Bob Lee, former CTO of Square, has died after being stabbed in San Francisco

https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/mill-valley-man-killed-sf-stabbing-17878809.php

by rdl • 3 years ago

1314 2368 3 years ago

sfgate.com

polio• 3 years ago

Where does it indicate the identity of the decedent?

madrox3• 3 years ago

It doesn't, but the poster is a reputable account. I have to assume this is correct.

rdl4• 3 years ago

It was first reported here on Twitter (https://twitter.com/lucy_guo/status/1643451123230031872) -- I'm friends with a bunch of people at MobileCoin where he was working and unfortunately it is true. I only met Bob once but he was a great man.

(Trying to just be sad about his loss and not angry at what San Francisco has become, but it's hard.)

achow• 3 years ago

Tragic.

From tweets it appears that he had moved to Miami, came back to SF on a work trip for a day - and this happened.

DangitBobby3• 3 years ago

The tweet has been deleted, unfortunately.

DantesKite• 3 years ago

Jake Shields says that it was someone reputable in the tech industry and a close friend of his who was killed. And that the family doesn't want to reveal the name yet.[1][2]

Additionally, if you search through Jake Shield's Twitter feed, you'll find instances where Bob Lee talked to him. [3][4]

UPDATE: Jake Shields confirms it was Bob Lee. [5]

[1] https://twitter.com/jakeshieldsajj/status/164344881917319577...

[2] https://twitter.com/jakeshieldsajj/status/164346184739026124...

[3] https://twitter.com/crazybob/status/1538245201734406144?s=20

[4] https://twitter.com/crazybob/status/1587914051715227652?s=20

[5] https://twitter.com/jakeshieldsajj/status/164347000156601548...

madrox3• 3 years ago

I lived a block from here prior to Covid, and I would've called this a safe part of town. Honestly incredible there was a stabbing there.

My condolences to the family. The guy was too young.

UberFly• 3 years ago

Unfortunately even in safer areas there are predators out looking for prey at 2:35 a.m., especially in places where crime is now epidemic.

assimpleaspossi• 3 years ago

Nothing good ever happens at 2:35 in the morning.

hackernewds4• 3 years ago

San Francisco, as you must be aware, has changed a LOT since pre-Covid. Arguably the administration and policies are surely to blame.

Hope this is a wake up call, but evidence points to the contrary in present day SF

madrox3• 3 years ago

It's one thing to have heard rumblings and another to hear about this happening a block from your old home. Upsetting story on many levels.

somsak2• 3 years ago

post COVID, SoMa is maybe second only to the tenderloin in how overrun it is by the homeless

pageandrew• 3 years ago

Some parts of SoMa, this is true, like 4th Street+.

The area where this man died is known as Rincon Hill and is dominated by tech offices, Sweetgreens, and luxury highrise apartment buildings and is basically dead after 8pm every day of the week. I lived a block away from where this man was stabbed for a month and it felt safe and dead quiet once all the tech workers go home.

himinlomax• 3 years ago

I thought we were supposed to call them "the unhoused" or something.

anoy8888• 3 years ago

We all thought we will live into 80s but you never know if tomorrow is not your end.

MuffinFlavored• 3 years ago

any reason to believe it was targeted/burglary or just random/senseless?

rdl4• 3 years ago

I would be shocked if it were anything but random/senseless (or opportunistic robbery), happening on the street at 0230 in SoMA. This police request for information appears to be related. https://twitter.com/sfvas/status/1643328384234315777

PieUser• 3 years ago

No where in the article does it say Bob Lee though, I would take this down until it's verified in the article itself.

robswc3• 3 years ago

Really hits close to home now… its always “someone else” until its not.

ethicalsmacker3• 3 years ago

Sounds like SF to me. It has never been "nice". I was commuting to and from work there for over a year back in ~2015 and it was hell then.

I interviewed around 2017 in SF and it was so bad I didn't dare walk back to the station (caught an Uber instead). It's a terrible place.

robswc3• 3 years ago

I feel like at least ~10 years ago you could justify it. At any rate, I think its safe to say the best days are behind.

etrautmann• 3 years ago

That’s ridiculous. I lived there 2014-2019 and it was delightful. Certainly many bad problems that weren’t getting fixed but ray to day life for most people wasn’t anything like the horror show it’s made out to be.

ethicalsmacker3• 3 years ago

I didn't enjoy stepping over human feces when walking down the street every day, carefully dodging used needles on the sidewalks or watching homeless people piss or shit in front of Starbucks at ~11AM but to each their own.

hackernewds4• 3 years ago

I lived there 2015-2019. A year less, but in my experience

5 car break-ins 2 bottles thrown to me 1 mugged, wallet gone Chased with an axe

These things happened at SoMa, which is objectively known to be a "nicer" neighborhood. The Tenderloin area definitely experiences worse. Surely everyone that has walked Market St or taken the train has seen things uncommon in most other urban American cities.

I struggle to understand how in SF we've gotten accustomed to downplaying these experiences.

dougmwne• 3 years ago

You must carry around your own alternate reality bubble. I was in SF for 6 months in 2015, by all reports a much safer time than now. I lived adjacent to the Berkeley campus and took the Bart to market street.

Got chased into the street twice, and had someone smear their blood on my jacket another time. I watched people eat morsels out of the gutter, defecate in public, scurried away from cars getting broken into and my Bart station was an open air drug market at 8am. I watched drugged out people wander into traffic, just to see other passersbys scream at the police for interfering. I’ve been to the poorest countries in the world and have never seen anything like the Tenderloin.

Ya’ll can keep SF.

subsistence2345• 3 years ago

AFAI remember (I was pretty young then) San Francisco was quite nice around 2000.

theGnuMe3• 3 years ago

Ha! It was worse..

Beaver117• 3 years ago

Targeted? Are people in SF attacking rich startup founders now?

jbverschoor• 3 years ago

Could've easily been someone with a frozen CashApp account.

DangitBobby3• 3 years ago

Very strange title, given that it's not at all verified by the contents of the article. I guess I'll have to flag this one, maybe if it's verified someone can provide a different source for the submission?

Edit: looks legit based on other new comments.

hn_throwaway_993• 3 years ago

Someone else confirmed it in the comments below.

Still, though, these comments here are an absolute dumpster fire, and until there is more information, I don't think stories like this produce any sort of insightful/curious discussion, so thanks for flagging.

DangitBobby3• 3 years ago

It was verified in the comments but the only source was a tweet which has since been deleted. I want to assume people are telling the truth but I could see this being one of those "pranks" where we find out what people are willing to believe without proof.

AlchemistCamp2• 3 years ago

It’s corroborated by one of his friends on Twitter and you can also see an Open Graph image from the article before it removed his name: https://twitter.com/jakeshieldsajj/status/164344881917319577...

akarve• 3 years ago

Jack Dorsey is corroborating it on nostr npub1sg6plzptd64u62a878hep2kev88swjh3tw00gjsfl8f237lmu63q0uf63m

am1on• 3 years ago

https://damus.io/note12k5g2nenm5d9vcy4yxyera5s00rud2sy4akd7w...

hackernewds4• 3 years ago

How does one navigate this? And why is Jack not posting this on Twtr?

hackernewds4• 3 years ago

Mobilecoin, where he is CTO, confirmed it

Joshua Goldbard, the CEO of MobileCoin sent the following statement to ABC7 News: "Bob was a force of nature. Helped to birth Android and CashApp into our world. Moby was his dream: a privacy protecting wallet for the 21st Century. I will miss him every day."

The shameless plug for "Moby" does bother me.

Sad day for the community.

fosk• 3 years ago

San Francisco has the notion that drugged up people out of their mind have the ability and the right to live in a civilized society..

Rule by common sense, not ideology.

happytoexplain• 3 years ago

Both sides of the SF topic are absolutely poisoned by ideology. It's a borderline un-discussable topic on the internet at this point, even on HN.

hnav• 3 years ago

SF in a lot of ways is a microcosm of the US and the broader world which is currently suffering what can only be described as emergent behavior in social networking. Like unintended gradient descent to get everybody maximally polarized by learning what most upsets them and feeding them more of that.

grumple3• 3 years ago

If you don't like addressing the reality the above poster stated, then sure.

thomasahle• 3 years ago

San Francisco is still only number 66 in murders/population of US cities: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b... Though Oakland is number 23.

Or 18 on this list: https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-city-rankings/cities-wi...

gfdsgfsdgfs3• 3 years ago

San Francisco has more than twice the murder rate of San Jose.

FreakLegion• 3 years ago

Not even 66th of all US cities, only of the hundred biggest by population. Of all US cities last year it was no worse than 120th per capita and 140th by total[1].

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_homicide_rat...

louwrentius6• 3 years ago

Everyone has the right to live in a civilized society.

That’s the definition also of a civilized society, how you deal with homelessness and drug addicts.

SF is clearly not a civilized place at all, or frankly the USA for that matter.

thedogeye• 3 years ago

How do we know it was Bob?

Mandatum• 3 years ago

I don't know why anyone would live in that city. Unless you're being bussed directly to a campus from out of area, it's an insane place to work, let alone live. Understaffed, under-resourced and under-appreciated.

robswc3• 3 years ago

and ironically, WFH will only make things worse. I don’t “hate” the city but have no idea why anyone would start a business there in 2023.

jossclimb2• 3 years ago

Not to mention overly expensive. We just bootstrapped a remote first company, hiring people from all over the world, some are in rural areas others are in cities. If we grew to level that we need an engineering HQ, it will be in a European country.

ethicalsmacker3• 3 years ago

Even then it's not worth it. When I was commuting to and from the city for work there would be 1-2 suicide attempts (or successes) every month and train delays for hours. I don't imagine that got any better after Covid...

ceelee• 3 years ago

this is total and complete lie

throwawayohio3• 3 years ago

You'll be shocked to learn there's more to sf than soma and the pier. Visit sometime.

sulam• 3 years ago

My office before I went fully remote is literally at that corner. Good luck getting me to go back to the office.

pixel_tracing• 3 years ago

I live around that corner. What the hell…

subsistence2345• 3 years ago

https://robkhenderson.substack.com/p/status-symbols-and-the-...

usually only the lower classes suffer for our luxury beliefs. this is an exception.

eternalban• 3 years ago

Great article, thanks for sharing.

"Elites decided they were vulgar, and during the reign of France’s Louis XIV, court chefs banned sugar and spice from all meals except for desserts."

And it was right in HN a while back that someone was poopooing non-European cuisine's use of spices as "a means to cover up subpar ingredients". Turns out that at least in Europe it had nothing to do with subpar ingredients.

sgammon3• 3 years ago

what in the f*ck?! man this is just so sad :(

NickSingh2• 3 years ago

Hate to see this – wish the SF politicians AND voter-base took crime more seriously.

teej• 3 years ago

Did I miss the vouch window for this? I don’t think it should be flagged.

arroz5• 3 years ago

People here saying SF is dangerous, the homicide rate is less than 3 per 100k people. I wouldn’t call it dangerous by any means. Shit happens.

mansion73• 3 years ago

Especially in the streets, sidewalks, and stoops of San Francisco!

fred1232• 3 years ago

I’d consider that dangerous when you compare it to the ~10x lower rate in Western Europe

arroz5• 3 years ago

it’s not 10x difference even when compared to Western Europe with few exceptions

dentalperson• 3 years ago

Where did you get that 3 per 100k from? In each of the last 2 years there were 55 homicides in SF from what I can tell. Maybe you're thinking of New York, which is half of SF's rate?

https://sfist.com/2023/01/03/sf-sees-exact-same-number-of-ho... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...

Hoyadonis5• 3 years ago

The FBI's Uniform Crime Reports (second link) contains statistics from 2019. However, it seems to be the most recent edition. I have no idea if or where the 2020-2022 ones exist.

If someome could point me to them or explain why they don't exist, I'd appreciate it.

arroz5• 3 years ago

I think the data was from 2018

roflulz• 3 years ago

SF is 6.9 per 100K -> pretty high... higher than any city in Europe or Asia not currently with an active war... (On those continents, only Ukraine, Iraq, and Afghanistan are more dangerous than SF)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_homicide_rat... excluding those at war.

julienb_sea• 3 years ago

Not to defend SF but there are about 30 US cities with a higher homocide rate, that don't get nearly as much attention. SF is absolutely overrun by homeless though.

arroz5• 3 years ago

The section with SF doesn’t rank the cities

My hometown has about 500 thousand people and is not there, it’s murder rate is about 10

piva002• 3 years ago

It's 6.9 per 100k people, that's higher than São Paulo, Brazil...

stefan_• 3 years ago

Yet lower than Austin, Texas! Must be the administration.

arroz5• 3 years ago

SP is one of the safest cities in Brazil

I don’t feel like SP or SF is dangerous

maersk• 3 years ago

This sfgate article does not identify the person killed. Where did "Bob Lee" come from?

deminature• 3 years ago

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35449473

zamnos5• 3 years ago

https://www.linkedin.com/in/crazybob/

He was Chief Product Officer at MobileCoin. Hopefully we learn who stabbed him, and why. 43 is just way too young. Thoughts go out to his wife. He was instrumental in creating Android. Whatever you may think of it today, we wouldn't have it if it weren't for him.

BigCryo3• 3 years ago

San Fran is filled with homeless schizophrenics... I would bet on one of them having killed him... Some of the mentally ill in the large cities are also addicted to meth or fentanyl

jahsome2• 3 years ago

Baseless speculation is worth nothing.

San Fran is also full of diabetics. Maybe they were trying to steal his pancreas.

zamnos5• 3 years ago

Please don't do this here. A man has died, leaving family and friends, and an operating system (Android), and CashApp, among other things.

Whatever you may feel about San Francisco, could you do it somewhere else please?

bmau5• 3 years ago

This is so tragic. I can only hope this helps spur action to curb crime in the city. RIP Bob :(

jeswin• 3 years ago

spur action to curb crime in the city

If crime is increasing in large US cities (as a trend), there'll be a lack of will in the media to write a story about it.

kortilla5• 3 years ago

Already flagged. This topic is radioactive because it gets close to blaming murder on political decisions.

rvz2• 3 years ago

It is related to tech. This topic couldn't be more relevant.

SF has always been a known shit hole anyway and it has never been safe for techies.

tapatio2• 3 years ago

SF politicians now have blood on their hands, question is, will they do anything about it?

g42gregory• 3 years ago

They move around surrounded by the bodyguards. Why would they care?

corbulo3• 3 years ago

Now?

tapatio2• 3 years ago

I guess they always have, but now it’s fresh techie blood.

seahawks78• 3 years ago

RIP Bob Lee! I was highly inpired by some of your Java talks in Youtube and other places. Aside from that alas! what have things come down to in San Francisco? It has become an utter lawless city.

dredmorbius• 3 years ago

CBS Bay Area has a story: <https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/fatal-stabbing-bob...>

(Presently in the New queue on HN.)

dmode5• 3 years ago

This is sad news, but as much as I am a critic of SF’s policies around homelessness and drugs, it is not a dangerous city that someone will get murdered. SF has one of the lowest homicide rates of big cities. For some perspective, Oakland has half the population of SF and almost 3x the murder rate

https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/pictures/murder-map-deadliest-u-...

corbulo3• 3 years ago

How is this a comment on...this...article...what even

dmode5• 3 years ago

I am responding to most other comments on this post where people seems to spew their personal agenda about a city

farmaway• 3 years ago

as much as I am a critic of SF’s policies around homelessness and drugs, it is not a dangerous city that someone will get murdered.

If you read the article, you'll find that SF is a dangerous city in which someone was just senselessly murdered.

dmode5• 3 years ago

A random act of violence can happen anywhere. Objectively, SF is not a dangerous city when it comes to violent crimes. In 2000s, SF was indeed a violent city with triple digit murders.

TMWNN5• 3 years ago

That Oakland is a really, really, really dangerous city does not preclude the reality of San Francisco's increasing lawlessness.

tomandrews8814• 3 years ago

The “It’s not hot today because hell is hotter” argument.

tomatotime• 3 years ago

SF has gotten so sketchy, sucks what it once was.

tomandrews8814• 3 years ago

Funny how people try so hard to show/prove/argue that SF is safe.

If it was, these discussions wouldn’t exist.

You won’t see these threads about Zurich, just saying.

EdwardDiego8• 3 years ago

I'm pretty sure you would see these threads about Zürich if you were in a net community that has a substantial proportion of members living in or near Zürich.

tomandrews8814• 3 years ago

I spend a lot of time in Zurich, and I’m in tech. Lotta googlers there. I haven’t seen any discussions like this about Zurich yet. When someone says Zurich is quite safe people nod and move on. It’s not news and it’s not controversial.

ben_w2• 3 years ago

I tried looking up comparative crime rates; closest I could find was that for homicide, SF is 5 times worse per capita than Switzerland.

For a sense of scale for anyone who hasn't been, Switzerland has tax funded drinkable water fountains basically everywhere, and (if you will excuse the surprising conjunction) rolls of free bags for dog poo mounted on the dog poo bins which are also basically everywhere.

kuboble• 3 years ago

But the Swiss cities are so safe that people let 6yo kids go to school alone through the city center. At night you can just go out and walk through the city with virtually no risk.

Manjuuu3• 3 years ago

You have no idea of how boringly safe Zurich is. You don't get stabbed in the streets there, you just don't. Also, it's full of tech companies.

Sponge5• 3 years ago

For Zurich this might be true, but there are definitely examples of European cities where the safety debate happens regularly (at least in my personal circles). Brussels and Paris come to mind with their explicit no-go zones and Naples and Rome are notorious for their pickpockets. Even Honest Guide[1], which is the main guide for my city, has half of its' videos dedicated to scams.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/@HONESTGUIDE

thaumasiotes2• 3 years ago

The claim isn't that European cities are safe. The claim is that you don't see arguments over whether safe cities are safe.

bjornsing• 3 years ago

Here in Sweden there’s very intensive public debate on the subject.

acatton• 3 years ago

To be fair, most of the scams exposed by Honest Guide are targeted at tourists, not locals.

I'm not saying this is a good thing, as tourism is a big contributor to Prague's economy, and I don't like when people are getting scammed. But this doesn't affect much the average Tomáš' life.

kkwteh• 3 years ago

I've lived in Paris for over four years now, and I have no idea what these no-go zones people are talking about. I've never heard anyone in Paris talk about them. There is no neighborhood in Paris that I would flat out refuse to go to, even though there definitely a very small number of sketchy areas where I would be more on guard (the Barbès metro comes to mind). There is nothing here that is near as bad as the misery on display in the Tenderloin, or Skid Row.

I have also lived five years in San Francisco, and Paris overall feels much safer to me.

trompetenaccoun2• 3 years ago

The existence of the problem and people denying it are intrinsically linked. You see similar developments in other big cites and it's not just limited to the US either but a phenomenon all over the Western world. Look at Britain and the cover up of those horrific gang rapes for many years.

Ideology is the problem. There are many who base their worldview not on reality but rather what they wish to be true.

joenot4435• 3 years ago

This is precisely the problem. SF is the perfect example of a city where a singular political ideology has remained in control for decades, and what we’re witnessing now is the fallout to that. How can we ever change when it involves admitting that much of what people once championed about SF is exactly what’s killing it now?

