Quote from: Rothman on Today at 04:52:43 PMMy bet is $5-6B.
Quote from: Max Rockatansky on Today at 03:42:47 PMThen again, it would be fair to mention that police response to shoplifting varied greatly in other states I've worked. Scottsdale was big on trying to convince us to let misdemeanor cases walk also. They often made us hold onto detainees for two-four hours or just flat out told us they weren't going to show. That is probably not the popular perception one has of an Arizonan city. The city DA actually met with me once and spelled it out clearly that they viewed prosecution misdemeanor theft cases as a waste of time.Another thing that often goes unmentioned is most retail chains will track people stealing and not stop them, because they almost always return and once it gets over a certain $ amount, it becomes a felony. This is the reason why it often appears people just take stuff and leave, because the stores let them. I saw this first hand when I did some AP work. We had about 3-4 known shoplifters, and once they got over the felony amount, had the police waiting for them when they left.
Quote from: Max Rockatansky on Today at 08:19:41 AMMy dad and I witnessed a shooting leaving a Tigers game in Detroit (where I'm originally from) during the mid-1980s. I still go back to visit, I don't recall ever having bringing it up in the forum. I would hazard a guess that Detroit has been by far the more crime prone city compared to San Francisco in living memory.Exactly. Many of the issues you hear are things like this, to create the narrative that [insert city here] is scary and dangerous. You hear it with all the major cities of America. Which is funny because crime rates have been dropping in America for decades, and continue to do so. But the rate of reporting keeps going up, creating the illusion things are a lot more dangerous than they really are.
When I hear vague stories like about crime in San Francisco it makes me curious as to what people are referring. Generally it is something about the homeless in conjunction with someone publicly peeing or defecating. Homeless people and someone publicly relieving themselves isn't high on the echelon of scary things I personally find scary or even off putting.
I can't fathom what a homeless person would do to an able bodied person like myself other than an attempt at panhandling. It isn't exactly simple to find a publicly available restroom in any city in California let alone San Francisco. Considering how much I have had to relieve myself on remote public roads or even during distance runs I guess that I can sympathize with the problem there.
Quote from: Plutonic Panda on Today at 01:36:45 PMA lot of retailers have closed and yes, you could attribute that to the pandemic, but they've also attribute it to an increased and retail theft so there's more to it.Retailers learned about 20 years after Amazon that many people like ordering things online and having them delivered. So many retail stores started doing at-home delivery, and found out it doesn't really impact their bottom line to close down stores, so they do that. Yes, theft doesn't help, but having worked in retail and seeing the numbers that AP won't make public, it's more a good excuse than the reality of why they do it. As always, follow the money. Closing stores and shifting to at-home delivery means less rent to be paid, fewer employees to be paid, and so on.
Quote from: hbelkins on Today at 02:21:07 PMThe Ohio Valley of KY meet 2002 should be placed at the Greenbo Lake State Park Lodge in Greenup County.
My Somerset, KY meet is missing from the list. As is my Charleston, WV meet. I can't remember the dates of them, although the Charleston meet happened the same year (IIRC) as the State College meet.