In February, a person wearing a hood walked into Expert Pet, a pet store in San Francisco’s Ingleside neighborhood, and went straight into the employee bathroom. The staff heard a destructive racket—banging and shattering tile—for several minutes and called the police. No officer ever arrived, and after several minutes, the vandal left.
The owner, Mike Sorrels, who was away at his store’s Dogpatch location at the time, repaired the smashed tile and refastened the sink and toilet. When he read in May that crime in San Francisco was down in every category, he didn’t believe it. “There’s no way, with the lack of police presence and the lack of officers actually on the street, that crime has come down,” Sorrels said.
That’s a common sentiment among the city’s merchant leaders, who say minor crimes are still a major problem for their businesses. And they have a sympathetic ear among some police leaders who don’t believe the department’s statistics tell the full story of what’s happening with street crime. Now, those police leaders are enlisting help from businesses to show what they suspect is really going on.
At a meeting of the Chief’s Small Business Advisory Forum in March, Assistant Chief David Lazar expressed concern that crime was going unreported and suggested that merchants develop an app to log reports. (Lazar, who declined to be interviewed, said through a spokesperson that he is “willing to talk with the community about any new ideas to use technology to better assist the SFPD.”)