It takes a lot to admit you were wrong, and it’s not the kind of thing I typically expect from the kind of folks well invested in ideologically driven politics.

somedude895• 3 years ago

This also happened when Trump said there were no-go zones in some European cities. The MSM instantly "fact checked" his claims and said he was lying. Fast forward a couple of years and now even those countries' governments admit that those zones do in fact exist.

aembleton• 3 years ago

Are there any in the UK? I've not heard of them.

jbu• 3 years ago

I live in (as I remember it) the prime example here. Birmingham UK. There were many articles about it some years ago. So, to fact check from the ground, there are no no-go areas. We're multi-cultural, and we do it well.

astrange7• 3 years ago

Considering the main hobby of Glaswegians is fighting each other over football games, does that mean it's possible to not be violent enough to belong there?

TMWNN5• 3 years ago

Fast forward a couple of years and now even those countries' governments admit that those zones do in fact exist.

They admitted that they exist before Trump became president!

<https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-security-police/fr...>

<http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/paris-terror-...>

notsosec• 3 years ago

France literally has official names and policies for those areas, but all French politicians were like "what the hell is Trump talking about, is he crazy, ha ha funny Americans"

ryan_lane5• 3 years ago

You're seeing this story because it's about someone related to the tech industry, specifically someone like you.

The murder rate in SF is extremely low. Violent crime as a whole is extremely low.

If a tech founder got stabbed in Zurich, you would indeed see a story just like this.

Hoyadonis5• 3 years ago

Violent crime as a whole is extremely low.

This is such an exaggeration, it's a borderline lie.

mjfl8• 3 years ago

except tech founders don't get stabbed in Zurich. Not a single one.

kenneth4• 3 years ago

Tech founders don't get stabbed in Zurich. In fact, basically nobody gets stabbed in Zurich. They do in SF.

In contrast, 6.5% of the population in SF is the victim of crime every year.

joenot4435• 3 years ago

For those curious, SF has the 37th highest violent crime rate of anywhere in the country actually, far ahead of Seattle, St Paul, and Vegas. Number 2 for property theft though!

lordnacho• 3 years ago

It's OOM worse in SF than any other city I've spent time in, including Zurich.

For comparison, I've spent maybe a month in SF put together over the last few years:

- In 30 days, I met more than 30 mentally ill people in SF. 40 Years everywhere else, I saw one old lady with dementia once in Copenhagen. And a few randoms few and far between in London. By mentally ill I mean the kind of ill where you're shouting nonsense in public.

- Then there's the guy who is aggressively threatening his imaginary friends. Seems to be a SF creature, doesn't seem drunk or stoned, just nuts. Even these guys outnumber the drunk/stoned nutters I've met in Europe in the last few years. I ran into them often, trying to stay away since you know...

- SF seemed like you were never more than 2 minutes away from someone with lower level mental health problems. I sat down in a Starbucks and realised I was hearing Cantonese from somewhere. Turned around it was some middle aged woman swearing while having a conversation with herself. But she wasn't in the category above.

- Never saw any crime but I've seen the shoplifting videos. That would not pass in Zurich. Probably not most places though I wonder if Metropolitan Police would get their act together.

- Extreme distress behavior like stealing food, never saw it anywhere else. In SF someone ran in to grab my leftovers when I was done eating. Not the same as a safety issue, but you can see how people might feel unsafe with that kind of thing happening.

- Generally an extreme level of inequality in living conditions might make people feel unsafe. I mean there were people on the street with no shoes, walking around Nordstrom department store in town centre.

Of course it's a long way between safety stats and feeling safe. I would guess if you're living in Sweden right now, you are safe despite the rocketing murder rate, providing you're not involved in organised crime. You might not feel that way and yes there's going to be innocents caught up with it. But safe means a lot of things.

eric-hu• 3 years ago

For anyone else wondering, OOM is probably orders of magnitude.

rvba2• 3 years ago

I wonder if the mental health problems were mental hralth problems due to sickness, hpw many due to situation and how many due to drugs. Drugs fry brains.

TrackerFF2• 3 years ago

I was recently in Copenhagen (one week, lived around King's New Square), and to be honest, I don't think I even saw any junkies there. Much less any obvious homeless people. Rode the subway every day, didn't see anyone there either.

It was pretty much the polar opposite experience of walking down any major street in LA or SF. Of all the metro areas I've visited in Europe, Copenhagen had the least visible amount of junkies and homeless people. I've been in Oslo tons of times, and there you see them quite frequently (but compared to California they're pretty much non-existent)

zhdc12• 3 years ago

You won’t see these threads about Zurich, just saying.

Nope. Taking a train from Zürich HB to Bellinzona for the holiday. The train is full. My suitcase is in the next car.

It will be there, untouched, when I get off in an hour or so.

sschueller• 3 years ago

You are taking a very high risk. I have caught thieves stealing laptops from suitcases on this route.

tomandrews8814• 3 years ago

Nice! In Japan you can leave your laptop in the cafe while you go to the bathroom. This should NOT be amazing. Why do people find this amazing? This should be the norm. Sadly, SF people find it amazing.

sureglymop• 3 years ago

Zürich certainly has dicey areas and such events happening. It is however, a much much smaller city. I don't know if it really makes a lot of sense to compare the two.

tomandrews8814• 3 years ago

I don't know if it really makes a lot of sense to compare the two.

Certainly in terms of crime, it doesn’t

martin_a• 3 years ago

Can someone very briefly wrap this whole "SF is broken"-situation up for somebody from Europe?

I only ever read that it's "because of the policies" and there are lots of rather disturbing videos about SF making its rounds on YouTube.

But what exactly happened? Did they just remove all the police? Did they gave out free drugs to everybody?

I'm not interested in blaming political parties, I just want to get a quick grasp of what exactly has happened.

tomandrews8814• 3 years ago

I just want to get a quick grasp of what exactly has happened

TLDR: there are far fewer consequences for crime now in large cities like SF, NY, LA. The results are as expected.

gwd• 3 years ago

I think GP was looking for at least a bit more context. How did it come to pass that there are fewer consequences for crime in SF?

fogzen• 3 years ago

“After reaching a peak of 1,115 per 100,000 residents in 1992, California’s violent crime rate steadily fell, reaching a 50-year low of 392 in 2014.”

“While the violent crime rate has fluctuated year-over-year, it has remained relatively stable this past decade—between 428 and 466, hovering near its 2010 level (440), when California embarked on major criminal justice reforms.”

“While violent and property crime rates increased in 2021, both remain relatively low”

https://www.ppic.org/publication/crime-trends-in-california/

tomandrews8814• 3 years ago

Another thing you should know as a European about SF is that saying the truth will get you downvoted if the truth doesn’t sound nice

rainy5911• 3 years ago

In fairness, downtown SF SJ and Oakland were always a tad dicey even back in dot com days so most startups preferred to be in more expensive PA MV

Even East PA was the hood. Oakland was famous for riots

SF governance has always been terrible. Real estate has gotten so expensive that startups anxious to conserve runway are pushing deeper into bad neighborhoods that were once unthinkable

thaumasiotes2• 3 years ago

Real estate has gotten so expensive that startups anxious to conserve runway are pushing deeper into bad neighborhoods that were once unthinkable

If the cost of office space were a concern, it'd be difficult to explain why they're anywhere near the Bay Area at all.

inferiorhuman4• 3 years ago

East Palo Alto is a separate city, in a different county, from Palo Alto.

threatofrain5• 3 years ago

SF homicide rate is close to the national average.

Hoyadonis5• 3 years ago

That strikes me as a cherry-picked statistic. San Francisco is one of the most crime-ridden cities in America.

San Franciscans face about a 1-in-16 chance each year of being a victim of property or violent crime, which makes the city more dangerous than 98 percent of US cities, both small and large.

https://www.hoover.org/research/why-san-francisco-nearly-mos...

oldgradstudent2• 3 years ago

7.1 per 100,000.[1] This is a large increase in recent years.

Just in 2014, the national average was 4.5 per 100,000.

And these numbers are several times that of large European cities.

Still, this is not as bad as Oakland, with a homicide rate several times that.

[1] https://abc7news.com/feature/san-francisco-bay-area-safety-t...

[2] https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/crime-in-the-u.s.-...

x-complexity3• 3 years ago

SF homicide rate is close to the national average.

That is in of itself not alarming. An average city would have an average homicide rate: That's what averages are. It's only alarming if the city has (a) one of the lowest homicide rates nationally, or (b) one of the highest homicide rates nationally. Being average just means that it's the middle of the pack.

m4632• 3 years ago

Didn't it used to be much worse?

I remember in the 90's that oakland and east palo alto were basically murder capitals, and SF wasn't too far off.

Dreako• 3 years ago

They have stopped prosecuting repeat offenders, and reduced the size of the police force

People are slowly realizing that it was a mistake, but its gonna take some time to fix the situation.

rainy5911• 3 years ago

If startups were really worried about avoiding crime, they would be in high rent Mill Valley Sausalito etc

In startup world, you tolerate the crime to get cheap office space

Salesforce went downtown for the cheap rent. Otherwise it was always foggy chilly and a commute mess. Amazon's original offices in Seattle were near some really spooky stuff too. In startup grind you do what you do

KptMarchewa• 3 years ago

They have stopped prosecuting repeat offenders, and reduced the size of the police force

Ok, but apparently it was shit even before that, so this can't be full answer.

ryan_lane5• 3 years ago

Neither of these things are true, and SF ousted the DA that was apparently not prosecuting offenders, and things haven't seemed to change?

ddevault• 3 years ago

Many of the other comments are missing the point. It's ultimately because there are a lot of desperate people in SF. The bay area has the highest homelessness incidence in the country. Mental health services are poor to non-existent. The city is full of people with no options, no healthcare, and no support system. We could criminalize homelessness even more, and brutalize the desperate with more police interventions, but that's a lazy and unsympathetic explanation for why this is happening. Society has failed the poor and SF is exhibit A.

five_alive2• 3 years ago

You’re putting a lot of stock into SF’s failures, but keep in mind that other cities ship their homeless to SF, and as a result, SF gets a disproportionate share of homeless.

subsistence2345• 3 years ago

In addition to the year-round mild climate, SF's local laws (and enforcement or lack thereof, e.g. legalizing theft of less than $1000 or intentionally spreading HIV) attracts desperate people, as well as people who simply enjoy the lifestyle, from all over the US, by rewarding them for doing what they do.

Basic "supply and demand" also applies to crime, playground needles and sidewalk turds: if you lower the "price" (punishment) at constant demand (people who want to steal or shoot up in public), the supply increases.

fifticon• 3 years ago

This. In europe we treat sick people, in the US they leave them on the streets, and then task the police with beating them regularly. I live in europe, in a nice house. We don't have any guns in our house, and we don't fear random weirdos trying to break into our house, because our society takes care of and treats sick people. Because we are not scaring and harrassing them all over the place, they aren't running rampant around areas of our city. I don't care about having health insurance, because I already have it as a citizen, paid for with my taxes. If I'm fired from my job, I still have health insurance.

secondcoming2• 3 years ago

Are all those homeless originally from SF, or do they migrate there?

If it's the latter then I assume that social services are just overwhelmed?

I'm pretty sure that if I was made homeless tomorrow, and knew I had no prospect of pulling myself out of that situation, I'd migrate to somewhere with a climate like that of SF.

scoofy2• 3 years ago

This is honestly not true. There are in fact a shocking amount of resources in San Francisco for people living in poverty.

patife• 3 years ago

I see a lot of comments about how it’s gotten terrible recently etc.

I’m not from the US, but I’ve been to SF a number on times (>5). The first time was in 2006 for apple WWDC, as a student, and back then I already witnessed a number of people wandering in the streets, mostly passed out or wandering, but I also saw peopoe shouting at the air, and defecating and throwing stuff.

At the time I was told this was a legacy from the post-Vietnam era, where many veterans flocked there due to the dem leaning of the city which provided an expectation of help, and also mostly the nice weather, but ultimately they did not get support.

From that point on things developed. Veterans from other wars, and then generally any people with life issues, were attracted to that location which fits their unfortunate, crazy situation - drugs, a barebones support network that provides food (?), and the fact no one bothers them anymore..

At least that’s what I was told.

In recent years I’ve noticed more of the situation, but tbh nothing that surprises me from the earlier observations. I didn’t see ANY numbers so that may or may not be the case.

I am interested in someone validating or correcting my perception

tedivm4• 3 years ago

Half of the problem is that San Francisco- and the bay area as a whole- ignores their drug and homeless problem. Ironically the drug rate in San Francisco matches that of most large cities, but you don't see the problem in other cities because most of the drug users do it in the homes rather than on the street.

The bay area has the lowest rate of homeless shelters per capita of any major metro in the united states. Whether you're talking Atlanta, Miami, or Boston (regardless of weather), every other city has more homeless shelters and programs to house people. This gets people off of the streets and, at a minimum, gets them in a place where they can take advantage of other programs to deal with health and addiction problems.

In the bay area these people stay on the streets while hundreds of charities get small amounts of money to help, but with no real central coordination or group that's in charge of spending that money effectively. As a result you've got a ton of people on the streets, as well as all the consequences of that.

jjcon• 3 years ago

California is 48th in the US for veterans per capita so I sorta doubt veterans make up even a few percent of those

Rob_Middleton842• 3 years ago

As a UK resident, I asked this very same question the other day on Twitter. I didn't get a reply. I'd be interested to hear a precis too

rejectfinite2• 3 years ago

Why did this get downvoted? HN is truly hilarious sometimes.

Fradow• 3 years ago

I'm from Europe too, but I've following what's been happening, so here's a very detached account of what happened.

First, it's not a single reason but several going hand in hand. The main one, as far as I understand, is the sky-rocketing price of housing, coupled with little social safety net for which the US is well-known, produced a lot of homelessness that has not been addressed and ballooned. With that also came crime and drug abuse (that's not new: I've been there 10 years ago and was shocked by the amount of homeless people in the streets, and I live in Paris, which has its fair share of homeless people, so that's saying something)

The second main one is that racism, which has always been a thing, especially in the police force, produced some very high profile events (George Floyd) and high backlash against the police, perceived as racist and not being on the side of "the people".

There has been a big "defund the police", which resulted in less policing, police force demoralization, a lot of officers quitting. Coupled with the previous issue, a lot of small crimes happened, mainly perpetuated by poor people. It's important to note that due to the US history, being poor correlate strongly with skin color.

I don't really know if it's the fact that the people appearing the court were black and it was deemed racist or if the court were overloaded (probably an unhealthy mix of both), but at some point, shoplifting under a certain amount (was it $950? Somewhere in the $1000 ballpark) was changed from a felony to a misdemeanor. In practice, that means you could do that without fear of retribution, which predictably had awful results, and might be the disturbing videos you are talking about.

There you go, hopefully I didn't misrepresent the situation and didn't forget any other important factor, though I'm sure someone will correct me if I did.

inferiorhuman4• 3 years ago

  I don't really know if it's the fact that the people appearing the court
  were black and it was deemed racist or if the court were overloaded (probably
  an unhealthy mix of both), but at some point, shoplifting under a certain
  amount (was it $950? Somewhere in the $1000 ballpark) was changed from a felony
  to a misdemeanor. In practice, that means you could do that without fear of
  retribution, which predictably had awful results, and might be the disturbing
  videos you are talking about.

In most states the felony threshold gets adjusted periodically if for no other reason than to keep up with inflation. Texas bumped theirs to $2,500 and Alabama to $1,500 back in 2015.

rainy5911• 3 years ago

I thought we were gonna avoid politics

I've lived in SF PDX SEA and I've lived in Europe

In the past decade, US cities enjoyed a renaissance / gentrification in otherwise formerly decaying downtown urban areas, mostly led by tech companies tired of car culture and suburbia

Now that money flows are slowing, these areas are reverting back unfortunately

IMO most US tech startups would kill to be in a cheap sunny European city say along the Adriatic coast but are hampered by funding regs etc

chrissnell4• 3 years ago

Homelessness in the US is not a housing issue. Simply walk through a typical homeless encampment or walk through the Financial District of San Francisco and it will be clear as day: it is a drugs and mental illness issue, and ultimately, a family issue. Good families will take care of their mentally ill members and get them the care that they need. If you don't have a family, it's easy to end up out in the street on drugs. Nobody wants to talk about families, though.

pookha7• 3 years ago

You're over thinking SF. SF is landlocked so there's always going to be steep housing costs...The real problem, as far as I can tell, is that homeless drug addicts are given free money by CAAP and have ample access to hard drugs. Anybody who's seen what hard-drugs do to a person or a family can attest that this is NOT good. You have probably seen something similar in Germany (I have) but the difference is in Germany they actively enforce the criminal code. You can't walk into an Aldi in Koln with a trash bag and make off with a hundred dollars in random goods...In SF this is happening. Which requires another conversation on America's far-left and their response to crime and their views of an unjust system. That being said there's a toxic environment in SF and it's not changing anytime soon.

glerk• 3 years ago

The truth is we are letting antisocial criminal trash walk freely around downtown and terrorize the local population. I think a lot of people live in their nice neighborhood bubble and have never stepped foot in FiDi or SOMA.

Since I moved here, I have sen people break into cars (numerous times), fill suitcases with products from Target and Walgreens and leave without paying, casually smoke meth in a crowded bus, empty their bladder and bowels in the middle of the sidewalk, etc. all of this brazenly and in broad daylight. In other cities, this type of behavior usually earns you at least a good beating and a night in jail. The negative feedback is very important for conditioning antisocial people to behave in a civilized community, but for some reason, SF has decided to not bother with it.

Some other comments conflate this with the "homeless problem". This is not a "homeless problem". Homeless people living in a shelter or pitching a tent under a bridge are not the problem in SF. Criminal antisocial nutcases getting no consequences for their actions are the problem.

jacquesm5• 3 years ago

at least a good beating

In what cities does any of this earn you a good beating?

soulofmischief5• 3 years ago

Opinions like these involving the use of corporal punishment and ad hominem (antisocial criminal trash) are part of the reason why the pendulum has swung so far in the other direction and the bay now lives in a liberal dystopia

rainy5911• 3 years ago

SF is very very good at marketing itself

Crime was pretty crazy during dot com days, just tolerated more. Maritime Park next to the Hyatt / Embarcadero was always hip deep in homeless people at night. Very scary. Even worse when the freeway was still there. Market always had overly bright lights at night and looked like a sci fi dystopia. Absolutely no one wanted to be in SOMA at night which is a real problem for a startup working late hours. Hence small startups preferred renting private homes in Menlo Park etc. (Silicon Valley HBO)

hotpotamus7• 3 years ago

As ever, "The Simpsons" were insightful.

Because you need me, Springfield. Your guilty conscience may force you to vote Democratic, but deep down inside, you secretly long for a cold-hearted Republican to lower taxes, brutalise criminals and rule you like a king!

That's almost 30 years old now.

kypro2• 3 years ago

I think a lot of people live in their nice neighborhood bubble and have never stepped foot in FiDi or SOMA.

