That ‘Car Break-Ins Are Up 750% In SF’ Report Is Bullsh!t
The San Francisco media landscape’s latest pearl-clutching, panties-in-a-bunching hysteria comes from a report in today’s Chronicle entitled “Car break-ins are up 753% in S.F.’s tourist hub.” KRON-4 declared they had “reported countless auto break-ins caught on surveillance video.” ABC-7, recently busted for falsifying details in a Chesa Boudin hit piece, called it a “troubling trend in San Francisco.”
The apparent return of car break-ins targeting areas frequented by tourists threatens to harm the nascent comeback of the tourism industry, which evaporated during the pandemic.
— San Francisco Chronicle (@sfchronicle) June 27, 2021
All of these reports are bullshit. The Chronicle intentionally cherry-picked the data to only include certain areas that are tourist destinations, and within a very specific COVID-19 affected time frame, to hype a percentage that completely exaggerates the issue to promote an obvious agenda.
Wow, that chart above sure looks shocking! But it only counts the month of May in three consecutive years, and one of those years there was shelter-in-place in effect, and absolutely no tourism! Notice how the 2019 numbers are basically the same as the 2021 numbers, In fact, the citywide total of car break-ins was lower than in 2019, a fact that does not fit with the Chronicle’s agenda and you would not know this from the headline.
The Chronicle even admits to their bullshit in the fifth paragraph of their bullshit article. That’s where they quietly admit that they only counted data from “the northeastern corner of the city, home to seven of the city’s top tourist attractions, including Fisherman’s Wharf and Chinatown.”
Of course car break-ins in tourist neighborhoods are up in the month of May 2021 compared to May 2020, because tourist neighborhoods were ghost towns in May 2020. But that key detail isn’t being discussed much in these reports, because some local news outlets would rather report Fox News than actual news. And let’s be honest, these outlets are being played by people who can’t stand having a progressive socialist district attorney.