By Rachel Scheier : yahoo – excerpt
It’s the sentimental things people are desperate to recover: a child’s notebook, a wooden cross, an Army backpack that survived two tours in Iraq.
These are among the possessions Mark Dietrich has retrieved from curbsides here in recent months, hastily dumped evidence of the smash-and-grab burglaries and petty thefts that have become a feature of everyday life in the city.
Dietrich is among an increasingly loud group of local activists who say such crime has spun out of control in San Francisco.
“We have all asked ourselves, is it time to go?” he said. “Lots of people have just said, ‘I’m not putting up with this mess.’”…(more)