We have similar problems here in the UK. A lot of people are disconnected by class which leads to misunderstands and bad politics. I personally think this class disconnect contributed far more to events like Brexit and Trump in recent years than social media.

Most of family are working class and things like mass 3rd world migration, homelessness, drug use, etc has caused huge problems in working class communities here in the UK. But when you try to raise these issues (as a working class person) you always get accused by some progressive middle-class person of racism, intolerance, or being anti-progress, etc.

You basically have to wait for things to get so bad that middle class people are also impacted, then they'll stop slandering you and let you have an opinion.

As an outsider it would seem San Francisco is reaching that tipping point now – it's not just poor people being impacted by these bad political decisions, but also the wealthy progressives responsible for them.

Although from what I've seen in the case of SF it seems the progressives who caused the issues rather just flee than fix the problems they created.

harimau7775• 3 years ago

You are presenting two false dilemmas:

First, that addressing the core causes behind most crime (poverty, drugs, mental health, etc.) implies not enforcing the laws. We could address the root causes while also enforcing laws.

Second, that enforcing the laws requires extreme punishment like beatings.

sva_• 3 years ago

I think there is a large intersection between the sets "homeless people" and "antisocial nutcases" though. I've been to SF once, and the amount of crazy shit I've seen in just two days was staggering.

But there was also a lot of good stuff.

AlexandrB2• 3 years ago

The negative feedback is very important for conditioning antisocial people to behave in a civilized community, but for some reason, SF has decided to not bother with it.

If we go with this, let's apply it equally. SBF should get 50 lashes in a town square and any employer stealing wages or landlord failing to maintain their property gets a beating and thrown in jail for a night. Why limit this punishment to petty crimes like pooping in the street?

cdelsolar• 3 years ago

I worked in FiDi, I worked in SOMA, and I worked in the Western Addition for many years. I saw a lot of shit (literally), addicts shooting up on the Civic Center station steps, my coworker got punched in the arm by a homeless person on the way home. I've walked through the Tenderloin at night numerous times (some of the best food in the city). Yeah, there's some nasty stuff going on. But the comments here make it seem like SF is a lawless hellhole, a failed city. This is just not true. I never felt too unsafe, and I explored the city on foot by night constantly. Of course everyone takes a chance walking around at night in a US city. I love SF and I intend to visit again someday soon.

scoofy2• 3 years ago

I will do my best, but it's important for people to know that I mean this as respectfully as I can. It's my honest assessment, and I will try to make few-to-no normative claims.

I tend to refer to what's happening in SF as SF-Stockholm syndrome (I do not mean this as disrespectful, only that I don't know any other way to describe the normalization of what happens here). I grew up in Texas, spent time on the East Coast, with a reasonable stint in NYC, and spent just over a year Scotland. I really have never seen the openness and acceptance of severe substance abuse like I have on the West Coast of the United States (not just in SF).

Portland, SF, LA, Oakland, Berkeley, pretty much every major city here, there are areas of the city where serious drug use, and some crime, is effectively just tolerated. SF is particularly unique, because, by a wide margin, it's the smallest in area and most walkable. Other cities tend to be automobile-centric, so non-organized crime tends to stay in small areas of the city (though, from my understanding, this is changing in Portland for the worse).

This is combine with a fairly strong anti-police culture. I don't know the veracity or history, but people here, even perfectly law abiding people, tend to think the police forces are generally corrupt-and-racist, or have a history of corruption and racism. I'm regularly shock that everyone here seems to be disgusted with the police, but nearly nobody has any intention or desire to reform, normalize, or even overhaul the institution. Many seem to see very idea of police as just a bad thing.

Combine this with the out-of-control opiate epidemic, and what this seems to have created is a pretty nuts, but not actually abnormally dangerous, environment in San Francisco in particular. There is little enforcement of any laws, except parking enforcement. When my friends from Germany visited, they were very curious about this "opiate and crime thing" after reading about book about Fentanyl, so as part of their visit, I showed them the open drug markets around midnight at UN Plaza, at Civic Center BART station. They were horrified. It's hard to describe the scene of crowds of people, many just shuffling around, obviously high, often with pretty obvious other complications from living in squalor.

I call it Stockholm Syndrome because people have genuinely convinced themselves that this is normal. People here legitimately believe that leaving anything at all in your car, even small things, in any major city in America, will likely lead to a break in. Obviously this is incredibly untrue, and SF is an outlier in theft (to the point that the stats are laughably inaccurate because nobody even reports car break-ins to the police anymore), but people have acclimated to the culture, and just assume it's normal, if they don't leave the region on a regular basis.

Ironically, the city is actually fairly safe with regards to violent crime. Not especially safe, but the homicide figures show that things aren't "out of control" in the violent crime aspect.

The thing that's shocking is how in-your-face it all is. The signs of severe substance abuse, are ever-present in a shockingly large amount of the commercial districts of the city (though most of the city is perfectly safe, quite and residential). The city does absolutely nothing about it. They do not mandate addiction treatment, because, for the most part, the people with substance abuse issues never see a court room. Primarily, because the court system cannot handle the case load. My roommate is a Public Defender, so I'm acutely aware of the backlog of cases that are genuinely violent crime. Not that it matters, because in election-after-election, the candidates tend to be pretty much on the same page that nothing really will be done. Again, much of the populous has a very strong distaste for any policing action. I honestly believe that most people here legitimately don't like the idea of forcing people into treatment if they don't want it.

It is incredibly complex, and I've only just scratched the surface of the nuance in what's happening here. There are housing issues, inequality issues, nativist issues, agency issues, and even a bizarre idealization poverty and squalor. To cover everything would be more appropriate as an hour-long discussion over drinks at a bar where you can see what's actually happening with your own eyes, because I think most Europeans would be quite speechless at it all.

This tragedy did not happen in a bad part of town, and I honestly walk through worse areas at similar hours regularly, and it's generally fine.

blackshaw2• 3 years ago

Interesting comment - thanks.

alexchantavy2• 3 years ago

One thing I’ve noticed in SF bay forums is there’s strong support for more enforcement and generally cleaning up the city. For comparison, Seattle forums are literally more split: Seattle’s subreddits are split to r/Seattle (leans left) and r/SeattleWA (leans right).

All this to say that based on my reads of online forums, I think SF is ahead of the curve of Seattle in terms of near universal frustration with homelessness/drugs/etc (even if it’s not confirmed whether they are related to this case), but somehow no progress or change in elected officials have been made.

I’m watching this to see if there’s hope for some of the problems in Seattle, since online forums here aren’t pissed off to the same degree yet.

mlcrypto• 3 years ago

I thought Europe is the same way. In France you get stabbed too and burned in the street by the riots

DoreenMichele15• 3 years ago

1. Due to the temperate weather, California has largely become the dumping ground for America's chronic homeless. This is rooted in longstanding housing policies causing a shortfall of affordable housing nationwide.

2. On top of that, California has additional broken tax policies and other policies that deepen the shortage of affordable housing.

3. Big cities are where the services are, such as soup kitchens. If you are homeless in the US and have nothing, going to the nearest big city is your best bet for trying to eat regularly.

4. California and big cities are both expensive. Once you go to California as a homeless person or the big city as a homeless person, it's quite hard to get off the street because housing is so expensive.

5. Being LGBTQ puts one at high risk of being homeless due to homophobia. San Francisco has a reputation for being more LGBTQ-friendly than average even for a big city.

So you have desperate people hearing high-minded nonsense that lures them into a bad situation and we aren't really dealing effectively with such issues generally, so we aren't giving people real solutions. Desperate, hopeless people with no options is not a good population type to foster the growth of if you value a civilized social climate.

/2 cents

chockablock• 3 years ago

The narrative that most homeless people in SF come there from other places is contradicted by data. In annual surveys, ~70+% of people who are homeless in SF lived in SF when they became homeless.

https://sfstandard.com/public-health/latino-homelessness-sur...

4gotunameagain5• 3 years ago

Being LGBTQ puts one at high risk of being homeless due to homophobia.

...Or, being LGBTQ puts you in a higher risk of being homeless due to underlying mental issues. We can never know.

TrackerFF2• 3 years ago

6. Treatment/care for mental illnesses is pretty much non-existent if you can't afford it. And if you're a violent homeless person, there's a pretty good chance you have some underlying psychological condition.

logicalmonster• 3 years ago

Being LGBTQ puts one at high risk of being homeless due to homophobia.

The statistics might bear out that being LGBTQ puts one at high risk of being homeless, but homelessness being due to homophobia is an unclear and unproven assertion.

ZeroGravitas• 3 years ago

I'd summarize it as BS.

This will receive howls of disapproval. It's so obvious, like climate change being fake and Trump secretly battling a cabal of pedo vaccine-peddling warmongers. How could you possibly believe something different?

But I've heard similar about Chicago, Paris and Bradford.

https://www.politico.com/amp/news/2020/07/29/trump-chicago-g...

Conservative media for decades have painted America’s third-largest city as a national hub of gun violence and gang activity, crippled by what they see as political correctness thwarting real solutions.

https://blog.geographydirections.com/2015/02/02/fox-news-no-...

Emerson stated, “In Britain, it’s not just no-go zones, there are actual cities like Birmingham that are totally Muslim where non-Muslims just simply don’t go… In parts of London, there are actually Muslim religious police that actually beat and actually wound seriously anyone who doesn’t dress according to religious Muslim attire.”
These segments were widely mocked across social media and the station eventually issued an apology, stating that there was “no credible information to support the assertion”.

As a European you just have to look at all the claims of how "communist" California is to get an idea how detached from reality these people are.

blondie9x• 3 years ago

Homeless is just the wrong word. It should be something else.

mrits2• 3 years ago

I'm imagining running through a WW2 field doing triage and telling the battle wounded that the doctors are behind you but you are making sure that no one offends them verbally. If you take the issue seriously it is more offensive to waste energy on what we decide is an appropriate label for other people.

m4632• 3 years ago

I visited the tourist area near the piers a few months ago, and it seemed a little lawless.

Why are there so many people on unlicensed dirt bikes doing wheelies down the street?

hayst4ck• 3 years ago

There's 100s of different hypothesis for the cause, but it's all just a different flavor of wealth inequality. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. This promotes all types of corruption.

The rich can usually avoid the stench and filth of the poor so they don't invest their money in solving it. Now the poorness is festering.

This is a problem that will not get solved without taxes, and it probably won't get solved without taxes at the federal level. Americans will not let themselves be taxed more and so the consequences are more of this for the foreseeable future.

logicchains2• 3 years ago

There's 100s of different hypothesis for the cause, but it's all just a different flavor of wealth inequality

This is simply untrue. There are cities with more wealth inequality (Singapore, Shanghai, Dubai..) that have no such crime or filth, because the police deal with it aggressively.

Dig1t2• 3 years ago

This problem was created by liberal policies, in typical liberal fashion, the only way to solve the problem is _even more_ liberal policies?

Despite having control of every layer of government they still somehow are blaming someone else.

San Francisco wasn't always like this.

syntheweave• 3 years ago

I have lived in SF my whole life.

It's not that anything specific has changed in SF - it's more a case of, the political machine has been running very smoothly in a way that does little to help anyone in particular, and occasionally it manifests as an "oopsie we let someone die".

The designated narrative role of SF since the 70's, as a Democratic Party stronghold, is to be praised from the left for progressive policies, and pilloried from the right for being a failing dystopia. And the narrative has simply intensified both ways over time, while the actual ground level conditions are way more varied. There used to be more overt violence, gang shootings and the like. Now it's mostly drug use and property crime. Mostly. After all, someone did just get stabbed. But in any case, the existence of the narrative allows every concrete fact to be shouted over by paid advocates for some cause.

To get at the truth you have to dig into the details neighborhood by neighborhood, department by department, year by year. The problems are not something that manifests from electing one wrong leader or voting yes on one wrong ballot proposition, but from the city openly allowing itself to court a menagerie of institutions that do no good other than to allow money to be shuffled between bank accounts. There are nice neighborhoods, mostly on the west side of the city, where if anything bad is happening, it's kept tucked out of sight. But go downtown and you get the apocalyptic scenes, which are supported by this "NGO industrial complex".

For one example, I present Urban Alchemy. Urban Alchemy describes itself like this:

We’re a social enterprise that engages with situations where extreme poverty meets homelessness, mental illness and addiction.

When a neighborhood, street or intersection earns a reputation as a place to avoid, we turn it around. Urban Alchemy is a peaceful and supportive presence, inviting communities to rebuild and restore a sense of pride and respect in urban spaces.

UA has a logo that looks like a cult symbol, and they hire former prisoners as "ambassadors"(i.e. they beat up and harass people, mostly homeless). This does nothing to fix the visible drug use problem next door to their building, of course. It would not surprise me to learn that UA itself has drug addicts in its ranks.

In essence, they seem to be doing the kind of thing you would expect the police to be doing, but the police aren't doing it, so they're going to do it very badly and say it is helping. What are the police doing? Not a whole lot, it seems. They were very happy to say it was the progressive district attorney making things unsafe. But even if that were the case, they just haven't been enforcing, not even traffic. They weren't defunded at all. After Covid, people started speeding around the empty streets and they didn't stop even after traffic picked up again. They need to fire the department and start over, like what happened in Georgia in 2004.

Tech actually did a measure of good for the city, at the expense of making it a really expensive place to live and bringing in a highly transient population of tech workers who "put in a few years" for a career launchpad. The tech companies threw their weight around and got some things built. However, a lot of the surplus funds that went into the government went into "programs" of the Urban Alchemy sort, and tech workers weren't in it for the long term and voted with the national narratives, not for direct investment in the neighborhoods. So, mostly, measures that favored landowners under progressive guises passed.

And that brings us to today, where it might actually come to pass that the city has to cut something for once. But they've made so many things in the budget earmarked that it'll probably be the wrong things that get cut first.

clsec2• 3 years ago

To those of us who have lived here for years, we know that this is an accurate answer.

dkn775• 3 years ago

This is a great comment that comes from someone who is knowledgeable about local government. Same thing happens here In Baltimore. They call it poverty pimping, or poverty industrial complex

harimau7775• 3 years ago

There's a combination of issues.

In general, the US has a major crime/homlessness problem due to the lack of a social safety net, poor drug & mental health policy, and homophobia.

California has much nicer weather than much of the US so homeless people move their or are just able to survive there. In some cases, right wing states purposely relocate their homeless to California.

America is currently experiencing a backlash against a broken justice system that tolerates police brutality, favors the rich, and is often racist. Unfortunately, this has probably resulted in an overcorrection in many places.

The previous point is exasperated by the fact that the Republican party, which in recent decades has been more oriented around "law and order", has become a far right party. Therefore, even if someone agrees with their candidate on crime, they may disagree with them on economics, LGBTQ rights, etc.

I don't know if this is true, but I've been told that unlike most other cities, much of SF's resources for helping homeless people is located in their downtown. That then results in the homeless problem being much more visible there.

JeremyNT3• 3 years ago

Only millionaires can afford to live in SF now due to the tech money. This displaces the middle class and poor, and leads to homelessness and increased crime.

mrits2• 3 years ago

It may lead to homelessness but certainly not the only thing that does. In Austin you don't need to be a millionaire and the city takes 1 step forward 2 steps back with our homelessness problem.

amrocha13• 3 years ago

Arresting people doesn't address the reason they committing crimes in the first place. The issue is poverty and wealth inequality.

The truth is tech ruined the city. SF used to be a city of misfits, who don't usually have high income. Tech workers started flooding the city, drove up rents, and these misfits ended up homeless. Once you're homeless it's a struggle, some get back on their feet but some start abusing drugs. Government support programs are terribly run, so nobody uses them. Let the situation go on for a few years and you get SF.

It's not just SF though, it's any city in North America that has had booming rents the past couple decades. Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, SF.

If you look at Tokyo, rents are low and jobs are plentiful. The biggest city in the world has less than 4000 homeless people living in it.

yurikoif3• 3 years ago

It’s just simply false. Crimes in SF were bad even before the dot com era. Remember the roof top Koreans? I’d give police & drug policies more credit for this

polski-g• 3 years ago

You can put bad people in an insane asylum, or you can put them in prison. But you cannot leave them in society: https://twitter.com/KaseyKlimes/status/1632096902022832130

The left decided that regulating society's behavior was racist so they stopped doing it since 2014.

fed_up_ca• 3 years ago

part of the problem is the city is refusing to arrest Honduran fentanyl dealers due to sanctuary city laws

the other part of the problem is there's a certain minority demographic who are responsible for 80% of the violent crime. Yes, it is racist to point this out but reality is racist. Europe doesn't have much of this demographic.

There's no good solution to this. 3-strikes laws from the 90s kept this in check but they all got rolled back as racist. Current progressive thinking is be lenient on violent crime and treat the perpetrator better than the victim. This is proving disastrous

Either American cities go back to harsh enforcement or they will continue to descend into Mogadishu-like chaos

seaourfreed• 3 years ago

Two factors:

a) They cut officers and drive them away. They had 2,160 officers and needed them. They are down to 1,651 officers (Sept 2022) Source: abc7news.com

b) The San Francisco DA allows many arrested to allowed to go free. They elected a special DA to allow people to go free. Not for all crimes, but many. This emboldens people because they see so many people released without trial or sentencing for their crimes, so they are emboldened to commit crimes.

The number of murders is very sad to see increased to such high levels.

Jochim9• 3 years ago

The number of murders is very sad to see increased to such high levels.

Why just make things up? The absolute number of murders is basically flat over the last decade and per-capita it's decreased[1].

[0] https://sfgov.org/scorecards/public-safety/violent-crime-rat...

[1] https://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-San-Francisco-Californ...

tlogan6• 3 years ago

There are a few unrelated problems:

- Sf closed schools for one year and half during the COVID causing large number of families to move out. And these are people who are contrablance to ultra liberals.

- Housing crisis: Corruption within the city's permit process has resulted in the need to hire "accelerators," which exacerbates the housing crisis.

- Public education: The public school system is facing significant difficulties and is in desperate need of improvement.

- Drug policy: The implementation of safe drug consumption sites has inadvertently worsened the city's drug problem.

- Street closures: Restricting vehicle access on certain streets has negatively impacted businesses and inadvertently facilitated the spread of homeless encampments.

- Small business challenges: Overly stringent regulations, often driven by the "virtue signaling" of the super wealthy, have created a hostile environment for small businesses.

- Progressive District Attorney: The DA's policies have led to policing issues, resulting in a surge of crimes such as robberies.

- Homelessness: Despite significant spending on homelessness, inefficiencies and corruption have hindered progress. Furthermore, "virtue signaling" has taken precedence over effective solutions.

- BART safety: Following a police shooting on BART several years ago, a reduction in policing has made the transit system less safe, deterring people from using it to visit San Francisco.

These issues may be interrelated or independent, but each contributes to the city's current struggles.

TheRealDunkirk5• 3 years ago

The implementation of safe drug consumption sites has inadvertently worsened the city's drug problem.

"Inadvertently." Nice one.

These issues may be interrelated or independent, but each contributes to the city's current struggles.

I don't see how any reasonable person could not see that these things are all closely related. The inequality, due to the unaffordable housing, leading to rampant homelessness, drug use, and crime, to an almost-complete abdication of prosecution for these crimes, in an effort to be "equitable," and now... considering paying reparations for slavery!? You really don't see a thread here? Really!?

