Fast forward and such a view seems to have left the once beautiful city as trash and broken shop glass, from so many break-ins, now abound.
This is not only happening in San Francisco, but in cities and towns throughout the state, bringing worsening crime and heightening fears about the future.
“I lived in Mexico City and when you live in a place where safety is a big deal, you understand the value of it,” The Epoch Times’s Southern California General Manager Siyamak Khorrami said in an interview.
With these concerns, he and Epoch Times staffers started an investigation into how Californians are being impacted by such and what lies ahead for the Golden State.
Where It All Started
“When laws pass, they have consequences. Sometimes a law passes and 10 years later, we feel the effect of it,” Khorrami said.According to Khorrami, some California laws are the biggest cause of its increasing chaos. Oftentimes, he said, people are not aware of what a law does, let alone its consequences.
For example, in 2014, state voters passed Proposition 47—also known as the Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act—which made non-violent property crime that does not exceed $950 and simple drug possession misdemeanors.
“The root cause of the crime issue is actually bad policies,” Hau Nguyen, the film’s director, said in an interview. “Bad policy created by people who don’t know much about the criminal justice system.”
The documentary points out the effects of such laws take years to materialize—usually only after criminals discover there are seemingly no consequences for their actions.
Additionally, the documentary points out much legislation has been marketed with misleading names and intentions, which leads voters to cast ballots for something they might not agree with.
“Politicians are selling people one thing and doing another,” Zach Li, producer of the documentary, said in an interview.
He said that generally people believe what they’re voting for is for the good, but their notion is developed based on the bill author’s advertising instead of fully understanding the issue.
“We need to be careful and do our own due diligence to know what’s happening so we can make decisions based on reality, instead of perception,” he said.
Crime Rate: Increasing or Decreasing?
While some in the media and in government are saying crimes are on the decline, according to the film, viral videos and photos on social media say otherwise.This dichotomy is discussed in the documentary, which found data reported by government and the media does not reflect the ongoing crisis.
Filmmakers took crime statistics from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department between 2019 and 2021 and found that cases of robbery, burglary, and rape had declined. However, the homicide rate had nearly doubled.
The difference is that some crimes are going unreported, said Douglas Eckenrod, retired Deputy Director for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Division of Adult Parole Operations, in the film.
Homicide rates are the only data that can be truly trusted, he said.
“It is a number that can’t be tinkered with. It’s a person who’s deceased, and a coroner made a determination that it was a homicide,” he said.
People stopped reporting things like property crime, car break-ins, and shoplifting because they know that police won’t respond due to understaffing and because district attorneys are no longer prosecuting those crimes, said Michael Shellenberger, a best-selling author and investigative reporter based in Berkeley, California, in the film.
“We’ve seen a withdrawal of police officers from making arrests and from taking reports. And ... also a significant reduction of ordinary people being willing to file reports,” he said.
Why Does It Matter?
Khorrami said all these issues combined are taking their toll on the state.“If crime goes up, everybody’s life will change. The lifestyle will change in California,” he said.
According to Khorrami, California is at a tipping point, and more residents need to be paying attention before things get worse.
“You won’t know the feeling until you lose it. You won’t appreciate safety until you don’t have it,” he said.
To that end, Li, the film’s producer, said if crime keeps increasing at its current rate, soon it can’t be ignored.
“It has gotten to a point that ... you won’t be able to avoid it,” he said.
California was known as the Golden State for decades, where people flocked believing they could achieve their dreams and create a life.
But now, they are leaving because of issues like crime, homelessness, and drugs, said Nguyen, the film’s producer.
In 2022, around 340,000 people moved out of California, and nearly 250,000 in 2021—huge jumps from the record of 145,000 the year before, according to the U.S. Census Bureau and California Department of Finance.
