It’s tough when you’ve spent a fortune to live in a trendy area, and then dropped a lot of money on expensive bikes, only to have criminals (sorry, justice-involved individuals) break into your garage and steal your stuff. What do you do? Buy better locks, turn to the police?

Woke world problems have no easy answers. (Actually they do, enforce the law, and lock up criminals. But that’s not an option here.) 

residents and city leaders are searching for answers: Should they tolerate a high level of burglaries as a downside of city living, and focus on barricading their homes? Should people who are repeatedly accused of stealing be targeted with rehabilitation services, or incarcerated so they can’t commit more crimes?

We could go with the common-sense policy that works or just build a wall around San Francisco.

Supervisor Rafael Mandelman is frustrated. He’s a longtime supporter of criminal justice reform whose policy views evolved as he grappled with property crime in his district — a persistent problem that makes residents feel vulnerable in their own homes.

“It raises tricky questions about incarceration,” Mandelman said. “Because so far we’ve been unable to release (Tiller and Howerton) without them committing more crimes. And the question for reformers is, ‘What do we do with someone like that?’”

You could…

A. Put them in prison

B. Not put them in prison and let them go on robbing homes

It’s not really complicated. It only appears so in the way that idealistic Communists struggled with the absurdity of their premises. If the real world disproves your premise, your premise is wrong. 

The timing of these crimes concerns police, in part because it could lead to confrontations between perpetrators and residents. To some, it makes the burglary feel more invasive. Castro resident and Google public affairs chief Rebecca Prozan shuddered, noting that a flight of stairs leads directly from her garage into her kitchen.

Burglars broke into the garage of her duplex Victorian twice at the beginning of the pandemic, she said, stealing bicycles, luggage and wine. They returned twice more to burglarize an adjacent mailroom, after she secured the garage door.

Google boasts of “spending $32 million and 15,000 pro bono hours… to support organizations focused on criminal justice reform.” 

It’s shocking when you spend millions to enable criminals and then they steal your wine.

While criminal justice experts and policymakers debate strategies and philosophies, Castro residents are taking steps to secure their homes.

How many of them are buying guns?

Public safety is a primary function of government. When the government ceases to provide this basic service, people are forced to provide both defensive and offensive forms of public safety. If lefties hated what they call the “carceral state”, just wait till they see the alternative.