IG_Semmelweiss4• 3 years ago

I think you forgot to add 2:

- Drug Crisis: Fentanyl crisis which is a US-made drug, widely accessible, and is affecting all America, exacerbating the homeless problem.

- SFO subsidizing addiction: On average $336 in grants given to homeless [2], many of whom are addicts, plus policies that allow crime for retail goods that are then fenced to support addiction. County Adult Assistance Programs (CAAP): Eligible San Franciscans can receive up to $687 a month from CAAP as well as a wide range of additional services and assistance. CalFresh (Food Stamps): All individuals who meet certain income requirements can receive up to $250 monthly for food assistance.

i'd add 2 citations under " Homelessness [1] "

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/23/books/review/san-fransick...

[2] According to the San Francisco Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, as of 2021, the average amount of General Assistance (GA) provided to individuals experiencing homelessness in San Francisco was $336 per month.

jonfw• 3 years ago

It's a great location on the coast, with public transit, interesting architecture and culture. So people want to be there. The weather is great and the housing is incredibly expensive, so living on the street, in a tent, or out of a car is more appealing comparatively speaking than most places.

San Francisco has tended to view aggressive law enforcement against poor or homeless people as immoral (they don't want to criminalize being poor) which has had an unintended affect of making it a good place to be a homeless person or criminal.

naremu• 3 years ago

It's interesting to see California really embrace socially progressive policies

while simultaneously staying heavily invested in economics that nobody but some quiet, far off yacht owner seems to be happy about

As someone from the general northeast US, it's amazing how local views of california have changed as they continue to kind of...drag their feet along and keep up this "highly based" outward appearance.

rib3ye• 3 years ago

Perspective of an SF homeowner and resident for 20 years. I also raise young kids here.

In 2000, there was observably more crime everywhere, but rents were cheap and as a young person I enjoyed the relative lawlessness. Market St used to be nothing but adult theaters and shady import shops. Things are 1000% NICER in ALL areas of the city. The transformation of China Basin has been incredible.

But you have to put all the down-and-out people somewhere. We squeezed them out of many central refuge areas (Tenderloin, 6th St., Fillmore, Mission) and then expected instant gentrification.

TL;DR... SF: far from perfect, but definitely not on a downward slope.

honkycat• 3 years ago

It comes from a few things:

1. Rent has become insanely expensive such that a lot of people end up no the streets. This is the cause of the tent cities popping up, and really are a small part of what people have a problem with. The "invisible" homeless.

2. We do not have any resources for people who are too mentally ill or too sick to be of any "use" to society. A lot of those people end up on the street, where they are vulnerable to manipulation to start using heroin. A lot of them have mental disabilities. No, we do not have mental hospitals, and the ones that do exist are full, and they are not hurrying to build more.

3. We have a massive heroin addiction epidemic. These are the people who are crawling all over the place trying to get their fix, mugging people in the fugue states between scraping enough money together to get their next fix. The "highly visible" homeless.

So. Something like 0.17% of our population is homeless. That is like 600k people.

Imagine what it will take get these people off the streets and reintegrated into society, if that is even possible.

They need:

1. Shelter.

2. Food.

3. Medical professionals to help them come down from the high, and help them get on a better path to stop using drugs.

4. Security to prevent re-victimization.

5. Legal authority to detain them without their consent ( a lot of homeless people have schizophrenia and are extremely paranoid and do not trust anyone ).

Imagine how much that will cost.

The US government is extremely austere around funding this stuff, so it has been left up to the cities and states, which do not have the resources to tackle the problem.

So that is really it. It's too expensive, and all the money is pooled into the top .1% of the population, and we don't tax them, and they are busy building rocket ships, so we don't have any money to fix the issue.

Some people want the cops to arrest them but that is actually MORE expensive and MORE prone to failure, other ethical issues aside. ( of which there are many )

prottog17• 3 years ago

It's too expensive, and all the money is pooled into the top .1% of the population, and we don't tax them, and they are busy building rocket ships, so we don't have any money to fix the issue.

There may be more impactful things for the likes of Bezos to invest in than rocketships, but the idea that more wealth redistribution via taxation here would help things needs evidence to back it up.

In 2021, when the stock market was at its peak and therefore the net worths of billionaires were the most inflated (for which you can blame government policy, anyway), the wealth of all billionaires in the US were around $4T. Even if you confiscated it all and were magically able to sell all of their interests in various holdings without affecting the price, it would pay for two, maybe three years of Social Security and Medicare; forget the rest of the federal government, let alone all the other levels of government.

It's been pointed out elsewhere that San Francisco already spends over a billion dollars a year on programs related to homelessness, or around $57k per homeless person. To put it in context, if the whole country spent the same amount on welfare per capita, it would be $19T, which is 3x the current federal budget and over 80% of the GDP. It's a mind-boggling amount of money which would be completely untenable to sustain over time.

You would have to rely on a lot of faith to think that lack of money is what is preventing these problems from being fixed.

thefourthchime4• 3 years ago

It's difficult to determine the precise policies that have led San Francisco to its current state. Having lived there a decade ago, I can attest that certain areas, such as the Loin, were unlike anything I had seen in other cities. When I returned a few years ago, I observed that those areas had deteriorated even further and were spreading like a cancer.

Since then, I have relocated to Austin, where homelessness has always been more prevalent than in other southern cities but never to the same extent as in LA or SF. However, a few years ago, our mayor chose not to penalize public camping, and as a result, homeless camps began to spring up throughout the city, including a tent city beneath a highway near my home. This led to a host of issues, including campfires, public defecation, and needles, necessitating constant intervention by EMS.

Fortunately, a proposition to make public camping illegal again passed with ease. While the city council was initially slow to enforce the ban, they eventually did so, and one by one, the tent cities disappeared. Occasionally, a tent pile of belongings still appears, but these are also cleared out promptly.

It's unclear where the former residents of these tent cities have gone. Some may have relocated to the creeks or woods out of sight, while others may have taken a bus to SF or LA. Alternatively, perhaps the change in policy inspired some of them to reach out to family members or other support networks to try and get back on their feet.

Ultimately, all I know is that enforcing basic laws had a positive impact on the non-homeless population, and I hope that those experiencing homelessness can find a way to improve their situation without making the city worse for everyone else.

RC_ITR3• 3 years ago

What happened is as follows:

1) Various US policies have driven up rates of destructive drug use (i.e. it's easier to get truly toxic drugs like Meth and Fent than it is to get lower harm, but equally potent drugs)

2) Various US policies have made life miserable for people who fall victim to that drug use

3) SF has nice weather and is generally more tolerant of people on drugs (California is the capital of working professionals with hard-drug habits)

4) Given the above, if you're down on your luck and drug addicted in the US, SF, Seattle, and LA are the only logical places to live in

5) For political reasons (SF is the home of leading progressives like Nancy Pelosi, Gavin Newsom, Kamala, etc.), there is a well-funded cultural apparatus trying to label SF as a failed state due to its own policies

emmelaich2• 3 years ago

Perhaps just read the book

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Fransicko

by Michael Shellenberger

tayo42• 3 years ago

Can someone very briefly wrap this whole "SF is broken"-situation up for somebody from Europe?

Id be really careful of taking anything people here say seriously. Its a politically divisive topic and the stuff ive seen in the comments are people getting riled up. The right wing loves to hate san francisco, the media loves to hate it too. Please consider there are multiple sides, people are being manipulated by media and outrage

carapace3• 3 years ago

California is only about a hundred and fifty years old. It was like Siberia, but with an awesome climate. Gold was discovered and a hundreds of thousands of 49ers flooded the state and San Francisco became a major port city overnight. For the next hundred and fifty years, right up until about 2001, the city has served as the "drain" for the rest of the country. San Francisco is and always has been an open-air lunatic asylum (e.g. His Imperial Majesty Emperor Norton I.) The Tenderloin is bedlam, a little slice of hell raised to the surface of the Earth and allowed to fester in broad daylight.

In short, nothing happened to make SF this way, it's always been this way. The idea that SF is some left-wing exemplar is just as foolish as the idea that is was a good place to start start-ups. It's all hype. SF is kinda nasty. (Go check out what was going down here a few decades ago. But be warned, it's pretty fucked up. It's a story that culminates in the events at Jonestown. If you don't already know what that is, then you probably should not look it up.)

srcreigh• 3 years ago

Mark Rober has a series where he builds fake packages with cameras, stink bombs, etc. Goal is to get vengeance against car thieves in SF since police do nothing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWeu2dxHRDg

throwaway2929395• 3 years ago

Just a few notes I quickly thought of:

- SF has policies that encourages homeless to emigrate there, one of which is being pretty lenient to anyone who sets up camp on the streets

- SF allows open drug markets that has become a hotbed of criminal activity

- Police aren't fully empowered, and many people because of their ideology tend to hate police

- Lots of catch and release going on, both anecdotally and on news

- They offer drug kits (think needles, pipes, and other tools). The kit looked to be worth around $100

- They gave free alcohol/marijuana to homeless during lockdown

- A large subset of the population seem to give no shits about the city or other people: public urination, defecation, harassment, drug use, property theft, vandalism is common. The lack of enforcement has allowed these activities to increase

jack_riminton2• 3 years ago

It seems most likely that this is a homeless/drugged up person related but remember it could also be an altercation with someone he knew

jack_riminton2• 3 years ago

Update: It was someone he knew https://missionlocal.org/2023/04/bob-lee-killing-arrest-made...

ronanyeah4• 3 years ago

Americans clearly have very low expectations for their standard of living.

As demonstrated by the amount of insane 'actually the murder rate isn't that bad' comments in this thread.

RGamma• 3 years ago

The decades of internal and self-violence are quickly forgotten when something happens to a tech bro. I simply can't take that country seriously anymore...

astrange7• 3 years ago

Every city in America is so much incredibly safer than it was in 1990 that nobody old enough to remember that is going to be bothered by much of anything.

(That is, if you think now's bad, you should've seen it then.)

ronanyeah4• 3 years ago

'actually the murder rate isn't that bad'

kelnos2• 3 years ago

Just because something used to be so much worse, it doesn't mean that the current state is good.

thegaulofthem• 3 years ago

We should all be incredibly skeptical of the claim. For the 2020-2021 years our rates in Charleston were returning to the “90s Crack Epidemic” rates.

Much like other commenters in the thread, I’ve had a man threaten to “cut my mother effing throat” in broad daylight in front of a dozen bystanders. Thankfully, he turned tail once I drew a handgun and no one died that day. Police showed up 45 minutes later and were of no use, so why bother reported the three times I’ve had guns pointed at me in traffic since 2020?

When police response times are at or above the hour mark and the best you’ll get is an “oh that sucks man, need a report for insurance?” people stop reporting crimes. Now the politicians get to pretend crime is “better”.

grumple3• 3 years ago

This is certifiably untrue. Philadelphia, for example, just had our highest 3 year murder period ever. Additionally, we should really compare this to previous eras, not just the other highest crime periods you could name. We're at triple the homicides of the 50s and 60s, for example, and our population has declined since then.

viridian4• 3 years ago

Nationwide crime is up 50% in the past 3 years, and at about 70% of the 1991 all time high. It's safer than our absolute peak for sure, but this historical reversal should be very concerning.

Hoyadonis5• 3 years ago

America is a land of extremes. We actually have relatively high standard of living thanks to extremely high wages, which allow us to live lives of relative luxury. We also have high wealth inequality and tolerate many horrors - some unfathomable to other developed countries (e.g. gun deaths).

ronanyeah4• 3 years ago

It is possible to tolerate wealth inequality, while not tolerating mentally ill drug addicts terrorising the public.

throw_m239339• 3 years ago

Americans have low expectations when it comes to the acceptable level of violence in a country that has third world levels of crime. And in Europe, many politicians wants their own citizens to live in what the former perceive as the ideal society? Just no.

Even being rich in US doesn't protect anyone from being murdered randomly...

louwrentius6• 3 years ago

I’m going to bet a lot third world countries are safer

TuringNYC• 3 years ago

> Americans clearly have very low expectations for their standard of living.

One SF startup I saw had executives mostly working remotely in Sonoma county (wine country) or Marin County (mountains and beautiful views) or Atherton. HR declared themselves remote also. For office visits, many Uber-ed in or drove in, conveniently avoiding all the chaos outside.

The median listing home price in Atherton, CA was $10.4M in February 2023. Unfortunately, it is easy to ignore the other half when decision-makers in power living in some of the most beautiful places on earth.

Low-level workers were the ones trekking into SF daily and dealing with reality.

bloak• 3 years ago

Isn't there a Father Ted episode in which they're trying to lure him from rural Ireland to somewhere in the USA with "it's really not that bad: last month there was a something-percent fall in the number of drive-by shootings"?

sidibe• 3 years ago

Well I was surprised by the number of murders so far this year. It's less than my much smaller hometown that isn't considered particularly unsafe, while on here everyone acts like SF is hell.

There's no question there's a huge homeless problem in SF but the number of murders there are really low compared to a southern or midwestern city.

dang19• 3 years ago

Nationalistic flamewar will get you banned here. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for, so please don't post like this here—regardless of how other commenters are behaving.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

ronanyeah4• 3 years ago

Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work.

I think you are violating this guideline.

kenneth4• 3 years ago

I find it shocking that anyone still chooses to live in this broken city.

I left >4 years ago and am never coming back. It's unfixable.

Let's move the tech industry somewhere that isn't rotten to the core.

astrange7• 3 years ago

The tech industry is mainly South Bay (you know, Silicon Valley.) Any tech being in SF is a last-decade phenomenon, possibly a zero-interest-rate one.

Since SF has some of the worst governance in the country, maybe it won't last that long. There's always East Bay.

0max• 3 years ago

Please no, I like the square footage I get for my rent. Keep all the startups on the bourgie side of the bridge and tunnel.

raverbashing• 3 years ago

Some company would have to pull themselves by the bootstraps and just go somewhere else close-ish to SV (East Valley? North?)

Pick a city who wants to get the money and has fewer NIMBYs and has space to build. Move one office there and incentivize who wants to be there

This is how it was in the "good old days" with factories, no? But instead of IceRock, WI it will be a place close to the valley

But sometimes companies are lazy for places that don't have avocado toast I guess.

hotpotamus7• 3 years ago

I wonder where it would move to? Does it seem a bit curious that a "rotten to the core" city would be so synonymous with the tech industry? Perhaps they are intertwined for a reason. Personally, I've never been there, but am somewhat curious to visit. Not so much after dark though.

galleywest2003• 3 years ago

Pacific Northwest already has a lot of giants, and no reason to live in Seattle itself. Microsoft, Valve, etc are over in the forested towns like Redmond. Nintendo is over in North Bend.

louwrentius6• 3 years ago

The Tech industry caused a lot of the isdues in SF due to rising housing prices due to high wages. The problem will just move around.

racl101• 3 years ago

Classic "why does it smell like shit everywhere I go" situation.

carlivar• 3 years ago

How much new housing was built?

prottog17• 3 years ago

A causal relationship seems very difficult to establish here. Housing prices in SF are mostly due to the fact that it's very, very difficult to build more homes. High wages, even if it's concentrated in one particular sector, spreads out to the rest, since those high earners have to spend their money somewhere. The average hourly wage among all occupations in the SF area is almost 50% higher than the nationwide average; in food service, 35% higher.

Of course, none of this causes drug addiction and mental illness.

manuelabeledo2• 3 years ago

This is a myopic point of view.

"High wages" are not the issue, inequality is, and the largest contributor to that are low wages.

We should be fighting poverty, not aiming at the middle class to earn less.

triceratops4• 3 years ago

San Franciscans: "Paying workers well is bad."

Everyone else: "SF is full of lefty commies".

Let's appreciate the...irony? Cognitive dissonance? Misunderstanding? I don't even know what it is.

dannyr• 3 years ago

I left in 2017 after having to spent over 10 years in the Bay Area.

It was bad then and pandemic made it worse.

So many closed shops on Market St/Union Square area.

Walk a few blocks West and Tenderloin looks like doomsday. Lines for soup kitchens, tents, drugged-up and mentally-ill people walking like Zombies.

fernandotakai• 3 years ago

it makes me super sad to see SF like this. it's by far my favorite US city -- the weather is great, people are quite welcoming, the food scene is out of this world.

but the last time i went there, just before the pandemic, it was just... horrible. within 1h of leaving my hotel, i saw a guy breaking into a car. a block later, two homeless people were arguing and then started beating each other to a pulp.

and no police officers around anywhere.

olalonde• 3 years ago

Reminds me when I first moved to SF. I saw a guy breaking car windows on the street at night and called 911 to notify the police. They seemed a bit baffled that someone would call to report something so trivial and I don't believe they did anything about it.

bigtex88• 3 years ago

Why don't they do anything to fix it? I truly don't understand the logic here. It's the same as Seattle. They've gone so far left that they've started delving into the absurd.

CWuestefeld3• 3 years ago

i saw a guy breaking into a car. a block later, two homeless people were arguing and then started beating each other

Implied is that you didn't do anything about either of these things you witnessed. I don't mean to single you out, but collectively for the people of the city: wouldn't it be better if you stopped expecting somebody else to fix the problems? Instead, be part of a better community by trying to right what wrongs you can. At the very least, photograph the thief and send it to the police, if not trying to stop him yourself. Similar for the fighting homeless people.

Yeah, maybe that's dangerous. I don't want to start the conversation of Californians trying so hard to give up their right to self defense. But maybe that's the reason we don't see such a big problem in, e.g., Texas.

dehrmann3• 3 years ago

within 1h of leaving my hotel

Union Square is uncomfortably close to the TL.

cardy31• 3 years ago

Tech in SF causing massive inequality in the city combined with structural American problems is how SF got where it is today though. Moving tech somewhere else (Austin seems to be next) will just result in a similar situation.

ipaddr2• 3 years ago

Lol. Tech or backlash against tech didn't create SF culture. SF culture comes from the 60s, Berkeley, Hippies and left wing policies, protest movement politics.

Austin has rich cultural background that is different. Moving to Austin won't change it into SF unless enough people bring failed ideas with them.

closeparen5• 3 years ago

An injection of rich taxpayers is exactly what most cities with a poor and needy population would be crying out for, in order to fund social services.

It is specifically the decision to keep housing close to zero-sum that makes this such a catastrophe. SF isn’t the only place that would make that decision, but is also possible to welcome & accommodate growth rather than trying to strangle it at the expense of all your renters.

ROTMetro• 3 years ago

Dude did you spend any time in San Francisco in the 80s? The 90s? San Francisco is how San Francisco got where it is today, the same place it was 40 years ago.

galleywest2003• 3 years ago

Pacific Northwest has loads of tech giants, move up here to the woods. No reason to live in Seattle, the big kids are over in the forest in Redmond (Microsoft, Valve, etc).

alexchantavy2• 3 years ago

No reason to live in Seattle

Seattle is very under appreciated imo. The pandemic didn’t do it any favors but it’s more affordable than the eastside suburbs with all the things you’d want from a city plus access to nature. Not everywhere is 3rd and Pike.

loeg3• 3 years ago

FB/GOOG have small footprints in Seattle proper and bigger footprints on the east side (Bellevue and Kirkland) as well.

cvhashim04• 3 years ago

The weather is terribly depressing

beardedwizard2• 3 years ago

Ya let's move the tech industry and ruin the next place, Austin.

all212• 3 years ago

There's this brewing sentiment in the rest of the US as California residents move out: please go away and keep your broken politics and social policies away from us.

