The issue is reporting. Where I live about 4 years ago they stopped prosecuting people who steal less than 500$. My friend who is a cop said they eventually stopped arresting them because its unethical to arrest someone for a crime they won't be prosecuted for. Then stores stopped calling the cops. This resulted in more crime but less reported crime for burglary.<p>The only statics you can really count on is Car thefts and murders. There was a surge in murders in starting in 2020 which has leveled off but it was still high.<p><a href="https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/USA/united-states/murder-homicide-rate" rel="nofollow">https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/USA/uni...</a><p>The same is true for car thefts<p><a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/191216/reported-motor-vehicle-theft-rate-in-the-us-since-1990/" rel="nofollow">https://www.statista.com/statistics/191216/reported-motor-ve...</a><p>I think it reliable to say the US experienced a large surge in crime starting in 2020.
I had my bag stolen with clothes + work laptop out of my rental car in San Francisco, from the trunk, while parked in an underground garage with security on patrol.<p>SF has an especially bad problem with shoplifting and robberies, but it's happening in a lot of other places too.<p>A friend who worked in a senior position at a FAANG had his phone stolen while it was unlocked, and within minutes they had disabled Find My. They had full access to his work accounts + private data + identity documents for several hours, so he has to get everything replaced. Crazy that for most folks the most valuable assets isn't the device itself but the information on it, and criminals have started to realize that.
"unload boosted goods at a swap meet, or at a store where illicit items are “washed” by commingling them with legitimate ones. Pilfered commodities often wind up online."<p>I do feel like one way to at least prevent resale would be for Target, et. al to work with the manufacturers to put more prominent markings that are custom to their retail outlet (i.e. stickers which signify Target). That way if I order skincare products or a t-shirt from Amazon and I see that the manufacturer labels have Target on them I can report it to Amazon.<p>I feel like Amazon, eBay, etc. are all key to the increase in the ease of reselling lifted items.
"We" need to stop thinking about "crime" as something negative.<p>It's a job, just a job. Some poor hungry person has to do a dangerous job
so they can feed their family. Simple as.<p>If you are the "victim" of a crime the wise thing to do is not resist, just
report the loss to insurance and get compensated, knowing that hungry people
have been fed and sheltered for whatever slight inconvenience you have experienced.<p>Perhaps even feel some gratitude that the lucky draw of your birth to privileged
people means you don't have the job title of criminal?<p>/s
Last December NYT: Is Shoplifting Really Surging? <a href="https://archive.ph/lJxHA" rel="nofollow">https://archive.ph/lJxHA</a><p>> Conservative media has promoted these videos as evidence of disorder in liberal cities and under President Biden.<p>Numerous other media emissions similarly re-assured us that crime is down! There's no organized theft rings! and so on.<p>It's so hard to keep up with History today.