Actor and comedian Seth Rogen was slammed on Twitter for downplaying Los Angeles’s spike in car-related thefts, saying it’s simply a part of “living in a big city.”
“I didn’t get any treats. He just took the decorations for my daughters 7th birthday party and left bloody hand prints,” Neistat said.
When asked by Neistat if he "can still be mad," Rogen replied, “You can be mad but I guess I don’t personally view my car as an extension of myself and I’ve never really felt violated any of the 15 or so times my car was broken in to.”
Critics of Rogen’s comments argue he was speaking from a place of economic privilege, and slammed him in further tweets about the back-and-forth that unfolded publicly on Twitter.
“Ah, yes, the millionaire is not bothered, so the rest of us don't bother as well. Check your bubble, Seth,” one Twitter user said. “I, too, am unbothered when one of many cars gets broken into. I just ask my assistant to get it all cleaned up and repaired. What’s the big deal?” tweeted associate editor at Tablet magazine Noam Blum in response to Rogen’s comments.
Rogen’s comments come following a weekend that included a handful of mob-style smash-and-grab robberies at upscale department stores like Louis Vuitton and Nordstrom. One of the robberies reportedly involved 80 individuals storming a Nordstrom department store in the San Francisco Bay Area.
While property crime in California and the United States at-large seems to be going down, the prevalence of violent crimes in the U.S. is higher than it's been in a decade, per FBI statistics. California’s rate of violent crimes is at the second-highest level the state has seen since 2010.
During roughly the first 10 months of 2020, there were 15,602 auto thefts in L.A., according to the Los Angeles Daily News, which was approximately 4,200 more than the previous year. Thus far in 2021, L.A. has seen 16,776 auto thefts, according to the Daily News.