I have family out in Idaho, and they complain that there a lot of folks from California moving there and screwing up the local politics by voting for policies that broke the state of California. They joke that the first thing people do is change their plates because they don't want anyone to know they're from Cali. I can't blame them, though, because it is an absolute train-wreck of a state whose condition is epitomized by SanFran.

alfiedotwtf2• 3 years ago

Given all the car meet videos I've seen of Austin lately, I'd say SF is much safer yikes!

tempsy2• 3 years ago

Ironically Austin’s housing market seems to have suffered the hardest since peak 2021-2022 prices because it’s more clear now that it isn’t becoming the next Silicon Valley.

whalesalad2• 3 years ago

Or, let’s decentralize the center of the tech universe so that everyone can prosper and we don’t fall into this trap again.

packetlost2• 3 years ago

I go back and forth around whether these dense communities of industry are bad or not. It certainly creates bubbles and echo chambers, but there's also a lot of real innovation that happens because there's a rich ecosystem of skilled people to hire to build things.

This is coming from someone who has never lived in SF.

maerF0x05• 3 years ago

Sharing experience as someone who has lived in SF and around the Bay Area, and now has moved to another popular US city. At least pre-pandemic, there is a vibe difference, a sort of "magic" of having the expertise colocated (not necessarily in office though!). The best I can analogize it is imagine the networking value of being at a tech conference all the time. You'd meet people and they would know what you meant when you described your job, and you could have a conversation with them about it. Versus where I'm at now, people simply do not get it, you talk with them about tech things and their eyes glaze over, they discount you as "nerd" and usually remove themselves from the conversation. The sharing of ideas is far better than any online community (HN included) than I've ever experienced. It's hard to convey, you truly have to live it to feel the difference.

sklargh2• 3 years ago

Or centralize it in the Midwest and put it next to the work that enables us to eat and use diesel to make consumable calories. Columbus, Des Moines, Oklahoma City. This is the way.

I fixed this in response to Green Man's comment.

chaostheory2• 3 years ago

For that to happen, people need to accept more remote work related technologies like AR and VR. AR is still far away with NReal being the closest thing that’s usable. With VR, the device form factor is so intimidating to people that many refuse to even try it.

kenneth4• 3 years ago

I'm fully for that. I'm fully remote now and based in Asia (between HK and Taiwan). I much prefer tech to be decentralized. But if the hub is going to stay in the US and somewhat centralized, almost anything would be better than SF.

fortran775• 3 years ago

Sunnyvale, San Jose, the real Silicon Valley

JoshTko3• 3 years ago

Honest question, what if the tech industry is a root cause?

maerF0x05• 3 years ago

How could it be? Please explain your hypothesis a bit more.

ultra_nick• 3 years ago

Housing inequality could be fixed with a land tax. A land tax makes nimbyism significantly more expensive, so they're more willing to sell property to high density housing developers.

Places like Texas, with a property tax and little zoning, would handle a concentration of wealth better. Although, it'd be even more optional with a land tax instead of a property tax.

intalentive4• 3 years ago

It’s not.

stagger87• 3 years ago

The documentary "San Francisco 2.0" explores this idea, albeit casually.

hindsightbias• 3 years ago

It's impossible that a 100K techies descending into SF after 2010 could have any impact on anything like the 18000 SRO units that used to house all those folks in the Tenderloin. All that wealth sloshing into a city - gentrification is a liberal fantasy.

Of course, when you bring up Manhattanizing Mission, most of these "YIMBY" astro-turf types start screeching. They want theirs, and as soon as they get it they'll be pulling up the ladder behind them. But keep your filthy mittens off the Mission.

carapace3• 3 years ago

It's not. For one thing, rental prices have been going up in a steady trend for over half a century. The tech industry didn't cause the rise in prices per se, the general economic growth of the region did (and does) that:

Today's outrageous prices are exactly in line with the 6.6% trend that began 60 years ago.

https://experimental-geography.blogspot.com/2016/05/employme...

For another, look at the history of the city, we have been a nut house for ~150 years, since the gold was discovered. We had an Emperor! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Norton

twblalock8• 3 years ago

If an increase of wealth creation is a problem for a city, that city is being badly run.

It's pretty obvious on the ground in SF that the homeless problem is fundamentally a problem of mental illness and drug abuse. A fairly large portion of the homeless there are not from SF but came there because SF tolerates behavior other cities do not. Even if there was an empty, free house offered to every homeless person in SF there would still be a massive problem because many of them would be unwilling to accept it.

time_to_smile3• 3 years ago

Anyone who spent considerable time in SF before the most recent tech boom would likely argue that it was the tech industry that caused the rot in the first place.

The foundation of safe cities is vibrant local communities with historic roots. Parts of the city where people choose to have and raise kids. Places with a sense of shared community where neighbors look out for each other.

The rapid influx of extremely high income individuals transformed SF over the course of the last decade. Uprooting those communities and replacing them with largely transient techworkers with no real interest in forming communities that don't help them to increase their TC and level up with their next new role.

Then when tech declines you really see the impact this has.

SF was treated as basically a luxury mall for rich tech workers to get whatever they want whenever they want. As tech workers start to leave it's no wonder the city feels like an abandoned mall.

alephnerd13• 3 years ago

SF has definetly seen QoL drop like a stone, but how much of that is because techies now live in neighborhoods that used to be the ghettos until the early 2010s.

Like Hayes Valley used to be crack dens until Twitter money, Mission District was a Latino ghetto until FB money, and Portrero Hill and West Add were the African American projects. Plus Chinatown and Tenderloin had an active Triad and Vietnamese+Cambodian gang presence.

Now you see upper net worth people living in Hayes Valley, houses in Portrero go for millions, every new grad SWE getting a shithole studio within walking distance of DoLo Park, much of Polk St and northern Tenderloin is now classified as "Lower Nob Hill", and all the Triad members and Viet gangs got caught in the ICE dragnet or retired.

closeparen5• 3 years ago

Xenophobic natives pursued an anti-housing strategy in order to thwart what they perceived as tech workers getting too much of what they wanted. It just didn’t work. Tech workers could still pay the inflated rents that you decided we should have in the service of “community.” But no one else could. Then you turn around and blame us for the collateral damage you caused with this narcissistic “look what you made me do” attitude.

Americans are entitled to move within the United States. Always have been, always will be. You can keep trying for de facto migration controls all you want, but you will never be able to dial them in to curate exactly the population you want. It will always blow up in your face like this. That’s very, very good and it makes me damn proud to be an American. This isn’t the feudal system. We don’t allocative the best land to the people born on it. It’s insane that this ever became a left-coded position.

triceratops4• 3 years ago

Maybe SF should've tried approving more housing so rich techies didn't drive up rents and displace existing communities.

poorbutdebtfree• 3 years ago

Maybe SOMA needs to double the amount of BLM, Ukraine, and trans flags?

dang19• 3 years ago

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

vxNsr2• 3 years ago

The main issue is that wherever you move if you don't change your ideology you'll turn the new place into the same as the old.

outside12343• 3 years ago

What's the alternative? Moving to the south with high amounts of gun violence?

* https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/firearm_mortality/...

auggierose• 3 years ago

Very sad to hear that. I loved this city when I lived there at the end of the nineties, although it was much more violent already than what I was accustomed to.

Eumenes• 3 years ago

Or most cities for that matter. I keep hearing "but culture" and I scratch my head... is culture expensive bars, restaurants, breweries? Yes the museums and art galleries can be cool, but most people see those once every few years. Similar to concerts/live music, its easy to travel into a city a few times per year for an event. Otherwise, they seem far from vibrant. (I've lived in SF, NYC, and LA - and haven't been back since the pandemic).

quacked• 3 years ago

Most Americans have no idea what "culture" is; they assume it refers exclusively to consumption, i.e. what is available to consume and how people prefer to consume it.

atdrummond9• 3 years ago

Nothing will change. I was attacked in Christmas ‘21 in the Tenderloin, right after walking out of the KFC/Taco Bell on Eddy. Two cop cars drove by me and did nothing. It was only due to an ambulance finishing a run at Sutter and spotting me that I didn’t bleed out on the suitcase.

I have video, proof of damages physical and financial, eyewitnesses and the info of the men who attacked me. SFPD will not arrest them because Boudin refused to prosecute. New DA has not gotten back to me despite repeated attempts.

I wanted to build a life and have my family in SF, to contribute and make it the city I believe it to be, but I refuse to put people I love in that situation. I’ve left for Estonia and couldn’t be happier.

quantified3• 3 years ago

Boudin specifically declared in your case he would not prosecute? Did he leave a record of his reason? Or did the SFPD just say he would? SFPD went on holiday to make him look bad, so the difference is important.

atdrummond9• 3 years ago

I should be clear it was his office (I’ve never talked to the man), not him, where I encountered the most trouble. SFPD at least feigned caring about my situation but repeatedly pleaded their hands were tied, that they could arrest but the men would end up back on the street in days.

The new DA’s office has made a lot of promises but there’s been no substantial progress. Their continued increasing rates of prosecutions on violent crimes gives me a bit more hope that they’re truly battling through an immense backlog - but I’ve simply run out of patience and energy to fight the system in order to compel them to simply do their jobs.

soderfoo• 3 years ago

In a broader sense, and without delving in to politics, administrative and resource constraints require District Attorneys to set priorities and guidelines to determine which matters to pursue. It is an ugly side of the criminal justice system I witnessed firsthand.

DA's have a budget and a limited number of assistant attorneys. They have to manage their office's caseload, and keep cases they do pursue moving through the pipeline. Even then, they must compete with the priorities of the judiciary and individual judges to reduce their caseload and keep cases moving.

It was not uncommon for judges to periodically advise prosecutors, public defenders and other key defense attorneys to convene a forum for the expeditious resolution of cases (essentially a fire sale with lots of bartering) to lessen their load and improve their KPIs.

So I think it is fair to say, Chesa Boudin, in his capacity as managing attorney responsible for setting his office's prosecutorial discretion policy, refused to prosecute the case. No different from any other prosecutorial discretion decisions made by countless prosecutors around the country daily.

deeensta• 3 years ago

“ SFPD will not arrest them because Boudin refused to prosecute.”

That’s not how it works. After being arrested, you press charges against them.

atdrummond9• 3 years ago

You can go ahead and call and try to get something done. I spent two years on it and was stonewalled by both the PD and the DA’s office.

It’s incredible when there are so many stories of the police doing nothing and statistical evidence of the previous DA not prosecuting cases, that you choose to, at best, accuse me of being imprecise with my terminology or, at worse, claim that I’m lying about one of the most traumatic events of my life.

Broken_Hippo• 3 years ago

After being arrested, you press charges against them

You know, folks get charges without being arrested - and folks get arrested without getting charged. These two aren't actually connected.

It isn't just that, but you - the private citizen - aren't really the one that determines whether or not someone gets charges against them. Sometimes, if you won't testify, they won't follow through. This happens in Domestic violence situations. But other times, they simply don't take the case to court or they take the case to court even if the victim doesn't want it.

nordsieck• 3 years ago

That’s not how it works. After being arrested, you press charges against them.

That's not how it works.

You, as a private citizen, can't "press charges". The DA presses charges. And they have (so far, according to OP) declined to do so.

In colloquial terms, "press charges" means 2 separate things:

1. File a civil suit. Doesn't really work if the offenders are indigent.

2. Agree to cooperate with a criminial investigation. Can't do this if the DA won't initiate one in the first place.

rainy5911• 3 years ago

Yep same here. Estonia is a dream compared to Bay Area even with the cold winters and old Soviet buildings (which means lots of cheap rent btw). San Francisco has a powerful marketing and promotion engine - and yes it really is a gorgeous city in the late summer - but the weather otherwise is pretty miserable - almost as cold and rainy as Seattle

I'm sure - given the option - any US west coast tech startup would much prefer to operate in some quaint old town in Eastern Europe with the cafes etc. and no need to hassle with a car. Unfortunately the venture community infrastructure / legal etc. is stuck on west coast - and AI is only reinforcing that

comboy• 3 years ago

Why Estonia of all the places? I'm assuming you guys were in the situation to choose whenever you wanted to move. Western Europe, Signapore, Australia, Switzerland? Why Estonia?

danielrpa2• 3 years ago

I'm sure Eastern Europe is great, but if you want to remain in the US there are many other great places to live in the Midwest and American South. You do need a car, which is fine or even desirable for many people (like me).

mjfl8• 3 years ago

you made a good choice. hope to visit Estonia some day.

rvz2• 3 years ago

Nothing will change.

What would it take for it to change? Really? It is never too late to change.

But right now, the SF tech travel agents here and in the comments section are going to have a hard time at pitching that the city is 'safe' for them and now have to admit that it has gotten worse.

But maybe we should start with identifying the 'problem' which has something to do with 'who' is running those streets and seeing if there is a patten in other cities in the US...

Once you know, you will find your answer.

seydor3• 3 years ago

I smell Robocop Startups rising

bobsmooth• 3 years ago

What would it take for it to change?

Putting criminals in jail and keeping them there.

atdrummond9• 3 years ago

I personally think the issue is that SF residents are like the frog in the boiling pot. Things only get a tiny, incrementally bit worse year by year. We get immune to the changes and begin to accommodate things we never would have in decades past.

I’m worried that there’s going to be a massive collapse of the tax base long before any serious reform attempts.

newbie5782• 3 years ago

I just want to know why do people let the current status quo be in SF? I mean hearing cases like these makes you lean to the right even though you disagree with them, but when you look what the left is doing, you are left with no alternative..

subsistence2345• 3 years ago

emperor's new clothes.

millzlane2• 3 years ago

Why would hearing those make you lean to the right? When did putting violent criminals in jail become a "right leaning" thing?

Jochim9• 3 years ago

Because the status quo has lead to a steady reduction in crime. Long term statistics are way down, and so are most short term statistics as well:

2017-2022 [0]:

* ~9,000 fewer incidents in total.

* Rape halved.

* Robberies decreased to 2/3 of 2017 numbers.

* Burglary/Motor vehicle theft increased but Larceny theft decreased by more than both combined.

Q1 2017/2023 [0]:

* ~4,000 fewer incidents in total.

* Only Motor vehicle theft and Arson were slightly up on 2017 levels.

Q1 2022/2023 [0]:

* Total incidents down by 9.7%

* Burglary down by 11.2%

* Motor vehicle theft down by 8.5%

* Larceny theft down by 12%

* Assaults did increase by 2.2%

* As did Robberies by 13.6%

[0] https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/stay-safe/crime-data/crim...

brightball4• 3 years ago

What I don’t understand is why it’s up to the DA? If a citizen wants to press charges what allows a DA to just decide not to?

Seems like the DA should be charged with obstruction of justice.

prasadjoglekar• 3 years ago

Citizens can press civil charges, but the power to prosecute someone for jail time is reserved for the government. And the local and state governments, not the federal govt.

DAs are elected, so notionally, Boudin, the DA for SF, is representating the will of the people by not prosecuting criminals deemed to be "low level crimes".

millzlane2• 3 years ago

Not sure what is going on in SF. But in Baltimore they would have been arrested and chargeg. Sure the city might drop the charges if the police bungle the investigation purposely or due to incompetence. But people are arrested and charged.

zenexer2• 3 years ago

Citizens don’t get to decide whether to press criminal charges; only the government can decide that. They may take the victim’s request into consideration, but that’s the extent of it.

rvba2• 3 years ago

Are those who attacked you policemen or their family members? Or someone was bribed to look the other way?

atdrummond9• 3 years ago

I don’t believe that is the case. I don’t think the police have been particularly “Johnny-on-the-spot” regarding the situation but I also don’t get the impression they’re actively stonewalling me.

weberer4• 3 years ago

SFPD will not arrest them because Boudin refused to prosecute. New DA has not gotten back to me despite repeated attempts.

The same is happening in Philadelphia too. Its sad, because the city was on the upswing in the first half of the 2010's and making a lot of progress on reducing crime. Then a new DA came in and did a complete 180. Now its worse than ever. Look up videos of "Kensington, Philadelphia" on Youtube. Its like Mad Max these days.

atdrummond9• 3 years ago

I drove through Kensington twice during my last visit to Philadelphia this past year. It seemed to me a conscious decision by the city to have one open air market that they couldn’t control but at least manage. Sacrifice Kensington and contain the violence and drugs everywhere else.

beepbooptheory2• 3 years ago

I live in Philly. "Mad Max" is really pushing it and slightly offensive. It is still, like, society over here. Up until last year my gf worked everyday at a school in Kensington. She was never attacked by raiders or whatever. People everywhere have lives and are doing the best they can with what they've got.

harimau7775• 3 years ago

A major problem as I see it is a lack of nuanced policy. Currently in America it seems that you can either have police brutality and criminalized homelessness or you can have non-enforcement. What we really need is to prosecute crime but without tolerating police brutality or making laws designed to punish the poor.

causi4• 3 years ago

People with middle-ground attitudes seem to just get attacked by both sides nowadays.

syzarian27• 3 years ago

You have pointed out the essential part of the policing problem. Anytime police are given genuine punishments for excessive force the entire department’s response is to stop doing their job.

Another problem I see is that in some cities (mine) people see racism at any attempt to alleviate the crime problem in lower income areas. I used to use the public transit system but it is now filled with drug users and people who enjoy terrorizing others. Police do nothing about it partially out of a fear of being called racist.

For whatever reason I get the sense that police are either extremely violent or extremely passive.

spopejoy2• 3 years ago

it seems that you can either have police brutality and criminalized homelessness or you can have non-enforcement

NYC shows you can have broken policies AND do a better job on homelessness.

NYPD brutality, stop-and-frisk, broken windows, "it's Giuliani time" -- the cruelty of the NYPD is long-standing and well-documented.

Yet, NYC has done a massively better job directly addressing homelessness than SF.

SF's vaunted liberalism is largely for show. This is where a homophobic psychopath murdered the mayor and supervisor and was hailed as a hero by many residents. This is where massively corrupt machine politicians like Willie Brown feathered their nests. This is a city with some of the worst-managed public housing in the country, and neighborhoods like Hunter's Point awash in toxic chemicals.

This is a relatively tiny city with economic inequality and effective segregation outpacing cities many times it's size.

Just because they've elected a progressive DA here and there (and then recalled them LOL) doesn't change the ugliness underneath.

closeparen5• 3 years ago

That’s what progressives in SF would say they are doing - with the stipulation that moderate amounts of theft, violence, and disorder are simply part of being marginalized, so criminalizing those behaviors is inherently oppressive.

nisegami• 3 years ago

I wonder if they'd have declined to prosecute if you'd have shot your attackers.

MrBuddyCasino2• 3 years ago

„Conservatives who think people will grow out of it, or that observable declines in quality of living or public safety will have an impact, don't get it.

