted plants in front of their houses, to sell them to nearby nurseries. Recently, one of the culprits was caught red-handed on camera, by a so-called Spotcam surveillance cam mounted by the home owner to monitor their premises (Abbildung 1). As you can imagine, this started a major dispute on Nextdoor between relentless law and order men and droves of confrontation-averse hippie idiots populating San Francisco, who send their children to Montessori schools.

Or take the package thieves: Since postal delivery employees often simply drop packages at people's doorsteps if no one is at home, apparently there's now a number of individuals patrolling our neighborhood to quickly steal those deliveries. But since many of the wealthy home owners are running so-called Dropcams, which are easy to set up even for the technically not inclined, a lot of caught-in-the-act videos have made it to Youtube, like this footage of two package thieves in Noe Valley. After several of her packages had gone missing, a Chinese lady in our neighborhood had had enough, trapped the thief, hunted him down armed with a traditional Chinese sword (a so-called "bokken"), and finally knocked him out with a can of bear spray purchased at a local outdoor store. Alas, vigilantism is illegal in the United States, which prompted the thief's attorney now to in turn file a law suit against the lady.

Figure [2]: The surveillance cam caught the package thief entering the premises.

But it's getting worse. Lately, several citizens were robbed at gunpoint in the late evening hours. According to the news this happened by "young african americans" who must have been traveling to our neighborhood solely for that purpose from other areas. Apparently, many techies are carrying backpacks holding $1,000 laptops even at night, and everyone owns a $600 smartphone these days, making them a profitable target, especially since SF police rarely patrols the rich neighborhoods and so far has not made arrests. Not too long ago, a robbery victim was even shot by the mopes!

As a result, late night party goers now hesitate to go five blocks in our neighborhood, although it is considered to be rather safe in comparison. Even supervisor Scott Wiener, the jack-of-all-trades in San Francisco politics, has had a rude awakening and is now planning on sending more cops to patrol the rich parts of town. As always in San Francisco, this kind of measure has to be approved by the voters, the proposition is coming to the ballots soon.

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