When we know that police is understaffed and can't respond to all crime, perhaps you should spend less time blindly trusting the numbers. You, too, can't build an argument on unreliable data. Just like the poster you're replying to.
This was literally pointed out in the comment you replied to.
and "official figures" are an untrustworthy source of data
pray tell us just what could possibly be a trustworthy source of data??
"Go outside and look for yourself" that's people's experiences
The issue is there, they were just there at a time where these people who are snatching weren't there. 18 phone snatching per day on one street, but not at all hours, and not on all streets. It varies. But yeah, we want people's experiences. Maybe some of these people on HN did not experience it. Perhaps they could ask their friends and the friends of their friends.
People's experiences are, as yet, an inaccessible source of data.
People's claims about their experiences are an often untrustworthy source of data.
> pray tell us just what could possibly be a trustworthy source of data??
The absence of an trustworthy, accessible source of data does not make untrustworthy or inaccessible sources of data trustworthy or accessible.
> "Go outside and look for yourself" that's people's experiences
No, its not "people's experiences", but its also not a broad, general, representative source of data.
It's not going to be perfect, but it gives a very solid snapshot of peoples experience with crime without the massive distortion we know we get from looking at similar sized samples asked what they think crime levels are.
So? Sample size only addresses sampling error, not nonsampling error, for nonsampling error its exactly as bad as the dinkiest little poll on the same topic (and for sampling error, it's not much better; polls are the sizes they typically are because it doesn't actually take a very large scale to be fairly reliable when you only consider sampling error, and, again, adding more size doesn't help at all against nonsampling error.)