It's a faith, backed by power and media. You can't fight that with reason, especially when you are being silenced.“ https://twitter.com/vdarejamesk/status/1643462162776567808

Xcelerate• 3 years ago

I’ve lived in the southeast, the Bay Area, and Europe. The Bay Area is my favorite, but every time I go back to visit I’m just astonished — is this what the residents really want (well, SF more specifically)? I can see people agreeing with the group-think in public to fit in, but in the private of the voting booths they still vote for representatives and policies they know are going to destroy the city? It’s mind-blowing to me. Are we so split on issues to the point where we can’t have clean, safe, healthy, well-educated cities anymore?

rswerve• 3 years ago

I don’t know your case, but it’s also possible that the police won’t make an arrest because police in America tend to go on low-key strike when a liberal prosecutor is elected, and then loudly proclaim that the DA is undermining the rule of law.

This article is about a different kind of “police pullback,” but the underlying phenomenon—cops won’t work when they’re challenged—is the same. https://www.propublica.org/article/what-can-mayors-do-when-t...

syzarian27• 3 years ago

This has happened in Minneapolis. Since George Floyd police in Minneapolis have effectively stopped doing their job. When one of their own is treated by the law like anyone else would be they retaliate by refusing to work. Police feel entitled to be free of genuine consequence for their actions. For example, police commit more domestic violence on average than non-police and rarely get arrested for it.

peyton3• 3 years ago

It’s great somebody wrote an article that says that. But let’s not pretend that’s what’s going on in San Francisco.

fallingknife2• 3 years ago

Given that in SF the liberal prosecutor was, in fact, undermining the rule of law and de facto legalized stealing, I'm inclined to side with the cops here. Cops don't prevent crime, they only catch criminals after the fact. If the DA doesn't charge them, then all arresting does is give them a day off. I wouldn't arrest people either if I knew they wouldn't be charged.

refurb4• 3 years ago

Or another take is - why bother arresting people if you know they're going to be released right away and likely never charged?

It shouldn't be surprising that the DA’s office and police need to work together.

paisawalla7• 3 years ago

As a developer, I would get pretty upset and demoralized if someone came and periodically reverted all my commits. Imagine if I actually had to risk my life to make those "commits"?

It's not hard to see why they stay in the car and keep driving if the arrests don't even lead to prosections.

analyte123• 3 years ago

Do they still refuse to work if someone defends themself against an attacker?

PoignardAzur• 3 years ago

That articles raises all sorts of "selectively including information to push a narrative" red flags.

Eg, one police officer interviewed says:

“I made two arrests two days in a row one week, and both turned into paperwork clusterfucks,” the former officer said. “When you’ve accumulated two or three use-of-force complaints in a week, you’ll say: ‘I just need to stop. I need to stop doing this.’”

The article later interprets it as "police officers opposed to the consent decree that McGinn negotiated [engaged] in underpolicing".

Which is technically accurate, but also... The article implies this is political retaliation, as in "we'll let people commit crimes, that will teach you", while the interviewed officer's reported experience is "when you get reprimanded and asked to fill time-consuming paperwork every time you do X, at some point you stop doing X". (Or you keep filling the paperwork, and therefore spend less time patrolling and responding to calls.)

Don't get me wrong, police brutality is a thorny problem and police often actively resists solving it. But when there's a tradeoff, if you act like the tradeoff only has one side and the other is that the people whose jobs you're trying to regulate are lazy corrupt assholes, you're not going to make a lot of progress on solving the problem.

agentofoblivion3• 3 years ago

What is the point of your comment? Are you here to say, “just so you know, Chesa and his policies are actually good, it’s the cops that are bad”?

kardianos7• 3 years ago

This is so wrong.

Even when police make arrests, they are back on the streets. Any rational police officer is bound to wonder, why make the arrest in the first place that only puts them at risk if nothing after them will actually be done.

brodouevencode6• 3 years ago

police in America tend to go on low-key strike when a liberal prosecutor is elected

It has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with demoralization. Most cops simply want to do their job and not consistently be undermined or called liars.

thatfrenchguy2• 3 years ago

When most people don’t do their jobs, they get disciplined, I don’t understand why cops get a pass. SFPD has a hard job but « passed in front of someone who got stabbed and did nothing » should get your pay auto-docked.

eric_cc2• 3 years ago

police in America tend to go on low-key strike when a liberal prosecutor is elected

This is not true nor is it verifiable. This is a bullshit political talking point. And it’s ridiculous.

cryptonector• 3 years ago

GP specificially says the DA won't answer. It's not about the police in that specific case.

aaa_aaa• 3 years ago

This sounds like a very lame excuse for failing progressive policies.

horns4lyfe2• 3 years ago

It’s hilarious that progressives refuse to blame homeless people or addicts for any kind of personal failings (it’s the system!) while simultaneously blaming police personally, saying they’re “quiet quitting”. Is it about systems or not?

rdtsc• 3 years ago

SFPD will not arrest them because Boudin refused to prosecute

It was explained to me a few times that it wasn’t supposed to be an issue. The police will just as eagerly do their job and arrest criminals. But that never made sense to me. What happened in your case seems a lot more likely. What would be the point in going through all the trouble arresting a suspect if there is a good chance charges will just be dropped.

lern_too_spel3• 3 years ago

Why should police care whether the DA brings charges? Their job is to arrest people committing crimes. Besides, even Boudin would charge violent criminals. Your story sounds like a clear case of police not doing their jobs.

https://missionlocal.org/2022/04/chesa-boudin-files-more-cha...

maratbn8• 3 years ago

Did Boudin specifically refuse to prosecute the men who stabbed you, or did the police simply refuse to arrest them claiming as an excuse that Boudin will not prosecute?

josephcsible8• 3 years ago

Did the lawnmower specifically chop off your hand, or did you simply refuse to stick your hand in it claiming as an excuse that the lawnmower would chop it off?

electriclove• 3 years ago

Anarchotyranny

mistrial9• 3 years ago

those fast food places are the site of regular drug deals -- hard drugs, all the time. The police do not know if you are a customer or what .. its an ugly situation.

roflyear6• 3 years ago

The police don't do anything - anywhere - and this thread is a great example of why nothing gets done in SF.

You have 1/3 of the people here saying SF needs more police.

You have 1/3 saying the police don't do anything.

You have 1/3 saying other things, dehumanizing homeless people, saying if everyone had a gun it'd be better, etc..

And this probably is not the case of "everyone is right" but rather "everyone is wrong!"

mjfl8• 3 years ago

Detriot was once the richest city per capita in the US, in the 1950s. It is now the second poorest city per capita in the US, an actual wasteland. SF seems to be headed in a similar direction. It's because the people that live there simply don't live on this planet - they don't have to. It is so wealthy that there's no penalty for being delusional. Until it's too late of course. And that's when the weight of fate punches you 6 ft under the ground, and you never recover.

grumple3• 3 years ago

I didn't realize how wealthy Detroit was. It really highlights how far the fall was, and that any city can experience this collapse.

bombcar7• 3 years ago

Much of it was people leaving Detroit city proper and moving into the suburbs around it which are technically separate independent cities. The metro area still went vastly downhill and the manufacturing never recovered (many of the US car manufacturers moved elsewhere).

jwmoz2• 3 years ago

London sometimes feels bad but then I read stories on SF..

mrgill• 3 years ago

At least the weather is good in SF and.. you make 3-6x more money.

louwrentius6• 3 years ago

That’s the only this that really matters: making good dough.

Everything and - most of all everyone - else can get ffed.

As long as I get my share I don’t care

Manjuuu3• 3 years ago

That's why we invented remote work. /s

jwmoz2• 3 years ago

When I was younger I had this fantasy of moving to and working in SF. Then one day a SF guy joined our company in London. Said it was foggy all the time. Totally ruined the fantasy.

bentt2• 3 years ago

“drugs”

kodisha• 3 years ago

I am very spoiled by living in one of the European capitals. It's super safe here, and it's normal thing to see young females taking a dog out for a walk in 22-02h.

I visit SF at least once a year, and default to my learned habit of walking alone, and later at night.

No more.

isaacremuant• 3 years ago

I never understand why people feel like they can make such generalizing statements as "One of the European capitals".

Europe is not a monolith.

Different areas also have different problems.

It's like the whole talk about "walkable cities" or healthcare.

Everything is frame from a US perspective and simplified to an absurd level so that no contextual criticism is possible without descending into weird political tribalism and an apples to oranges comparison between an entire continent and a country.

bestcoder692• 3 years ago

OK then make it apples to apples and compare crime rates in your preferred manner? It’s hard to make the US look good no matter what grouping or aggregation or whatever you choose. There’s a clear difference in policies and their downstream effects (eg poverty rate) between the US and a random European city you select by throwing a dart at a map. Not all, but do a few trials and pretend not to see a pattern.

e: Also, sorry, it's ridiculous to say the US looks to Europe too much when discussing policy. This almost never happens, and when it does it's from the left, who has 0 actual influence. Every policy discussion should begin by talking about prior art & what we've observed about the effectiveness of policies as implemented elsewhere. It'll never show causality, but it'll start the discussion off with some possible causal links to explore w/ our own policy experiments!

aqme284• 3 years ago

Because it doesn't matter which European capital. No country in western Europe has a higher homicide rate than the US.

francisofascii• 3 years ago

never understand why people feel like they can make such generalizing statements

Simply to remain more anonymous.

petodo3• 3 years ago

Because it works in general? Even the worst country in Europe [1] (Latvia 4.9 murders/100k pop.) by murder rate is better than US average (6.6/100K) [2] with France 1.1, Germany 0.9, etc. So unless you choose extreme in Europe you are looking for sure at least at 3-5 times lower murder rates in Europe.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1268504/homicide-rate-eu...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...

mrtksn• 3 years ago

Sure, all generalisations are wrong and it even depends by the neighbourhood but the highest homicide rate in Europe appears to be in Tallinn and it's on par with Seattle. The only very worst places in Europe overlap with the very best in US. San Francisco also appear to be on the better part, way worse than Tallinn still.

Even Istanbul, which is a 15M population city in a country with serious economic turmoil and and has huge number of refugees and illegal immigrants from war torn countries, is much batter than most of the US.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_homicide_rat...

_0w8t• 3 years ago

Just based on statistics it is very easy to make such generalizations.

During the civil war in Lebanon in eighties it was safer there than in modern US.

glanzwulf• 3 years ago

Yep. Us Europeans have a tendency to pretend that "America Bad - Europe Good". And sure, we don't have the gun violence and have healthcare, but we also have our own share of violent crime.

And of course it all depends on many factors, but I know for a fact that not all of Paris is safe, or all of Berlin. You have your bad apples everywhere.

coldtea5• 3 years ago

Europe is not a monolith.

Doesn't have to be. Almost all (if not all) European cities have much lower homicide rates. To the tune of multiple times lower.

itronitron• 3 years ago

I feel you, people also make a lot of generalizing statements about the USA, especially Europeans.

peoplefromibiza2• 3 years ago

Europe is not a monolith.

When it's about homicide rates, it kinda is though.

Different areas also have different problems.

It's rarely violence at the level you see in an American city.

It's like the whole talk about "walkable cities" or healthcare.

Yeah, I feel it for you, but it's mostly true. With rare exceptions.

While in the US it's mostly false, with rare exceptions.

nonethewiser7• 3 years ago

Europe is part of the Asian continent. I think the idea that it’s a continent is eurocentrism. Perhaps you could say it’s a subcontinent of Asia, like India.

iLoveOncall4• 3 years ago

There are daily stabbings in London. Often by minors.

pornel• 3 years ago

Only in comment threads, not actual London.

rhaway847733• 3 years ago

One would think that a comparison with the UK would be a smart one to make considering the media coverage stabbings in the UK receive, and the fact that homicides in the US tend to be conducted using firearms instead.

Turns out, shockingly to me at least, that the US also has a much higher deaths due to stabbing rate than the UK.

0.60/100k residents in the US vs 0.08/100k residents in the UK.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/stabbing-...

That’s almost an entire order of magnitude. And on top of that you add the many order of magnitudes greater homicides in the US thanks to firearms.

petodo3• 3 years ago

stabbings ≠ murders

notamy6• 3 years ago

It's super safe here, and it's normal thing to see young females taking a dog out for a walk in 22-02h.

A small point about language, in case you or anyone else didn't know: In English, it sounds weird to use "female" as a noun to refer to people. If, in that sentence, you would replace "female"/"females" with a word like "man"/"men," then you probably want to be using "woman"/"women" instead of "females." Using "female" as a noun for people can come off as dehumanising since it's how we refer to ex. animals in various situations. This applies to men too! Use "men" or "boys" or similar instead of "males"! Dehumanising language affects everyone.

Not upset / telling you to change immediately / etc., just thought it might be useful to bring up in case (:

Edit: Done engaging with this, thanks for the comments all! Don't want to accidentally start a flame war any more than I may already might have. Sorry mods!

Some light reading on the topic that might help:

"Why is calling women females a bad thing?" https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/tvp97b/w...

"I hate when men call women "females" instead of saying women" https://www.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/u735sl/i_h...

"CMV: Using the word “female” to talk about a woman or girl is not sexist/wrong/inappropriate" https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/hzj5ox/cmv_us...

"When did calling females, female become offensive?" https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/re0dc0/w...

"What’s the deal with calling women “females?”" https://www.reddit.com/r/ask/comments/xa3jwp/whats_the_deal_...

drstewart2• 3 years ago

In English, it sounds weird to use "female" as a noun to refer to people.

By "it sounds weird" you actually mean "in the past few years there's been a movement to hyperfocus on this small language quirk that nobody really cared about in the past". Just so we're clear.

that_guy_iain8• 3 years ago

Using "female" as a noun for people can come off as dehumanising since it's how we refer to ex. animals in various situations.

Honestly, it's all about context and really the people say "oh he used female workers instead of women workers" what a pig are the people who are going to be mad no matter what they're literally just looking for an excuse.

And quite simply I find that demonisation of the word female to be rude and fundamentally sexist. We wouldn't have a problem saying "two males walking around" but in escence you would have a problem with "two females walking around". The fact being female is considered dehumanisng is a problem in itself and sexist. Being male is not dehumanising. See how that got turned around? You had good intentions then I got mad and used your words againist you.

agentofoblivion3• 3 years ago

English is my first (and only) language and I’ve never heard of this. I would say that it not only doesn’t sound weird, but is totally normal. Who told you this isn’t correct?

bluedino3• 3 years ago

It's common in certain circles.

slibhb• 3 years ago

I see nothing wrong with the previous poster's use of "females". Males/females is sometimes used instead of men/women in a forensic context (e.g. a police report or an objective description: "female athlete," "single white female," etc).

blackSnake• 3 years ago

I don't know about this either. It sounds fine to me and I hear both used interchangeably (from NYC area). I've also seen it written both ways. To the original comment, you're fine IMHO.

strken• 3 years ago

Saying males or females is putting emotional distance between you and the subject. One possible reason for creating that distance might be to dehumanise, but it's far from the only reason, as you presumably know quite well.

If you or anyone else didn't know, consider a police report or a research paper in which the language is deliberately distant to avoid biasing the reader: "The two female victims were struck by the SUV, and the male suspect fled on foot", "we observed higher rates of CVD for males in the treatment group, but in females the effect size was not significant", and equally bloodless language. This may be dehumanising in some sense, but it's done in a benign way to help the reader be objective.

It's easy for a non-native speaker to make a mistake in informal language after reading formal material like the aforementioned, and it might not be great to call out minor breaches of etiquette in such a targeted and public way.

throwaway4aday6• 3 years ago

Why are all of your sources from reddit?

boeingUH60• 3 years ago

Thanks, I guess, for diverting the discussion into something unimportant.

camdenlock• 3 years ago

A small point about self-righteousness in case you or anyone else didn’t know: asserting your own beliefs as dogma is often counter-productive in a forum like HN.

Stating that you’ve got information that CLEARLY everyone else needs to be taught; that you’re just trying to be helpful; that nobody should feel pressured to conform “immediately”; all comes off as disingenuous at best and threatening at worst. Instead, try asking questions and engaging in conversation rather than lecturing.

As to the topic at hand: in what way is it dehumanizing to refer to a human as male or female? Being male or female is a fundamental part of being human, not something to be erased or ashamed of. I am a trans woman: a human male who identifies and lives socially as a woman. Should I hide the fact that I’m male? Why?

collegeburner4• 3 years ago

it's pretty common in aave/ebonics, that's probably how it's become more common. lots of slang has mainstreamed from the black community in the past few yrs

lucideer6• 3 years ago

I live in "one of the European capitals". It is super safe here, but there are still stabbings. The crime-rate is also enormously variable between European cities.

No more.

Changing your habits based on a single event isn't particularly rational. If this were a comparative articles on SF crime-rates you might have a good point, but it isn't.

And I say this having had a shooting happen on the street outside my hotel room the last time I stayed in SF - one event isn't a pattern (though in fairness if you look at comparative firearm incidents between US & European cities you're a bit more likely to see obvious disparities).

User235• 3 years ago

Changing your habits based on a single event isn't particularly rational.

You only have to be wrong about getting murdered once.

coldtea5• 3 years ago

Changing your habits based on a single event isn't particularly rational.

It's doesn't need to be "a single event" that happened to the parent.

Many individual observations, talks with residents, learning what they consider "normal" and "acceptable" baseline are also very possible to scare someone used in a safer city off for life.

Then there are also the actual stats.

TheRealDunkirk5• 3 years ago

Changing your habits based on a single event isn't particularly rational.

https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/ca/san-francisco/crime#des...

But changing your habits while in a city in the top 2% for crime might be.

nonethewiser7• 3 years ago

Well every murder is “just” 1 event.

seydor3• 3 years ago

Changing your habits based on a single event isn't particularly rational.

I would say it is quite prudent and rational, because you cannot be killed more than once

supergirl• 3 years ago

stabbing is quite common in some big european cities. that’s because guns are hard to find

onion2k2• 3 years ago

stabbing is quite common in some big european cities

London is the European (well, kind of) city that most people cite as being bad for knife crime. It's still rare enough that a stabbing will make the national news though.

For a basic comparison, in 2022 there were 710 murders in the UK. 282 were stabbings. In the US there were 26,031 murders (a little more than 20,000 using guns), which is 36 times more, while the US has a population that's only 5 times that of the UK.

hestefisk• 3 years ago

I always thought SF was relatively safer compared to other U.S. cities, eg LA?

ghaff4• 3 years ago

While there are obviously crime stats that give crime rates for whatever somewhat arbitrary political boundary defines a city, they can tell a misleading story. LA covers a lot of different types of areas. SF does to some degree as well (and a lot of visitors are most familiar with area around the Moscone which is at least near somewhat sketchy areas).

But this is really true in general. I consider Boston a pretty safe city. But there are absolutely areas that I wouldn't be walking around late at night.

Mizoguchi• 3 years ago

Somatic Marker Hypothesis

The somatic marker hypothesis (Bechara and Damasio, 2005; Damasio et al., 1991) highlights the importance of emotions in decision making. The hypothesis postulates that reasoned decision making is influenced by biasing signals (somatic markers) arising from changes in the body periphery.

First triggered as a reaction to experienced feedback (e.g., increased heart rate or visceral responses), the somatic reactions are assumed to be reactivated in similar decision situations.

It is argued that there are primary and secondary inductions of emotional responses.

The primary induction can be understood as innate or learned affective responses arising from a confrontation with pleasurable or aversive stimuli.

Secondary inducers comprise affective responses induced by the recall of past events or anticipation of future states.

UncleMeat• 3 years ago

Many years ago my dad worked for a british company. Some of his coworkers were traveling to DC for business and staying in a very nice hotel. They asked my dad if they should buy a gun to be safe in DC. He was floored.

No. Jesus Christ.

Violence exists. You can compare risk between places and activities. But decisions should be based on data, not headlines and hunches.

devoutsalsa• 3 years ago

I used to live in the Tenderloin of San Francisco, an area full of homeless people, drug dealers, and probably other things. I hosted a foreign woman via couchsurfing.org and she asked if my neighborhood was safe. I told her she should be fine as long as she didn't bother anyone and didn't stay out too late. She then corrected herself and said she wasn't worried about the criminals. She was worried about being shot by the police.

nonethewiser7• 3 years ago

The ridiculous part of that story is the expectation that they could just buy a gun and walk around with it in DC. Concealed carrying is a viable option but not something you can do after you simply walk off a plane.

Also, walking around and taking care of yourself is just not in the realm of known data. You should consider the known data, sure, but don’t ignore your instincts on the ground. That is insane.

ghaff4• 3 years ago

Obviously buying a gun wasn't the solution, but at least "many years ago" DC was pretty bad. I was at a company event and the wife of one of our dinner guests was cut and robbed right outside of a downtown business hotel. And absolutely no one thought this was a freak or particularly out-of-the-ordinary event.

pookha7• 3 years ago

I like Europe but you're exaggerating...I got robbed in Amsterdam and could have been stabbed to death in Frankfurt. London felt dicey in certain spots too (turns out it has 95\1000 rate which is 20% higher than the average in the UK)...To anybody traveling through Europe you've got to be aware of your surroundings because it's not always super safe and there can high risk of crime in tourist areas.

toyg2• 3 years ago

Lol yeah. The reality is that any metropolis will have dodgy areas. Tokyo is super-safe, but even there you don't really want to look funny at a yakuza bouncer in Ueno at 3am.

The question really is whether SF has more dodgy areas than average, and I guess the answer is yes. I've been a couple of times, and it was a long time ago, but some very central areas felt a bit too unsafe even during the day.

Erem2• 3 years ago

I also came terrifyingly close to becoming a stab victim in Frankfurt. Those blocks around the train station are as hard as any place I've been.

Gareth3213• 3 years ago

You might be the most unlucky person on Earth. European cities are almost universally safer than American cities. To which cities are you comparing Amsterdam, Frankfurt, and London?

Equiet• 3 years ago

Lots of comments about relative safety of US vs European cities.

Looking at the data, you need to scroll past 9 US cities (all big cities) until you find the first European city (relatively small city you never have a reason to go to) in this crime ranking: https://www.numbeo.com/crime/rankings.jsp

Europe is definitely safer than the US.

nonethewiser7• 3 years ago

Which 9? I see 5, then Bradford, UK

balls187• 3 years ago

Aside for the active warzone.

0xDEF• 3 years ago

The "problematic" parts of Copenhagen and many other European cities are often counted as being part of other smaller suburban municipalities/cities that are too small to appear on such lists.

Nation-wide statistics show that Europe is definitely much safer than the US. However I would rather compare metropolitan areas than cities.

dang19• 3 years ago

Please don't take HN threads into nationalistic or regional flamewar. Of all the things we don't need here, that is one of the easiest to avoid.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

bwb• 3 years ago

wow this is a sad day, how fucked up :(

LegNeato• 3 years ago

My family has lived in SF since the 1800s. I recently moved because it has gotten so bad. I hate what the government has done to my city.

brtkdotse• 3 years ago

What has the government done to your city?

peyton3• 3 years ago

Downvoting for flame bait. Come on.

bmelton5• 3 years ago

Interpreting the question in good faith (since nobody else seems to want to)

I work in SF but don't live there, but over the past few years (especially under Chesa Boudin, the previous District Attorney) they've moved towards "soft on crime" policies that may have contributed to what friends who live there are referring to as 'lawlessness'

Some policies that likely have contributed include:

Bail Reform: They've prohibited cash bail, meaning most offenders who are arrested have no incentive to stand trial or prevent fleeing. No idea what the effect has been here, and as I understand it, offenders deemed violent are asked to forego bail. Again, no information on whether that's a voluntary ask or an imposed demand, but the impression is that people are arrested and back on the streets the same day to potentially reoffend.

Decriminalized theft up to $950: It is now quasi-legal to walk into a store in San Francisco, steal up to $949 in merchandise, and walk right back out. Allegedly, police won't respond to such incidents, and there's no deterrent from doing so. This has led to gangs who take turns, each walking in and snagging almost a thousand dollars worth of merchandise, then pooling the goods and reselling them. Pharmacies seem to have been particularly affected.

This was walked back somewhat, as shoplifting is now considered a felony again, especially if done as part of a ring, but police are apparently still extremely unlikely to respond.

Reduced sentences: Due to budgetary concerns, California as a whole is now imprisoning offenders for less time, issuing shorter sentences and early release as much as possible so that they do not have to bear the cost of imprisonment.

They defunded the police: Or, at least they pretended to? They promised to redirect $120 million of police funding away from law enforcement to support other social initiatives, and I remember a remark at the time that this was to fund reparation initiatives that they seem to be aiming to implement, but I have no idea as to the sincerity of that. That said, in the years since this promise, police budgets are up from where they were, so they seem to have either reversed course or possibly never gave it more than lip service. I'm not sure.

All together, if those are to be believed as causes (rather than say, wealth inequality, general social unrest, etc.) then it's worth looking into. Crime is up 110% in San Francisco relative to the American average, and is up 91% relative to the average in California.

Two additional notes: I'm just relaying what I think might have been OP's causes for attributing this to government action. I have no idea. I don't live there. Also, it seems that residents aren't particularly happy with it, as there was a (failed) attempt to recall Gavin Newsom, and a (successful) attempt to recall Chesa Boudin, and there are efforts underway to recall Mayor London Breed as well. No idea how that will fare.

Edit: It's probably worth remembering that someone can be stabbed anywhere, and if the fact that this happened in San Francisco confirms a bias you had, it's probably worth reframing it as somewhere else. Confirmation bias is our common enemy, and one that we don't have to succumb to just because our brains insist on it. Ask yourself if your tirade applies if you replace "San Francisco" with Zurich, Tokyo, Toronto, or Frisco Texas.

roflyear6• 3 years ago

The government, or rich people?

shuckles2• 3 years ago

Every elected legislator in San Francisco is rich (as is the populace - it’s one of the richest cities in the region and planet), so you’ve proposed a distinction without a difference.

agentofoblivion3• 3 years ago

Rich people? Lol. At least people are transparently saying their hateful nonsense these days. Yes, it’s people with large incomes that are making people take fentanyl, shit on the streets and stab people to death. If only rent was 50% cheaper, that guy would be a productive member of society! Hey, I have a great idea. Let’s have the government step in, take that stupid rich guys money, and give it to the drug addict. That’s never been tried before and I’m sure will solve the problem completely…

iancmceachern4• 3 years ago

They're the same thing

chpatrick• 3 years ago

The last time I was in SF was 2015, and it was already horrible.

cromwellian• 3 years ago

The murder rate in SF is below what it was in the 1990s.

There are far more dangerous cities than SF, which isn’t even in the top 20 in terms of crime. SF does have problems but there’s been a kind of relentless right wing attack on SF and CA in general that simply is not objective and it’s a rea irony because many of the red states have the highest murder rates.

We’ve got a serious problem in this country in many areas but it’s never going to be fixed by getting hysterical over crime.

This was an awful awful awful tragedy, but statistically, all of the people talking about how bad things have gotten apparently didn’t live through the 80s and 90s. We literally had vigilante groups like the Guardian Angels in the 80s because crime was so high. I’d like it if SF takes action to reduce crime of course but I’m skeptics of simplistic claims without knowing the core reasons crime dropped dramatically from 1980-2000.

[people voting it down but providing no rebuttal that the “gotten bad” claims are subjective and don’t map to actual violent crime stats. What has objectively gotten worse is property crime. If someone can provide stats that show violent crime has objectively gotten worse over the last decade or two, I’d be curious]

octopoc• 3 years ago

When someone's family has lived for generations in one place, I imagine that gives you a special connection to it. Sorry you had to leave there.

alistairSH4• 3 years ago

If by “government”, you mean “citizens”, then sure. But we elect the government and can toss them out next election cycle.

INTPenis2• 3 years ago

A bad government breeds social inequality and this leads to desperation among citizens. You can't just blame citizens as if there's something in the air in SF.

People are desperate. Tbh the whole US system is so messed up, it's generations upon generations of PTSD among the working masses. I hate to get into these discussions but it makes my blood boil to see how people are left stranded with no safety net and just more and more money gouging corporations around them.

TheRealDunkirk5• 3 years ago

Am I missing something? I live in the midwest, so I might be. From here, San Francisco seems so deeply liberal and Democratic, that even if you would change out the entire local government, you'd get similarly-minded people right back, and nothing would change. I'm also middle-aged, and seen this argument before. No matter how bad things get in, say, Chicago or Detroit, "citizens" have never flipped a deeply-Democratic city, nor implemented significant changes to the systemic policies that have led to their situations. For decades, I've watched from afar as people argue about SF's housing policies, which I think are ultimately responsible for almost all the problems there. Is there ANY hope that the local government would risk losing an iota of existing property value by making policies to significantly expand housing?

istjohn4• 3 years ago

In a democracy, you are the government. What we see today in SF is the consequence of decades of hostility to construction and growth from the residents of SF.

ilikecakeandpie3• 3 years ago

In the US, that's not entirely true. There's acts of voter suppression and gerrymandering that have been rampant for what feels like forever and persist today.

TechBro86158• 3 years ago

I can maybe understand the premise that fewer houses means more homelessness. Although I'm skeptical that it's a direct cause, and undoubtedly many homeless people in SF did not become homeless in SF, but migrated there after they lost their home or became addicted elsewhere.

It's a commonly promoted trope to blame all of SF's problems on wealth inequality and the housing market. But it could be an oversimplification that hand-waves a difficult discussion, which only ends up exacerbating the problem.

Can you articulate how housing policy leads to drug addiction, open air drug markets, high rates of property crime, and general non-enforcement of criminality?

jollyllama• 3 years ago

you are the government

Maybe if you're a moneyed donor.

7174n6• 3 years ago

There is so much truth to the saying "The People Get The Government They Deserve". The government of SF only exists in it's current state because the majority of voters in SF chose them.

CrackerNews• 3 years ago

I have an issue with that sentiment because people do not directly vote for policies. They indirectly vote for a representative to enact policies, and the viable ones are backed by mass party apparatuses. Here, the Party's interests overrides the People's and dominate the political discussion. The Party is backed by a large network of corporate lobbyists. It's really that corporate personhood gets the government they deserve.

anon2913• 3 years ago

Well in the case of old time san Franciscans, they made quite a nice city and then people moved in, out numbered them, and voted exactly for that which they didn't want.

TheBigSalad2• 3 years ago

When did you leave? Statistically, the city has gotten much safer over the past 30 years, like most other American cities.

game_the0ry• 3 years ago

A friend who was planning to meet Lee in Miami this weekend told The Standard that Lee had been in San Francisco on business, had stayed an extra day and was killed on that day.

I am genuinely curious to know how SF residents feel about this.

lancesells• 3 years ago

Not to diminish this tragedy but I believe murders are close to an all-time low in the city.

zamnos5• 3 years ago

The sfgate article mentions that there were 10 murders by this point last year, compared to 12 this year.

https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/mill-valley-man-kille...

tlogan6• 3 years ago

Funny stat. Majority of murders happen in family. The recent FBI stat says that family members were responsible for 43% of them. Gangs are responsible for about 30%.

Now since large number of families moved out from SF, and there are more no big local gangs (since there are no families) you have about 40% more random homicides. And these random ones are the worse and the most scary ones.

coldtea5• 3 years ago

If by "all-time low" you mean "the highest of the last 10 years" (we need to go to 2012 to find a higher value, with 2007/2008 being the peak of the last 20 years).

And also if we're willing to accept this pretty high bar...

For comparison the UK, not exactly the safest country in Europe, had 12x the homicides for 80x the population, which puts SF at 6 times more homicides per population.

avsteele2• 3 years ago

This is wrong. The 56-year low was 2019. 2021,2022 up about >30% from that. Oakland and Vallejo increases even more horrible.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/crime-homicides-...

https://sfist.com/2023/01/03/sf-sees-exact-same-number-of-ho...

peoplefromibiza2• 3 years ago

well that says a lot, San Francisco had in 3 months the same number of homicides that Rome has in one year, while also being 3 times larger.

SF average homicide rate: 7.1/100k [1]

Rome average homicide rate: 0.5/100k [2]

[1] https://abc7news.com/feature/san-francisco-bay-area-safety-t...

[2] (in Italian) https://www.agi.it/fact-checking/omicidio_sacchi_sicurezza_r...

cylinder2• 3 years ago

How does it feel to post outright incorrect information? Do you delete now or leave it up?

komali221• 3 years ago

I am genuinely curious to know how SF residents feel about this.

Based on the subreddit, which is usually a trash fire, it's what you'd expect I guess? Everyone thinks murder is bad, so we start at that baseline, and from there it's a couple classes of people arguing with eachother: those that are happy to consider san francisco "a shithole" or whatever hot reactionary word of the day the rest of the country is using to label SF as enemy #1 of traditional american values and are essentially exuberant to have a new single point of data to sling around, and those that are overcorrecting against this and diminishing the real problems in SF in an attempt to whitewash while to be fair making things seem more true to reality, that is to say, portray SF as, statistically speaking, relatively safe and boring for a US metropolitan area.

As a former SF resident I think it's really sad that someone got murdered and I'm really angry about it. I'm mad at whoever did it, what a scumbag. I'm hopeful that there will be justice. I'm also afraid that this might give ammunition to reactionaries that want to overfund or overarm the SFPD, and that this will lend further political strength to politicians like bloodthirsty DAs that get their rocks off to throwing young POC in prison for minor drug offenses.

Cynically, part of me knows that finally some of the issues SF has been facing and the various leaders have been ignoring or handling poorly will probably be handled properly now that a rich person has been murdered. Well, no, cynical me again, probably this just means the cops will be cut loose a bit more and ineffective, punitive policies will be enacted / enforced / tightened.

zamnos5• 3 years ago

If they're able to tie this back to a seedy tale of a crypto millionaire gone wrong, and can't blame it on the homeless, then what will they do?

shuckles2• 3 years ago

Most criminal justice reform is implemented at the state level so hopefully you are assured that punitive sentences for petty crimes is not actually possible anymore in California.

In any case, even the most pro-incarceration DA electable in San Francisco would be a reform candidate in almost every jurisdiction of the country.

bart_spoon5• 3 years ago

It seems strange to me that when a person is murdered the first concern is how it will affect criminals. I mean I understand the concerns of an over active and under regulated police force, but my understanding is that San Francisco’s issues are largely the exact opposite: the police and the DA office have essentially legalized many forms of crime by refusing to prosecute people. It hasn’t seemed to make San Fransisco any better for it. At what point does the idea of punishing individuals for criminal activity stop being taboo?

lupire3• 3 years ago

Sadness and anger about a murder.

throwayyy4790875• 3 years ago

This thread is 90%+ people denying the very existence of a problem.

Last time I was in SF, people were shocked that I felt less comfortable than I do in Detroit. Detroit doesn't tolerate half the shit SF does - no encampments, no wandering screamers, etc. Yes, violent and organized crime is much higher - but when you're QOL is lower than the symbol of urban decline........

brodouevencode6• 3 years ago

Time to bring back Dirty Harry.

brodouevencode6• 3 years ago

Apparently this was not taken as the tongue-in-cheek statement it was meant to be.

tlogan6• 3 years ago

Sadly the situation in SF will continue to deteriorate. Corruption in city gov is astonishing.

Mdubrov• 3 years ago

How many ex-CTOs of square have to die for it to be obvious that having thousands of junkies slowly decaying on the street in an orgy of madness and drugs might be a bad idea?

Not that this should matter, nobody deserves to be stabbed… but I knew Bob personally btw and he was a great guy.

igetspam3• 3 years ago

I knew crazybob too. Met him his 20s at Google. Haven't chatted with him in years but the Bob I knew would have have your intro to be offensive and in poor taste.

viridian4• 3 years ago

Speaking for the dead in a public forum seems in far worse taste to me.

civilized• 3 years ago

I accompanied my wife to a conference in SF a few years ago. While walking along Market Street, returning to our hotel from picking up food for the kids, one of those dishevelled guys with big coats ran at me full tilt. I was forced to run across the middle of the street into traffic to get away from him. He pursued me, pulling out a gun and pointing it at me midway across the street. After I got across the street he gave up and went back to his side.

I think the gun was probably a toy, but the only reason I think that is because he didn't fire it. It was small, but gunmetal colored and realistic. Now, I feel like I could have just as easily been Bob Lee, and my kids could have just as easily lost their father. For nothing more than flying in for a weekend and walking along a main thoroughfare.

It seems like this story is completely unremarkable in SF. Nobody in the vicinity seemed to care what was happening to me. It was obvious there was no point in calling 911 to report this. Apparently it's just normal that you take your life into your hands walking along Market Street, and some resident mentally ill guy might decide to end you because he doesn't like your face.

bombcar7• 3 years ago

I’ve often wondered if the above is part of the reason we have so many tech delivery companies - hire someone else to take the risk for that burger for you.

cdolan3• 3 years ago

Wow. Had not thought of that.

I think you may be correct! Feels right out of black mirror/etc

alephnerd13• 3 years ago

Easily. Whenever I feel a hanking for good Yemeni (Yemen Kitchen) or Mizrahi (Limonana) food, I just order via Doordash because there's no way I'm walking on 6th or lower Jones.

kardianos7• 3 years ago

For contrast, in many parts of Texas, that man assaulting you would have been dead.

People may not like it, but reality isn't some idealized abstract notion. Knowing what is good requires you to look carefully at what is.

propter_hoc2• 3 years ago

I'm not sure what you mean here. Looking carefully at what is, in most of the world, this wouldn't have happened in the first place. The Texas solution doesn't sound much better than the SF situation to me.

andyjohnson0• 3 years ago

So a (probably) psychlogically ill/troubled person with a (probably) fake gun would have been shot dead by some random passer-by? In what way is that better than the traumatic situation that the op described?

nrclark• 3 years ago

Can you give some evidence to support that assertion?

I would love to see statistics on the number of assaults that were stopped because the defender had a gun.

roflyear6• 3 years ago

Comparing Texas to a single city isn't really the most honest thing to do.

Texas has a higher gun HOMICIDE rate than California, per-capita, btw. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/firearm_mortality/...

Unsure what you're really trying to solve!

brushfoot• 3 years ago

Add this to the list of reasons why I refuse to live or work in San Francisco. I screenshotted your comment and shared it with my family.

I know this is anecdata, I know the article we're discussing lends itself to these kinds of stories, and I know there're a lot of positives in SF, too; but there comes a point at which the negatives outweigh the positives by severity, regardless of relative quantity. SF is past that point for me.

theGnuMe3• 3 years ago

I was almost mugged and stabbed in Santa Fe. Same thing. Apparently crime is under reported there by the media.

slifin• 3 years ago

You are in danger as a pedestrian always near traffic

Social cohesion breaks down near congested roads

You can tell if you are in one of those areas by asking yourself Would you let your young child move through this area unattended? If not - you're in an area built for cars first and not for you as a pedestrian

alephnerd13• 3 years ago

My condolences to Bob's family. I hope this finally gets SF city government to get it's shit together. Ik the VC commmunity is pretty closely knit here but always seemed to concentrate on national politics. Maybe they'll now pressure City govt to finally start maintaining quality of life

Edit: Jesus, this happened right in Rincon Hill. This is SF's equivalent of Murray Hill. Yea shit needs to be fixed.

philwelch7• 3 years ago

It seems to me that SF city government has been openly hostile to tech this entire time. If they don’t care about impoverished minorities being murdered by violent criminals, what makes you think they would care any more about tech executives?

alephnerd13• 3 years ago

The tech hostility issue was surrounding tech workers moving to the Mission District (a formerly working class Latino neighborhood that had a bunch of white bohemian alternative types).

In city politics, a handful of major tech moguls have always been active. Ron Conway and Mark Benioff have both historically been massive players in SF politics and have been supporting more moderate Mayoral candidates for some time, but the SF Board of Supervisors tends to filled only with NIMBY activists and real estate owners (Dean Preston, Aaron Peskin, Hillary Ronen).

Now that someone who is Seacliff adjacent is dead, they'll finally do something. I used to live in a Tenderloin adjacent neighborhood and my street literally reverted to mob justice after the riots because it was filled with working class undocumented immigrants+asylum seekers who were targeted and Tenderloin PD's hiring basically collapsed (on that note - if you're trying to stick up someone, don't stick up someone who fought in the Yemen Civil War and the Afghan Civil War. A couple people learnt their lesson in that neighborhood from what I heard at the local mosque).

While those riots went on, the police were guarding Seacliff, Russian Hill, and PacHeights. And it's those same people who's kids end up in SF progressive politics and setting up organizations that push these kinds of policies.

Btw, if anyone downvotes me thinking I'm some GOP nut - I'm not. My politics lean moderate Dem and I have worked in the moderate Dem space for years. That said, the SF Dems are entirely out of touch. It's a level of machine politics that makes Chicago look competent (and they've had actual Supes get arrested for arms trafficking, but then again so did we in 2012).

Nifty3929• 3 years ago

No. Any leader or public figure who acknowledges the systemic problem will be torn apart (figuratively, I think) - mostly by people who don't live in SF. They will be ostracized by their peer group, even by people who privately feel the same way, so that those peers are not themselves torn apart.

1% of the people that are okay with the way SF handles crime are calling all the shots. They hold the cudgel of public scorn that keeps the other 99% in line.

newbie5782• 3 years ago

Sorry to hear this, I do however wish to hear if this is finally going to put some pressure on the government to change some things?

Already, I have friends in Europe who lived and visited SF and had some troublesome stories.

I don't know if people realize, but stuff like this will reject people from the Valley and look for other places for entrepreneurship..

zamnos5• 3 years ago

https://www.linkedin.com/in/crazybob/

mkolodny• 3 years ago

If it's true, condolences and love to his family.

omeysalvi• 3 years ago

Very sad news indeed. It does go to show that even the rich and powerful are not immune to the chaos in this world.

lupire3• 3 years ago

So much pervasive surveillance, but no video evidence of a violent crime committed (presumably) on a public street.

alephnerd13• 3 years ago

SF City Supervisors banned Video Surveillance by SFPD. This was Supported and pushed by our local ACLU chapter. Fuck em.

yosefjaved1• 3 years ago

Wow. RIP Bob Lee.

He died at Harrison and Main st. That area is tame compared to the mission, tenderloin, and other spots in SOMA. Of all places, I would never have guessed a stabbing would occur there but I haven't been in the area since 2020.

Just a give a sense of the place, the area has a lot of apartments and skyrises. A friend of mine lived two blocks away at the jasper building. We would walk around there at night with his dog and never really saw anybody else in the area past midnight.

My company's headquarters was also a few blocks away directly across the street from the Salesforce park. Several major tech companies and organizations had satellite offices and/or headquarters in the area.

oski2• 3 years ago

While that area is usually pretty quiet, it is pretty close to the on-ramp to the Bay Bridge. This is purely speculation, but it is plausible that the crime was perpetrated by someone from the East Bay looking for a quick getaway.

badcppdev4• 3 years ago

I've never been to SF. Never met Bob and have barely any personal experience with crime at all.

And I'm fairly high on the bleeding heart liberal scale but my opinion looking at the crime stats for the US (and other western countries) is that you get the society that you are willing to pay for.

When teachers, social workers, doctors, police, justice systems and prisons cannot teach, help, cure, protect, judge, punish, and rehabilitate people who are not following the laws because there aren't enough of them and they have insufficient resources then this is what you get.

There are people out there who are unintelligent, vulnerable, mentally ill, and occasionally just sociopathic. You need a comprehensive system to try and help those people and protect the rest of society from them.

We've (across the western world) have decided to not put our tax dollars into solving these problems.

Just my 2 cents worth. RIP Mr Lee.

vanilla_nut• 3 years ago

Agreed that we're not using our tax dollars effectively to help people in SF. But SF (and CA in general) have some of the highest tax burdens per citizen in the entire nation -- very similar to many European nations. We should emphasize that taxes provide more than enough money to make a functional city, but some combination of internal corruption or mismanagement is preventing those dollars from effectively helping those in need.

badcppdev4• 3 years ago

Well you've made an assertion that the there is more than enough money but not provided evidence. My understanding is that a lot of the homeless people in SF come from elsewhere so if that's true then a straight comparison of taxation might not be valid. But this is a very very big topic so I'll just point out that actually society is not taking care of the people who need it anywhere in the US or the western world. This is a choice that people make.

joemazerino4• 3 years ago

I have commented on SF threads before regarding the violent crime.

I don't think we have figured out if this was premeditated or not, but either way, SF is becoming incredibly dangerous. Progressive DA's and a neutered police force are to blame for the rise in violent crime.

Many of my friends have taken their remote gigs and left SF in the last 3 years. What's the point in rolling the dice every time you walk outside for some air and to potentially catch an attack or worse? I can't blame them at all for the move.

fluidcruft4• 3 years ago

Have deaths as a result of police violence decreased?

HL33tibCe7• 3 years ago

Deaths from “police violence” are extremely uncommon - when they do happen, it is plastered all over the newspapers for months.

cdolan3• 3 years ago

Is the logical conclusion to this line of thought that any fewer deaths from police violence justifies a metropolitan area falling into socio-economic collapse?

qgin2• 3 years ago

https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/your-sfpd/published-repor...

This doesn't get into any context or whether anyone died as a result, but from the available data, the highest number of incidents where someone was shot by police in SF was 11 in 2010, the lowest number was 2 in 2021.

fredgrott• 3 years ago

when you can factually compare it to Bakersfield(higher crime rate and less inequality) then maybe your conclusion changes to something of more value.

jeffbee9• 3 years ago

neutered police force

The police are on strike and that's all there is to it. They haven't been "neutered". SF has an average number of sworn personnel for cities of its size, 23 per 10k residents.

No city has figured out how to attack the problem of police productivity, except arguably Camden NJ.

mrzimmerman• 3 years ago

I’m guessing it’s a thinly veiled reference to the fictional idea that if you steal less then $1,000 worth of valuables in CA you won’t be prosecuted. It’s constantly brought up by people like Charlie Kirk (who tweeted it as early as three days ago.)

For the record, that isn’t true, it’s where they set the threshold for a crime being treated as a high class of misdemeanor or felony (I can’t remember which) and how stiff the sentence is. I live in AZ and our dollar amount threshold for the same types of crime are actually higher than California’s but no one tries to say that you can “walk out of a CVS with $X and there’s no penalty” because some people are just looking to tear down CA, not actually discuss policy and it’s impacts.

diebeforei48512• 3 years ago

per 10K residents

This is not a meaningful metric because the daytime population is a lot higher. Many of the crime victims are not SF residents, and most of the criminals are not SF residents either.

This is not the case in NYC, which has a lot of commuters between boroughs.

tootie2• 3 years ago

Obviously we have no idea about motive or the situation, but I think it's at least ironic that this guy helped start up CashApp which was recently exposed as being a platform heavily utilized by criminals with their tacit consent.

jutrewag2• 3 years ago

It’s really simple and I don’t understand why progressives can’t grasp this. You need to snuff out crime. There’s a reasonable way to do it without swinging across to either extreme. If the police force won’t cooperate, clean house and hire again. It’s a relatively low skilled job that is easy to hire for. Get the homeless off the street, snuff out petty crime or you’re basically dooming the progressive mandate as something unworkable.

ketzo• 3 years ago

“Police are easy to hire”

Then why is the PD of every single major American city dramatically understaffed?

pr0zac2• 3 years ago

I lean rather leftist in how I think about addressing social issues so we may have differing opinions on correct solutions, but your general assessment on the city's problems and its root issue being a lack of strong conviction and follow through is spot on.

I agree the SFPD’s lack of cooperation and inaction is a central issue that needs addressing by cleaning house and rebuilding. The leftist proposal (often shorthanded to “abolish the police”) would say wipe away the current structure that answers to no one built for antagonism and punishment and replace it with a service bound to strong community oversight tasked with protection, aid, and rehabilitation.

That idea may be the literal scientifically perfect solution to crime or an impossibly impractical utopian fantasy but we’ll never know from SF’s vague motions. Appointing Boudin DA so he could reduce charges and lessen punishments without making corresponding changes in the police force to focus on community outreach and aid services was never a real attempt that could be judged, and was hamstrung from the beginning in a way that could only result in failure.

But even if you think real try at that proposal would never work and the correct solution for addressing crime in SF is something very different the same type of failure is guaranteed if the city doesn’t address the point you made. If the police refuse to act in accordance with the wishes of the community and aren’t replaced with people who will the city will never have a cohesively focused law enforcement strategy that any approach requires to have a chance at succeeded.

The homelessness issue is the exact same thing with SF continuing to be afraid to commit to anything more than half measures regardless of costs. The city has a homeless population of around 8-10 thousand and spends around $1.1b a year on services. Over $100k per person, a bit more than the average income in the city, how does that make any sense? Providing every homeless person an apartment, free food, healthcare, drug rehabilitation, and job search services would very likely cost less and actually solve the issue. Like yes that's a massive simplification and not actually workable in the current world, especially without the rest of the country providing similar services, but it approximates an actual plan with singular direction and the numbers involved highlight demonstrate the problem.

San Francisco really wants to be seen as progressive on homelessness so it keeps throwing large amounts of money at one-off half-baked projects like $5k a month per person on tent spaces in parking lots to prevent COVID spread in the homeless or $70k a year to fund new beds in shelters the homeless can only sleep in at night or $1.7m to build a single public toilet.

At the same time it really wants it to seem like its listening to its tax payers and taking action with visible effect so it also tosses however many millions on encampment sweeps, building hostile architecture, and having law enforcement harass or temporarily arrest the homeless all of which just results in the homeless moving somewhere else a few blocks away.

So it ends up wasting this extraordinary amount of money and effort doing a whole bunch of nothing instead of you know, actually getting the homeless off the street. Because that would require establishing a goal with measurable criteria, forming a comprehensive plan to accomplish it, and working as a cohesive public body to make it happen.

I really rambling here but I feel like pretty much every single issue in San Francisco stems from this same problem. The city and its government is terrified of doing anything that requires the integrity to build a concrete project that it could be judged by, in whichever political direction, and so it keeps creating a giant mismatch of conflicting partial measures it can parade around as progress to counter criticism and avoid quantifiable failure while never actually making any forward movement. See everything with the schools or the cost of living or public transit or other infrastructure or a million other things for even more examples of this.

As long as SF continues to half-ass everything and avoid commitment nothing is going to change.

fundad• 3 years ago

They recalled the DA 10 months ago and the new, tough-on-crime DA failed us here.

brookst3• 3 years ago

It’s of questionable taste to use someone’s death to advance your politics when the facts are known and can be fairly used as evidence that your tribe is right about something.

It’s in poor taste indeed to acknowledge that you don’t know the facts of a murder, and to still insist that the killing supports your politics.

vuln• 3 years ago

Right.

“Just part & parcel of living in a _big city_.”

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3801018/Terror-atta...

flavius296632• 3 years ago

use someone’s death to advance your politics

Are you shying away from discussing politics whenever there is a school shooting as well?

thealchemistdev• 3 years ago

It's in poor taste to establish yourself as an authority to someone else on the internet.

Do you think it would have been better to ask a few questions before resorting to shame as a tactic to change someone's behavior?

(See what I did there?)

VoodooJuJu• 3 years ago

I can't think of a stronger reason to start getting political, to start rallying for a change, than when brothers-in-arms, when innocents, are falling to the sword.

rullelito• 3 years ago

The truth hurts

levzettelin5• 3 years ago

I can see why people would think the second point is "poor taste" (although I'm not sure if I agree), but definitely don't see why the first would be "questionable".

JeremyNT3• 3 years ago

I don't think we have figured out if this was premeditated or not, but either way, SF is becoming incredibly dangerous.

Jesus, the bubble the typical HN SV commenter must live in.

I'm sure it's frustrating to see crime rates increase, but "incredibly dangerous?" SF still has far less crime per capita than many of its peer cities. Where are all the displaced SV millionaires moving with dramatically lower crime rates where these people actually feel safe?

fortran775• 3 years ago

Your denial of plain facts is what’s “incredibly dangerous”

rossdavidh• 3 years ago

From https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/ca/san-francisco/crime#des...:

"With a crime rate of 54 per one thousand residents, San Francisco has one of the highest crime rates in America compared to all communities of all sizes - from the smallest towns to the very largest cities. One's chance of becoming a victim of either violent or property crime here is one in 18. Within California, more than 98% of the communities have a lower crime rate than San Francisco."

adamsmith1434• 3 years ago

4th highest property crime rate in the entire nation. Middle of the pack for violent crime. Many have left for Austin, Texas which has half as much property crime and almost half as much violent crime per capita. So yeah significantly safer.

dang19• 3 years ago

Please edit flamewar swipes out of your posts here. Sneering at the community and promoting regional flamewar are markers of bad threads.

Incidentally, only a small fraction of HN users (10% or so, last I checked) are anywhere near SV. HN is an international forum, which is why we get regional and nationalistic flamewars to begin with.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

mort96• 3 years ago

SF is becoming incredibly dangerous.

Source?

Progressive DA's and a neutered police force are to blame for the rise in violent crime.

Source?

...

Disappointed to see this purely emotional appeal to partisan politics as the top comment. Bring statistics next time, show that the city is actually more dangerous than other big cities (especially conservative big cities), and show that policy changes are to blame. Don't use HN as a dumping ground for your political opinions.

EDIT: Wow, I seem to have struck a nerve. To those of you who downvote my comment: I'm not saying what my parent comment claims is incorrect (though I have my doubts). I'm saying it's just a set of unsubstantiated opinions. Maybe those opinions reflect reality, but if they do, you should be able to show that using statistics. If this offends you, maybe consider whether your own stance on the issue is based in reality or if it's a result of emotional appeals such as my parent comment.

clsec2• 3 years ago

Progressive DA's and a neutered police force are to blame for the rise in violent

Interesting that you say this after our progressive DA was recalled & our mayor is trying to supplement the SFPD budget by $27.6M.

Also interesting, I have lived in SF since 1972 and only been mugged once, in my 1st yr there (I was 7 & mugged by kids across the street in the projects for my Mickey M watch and about $0.50). I will freely and safely walk anywhere in the City at any time of day or night. And I'm an older guy.. This ongoing discourse is tiring.

chitowneats4• 3 years ago

Governments and the polities they govern are like container ships. It takes a long time to change course even after the decision is made. Sadly, in SF, the damage has already been done and it won't be undone by recalling a single DA or merely proposing to fund public safety.

Nice anecdote. Have you heard the one about the tech CTO that got stabbed to death? We have data about this too and it's very much trending in the wrong direction.

If you're tired of arguing with people who are begging you to care about their lives, you can always just remain silent.

tlogan6• 3 years ago

Good for you.

But I do not feel safe at all. What do your kids and grandkids say about SF? Maybe that is generational - I’m in 50s.

ukd1• 3 years ago

Having lived in SF for over 10 years (and never been mugged) there are multiple areas that are subjectively and objectively unsafe. I hope you continue to be so lucky.

bsuvc• 3 years ago

I will freely and safely walk anywhere in the City at any time of day or night.

Please don't. This is not safe, even if you have managed not to be a victim so far.

throwaway2929395• 3 years ago

Interesting that you say this after our progressive DA was recalled & our mayor is trying to supplement the SFPD budget by $27.6M.

Not commenting on the current DA's performance yet, but even "good changes" take time. SF didn't get this way overnight.

ren_engineer• 3 years ago

I work remote and hearing some of my coworkers try to defend SF is like hearing a battered woman defend their abusive husband, "it's not that bad really, you just need to do X, if you get robbed you probably deserved it for Y"

boggles my mind that people can rationalize things like not being able to leave bags in their car or they'll get their windows smashed and their stuff stolen. People in other places don't have to live like that

laweijfmvo• 3 years ago

Name a city in the US where you can objectively feel safe at any time and any part? I’ve never been to such a place.

Outside the US, maybe.

yadaeno3• 3 years ago

We need a fund the police movement in SF desperately. When my bike was stolen last month the officer on the phone said they were something like 400 officers understaffed.

pauldenton2• 3 years ago

I wonder what city is the best for solving bike theft crimes

hintymad5• 3 years ago

Progressive DA's and a neutered police force are to blame for the rise in violent crime

There are reports that police would book a criminal, yet DA simply released them right away. I'm not sure how much police can do about it.

myko• 3 years ago

Those reports are fake news

jesuspiece• 3 years ago

found the libertarian

robertwt7• 3 years ago

This is crazy, Bob is such an excellent engineer that has contributed so much to the engineering world. I have no words for this.

Sf needs to get their shits together, i still can’t believe that the majority of the high income earners stayed home because they’re afraid of the people on the street. I often asked my mates when I visited SF, how come a city so rich has such a basic security issue where people don’t feel safe walking around their own city??

NDizzle• 3 years ago

Turns out defunding the police actually has consequences. Who knew?!

grugagag• 3 years ago

Turns out rising social inequalities and disparities are also part of the problem. Who knew?

a_shovel2• 3 years ago

The SF police budget does not seem to have been defunded, with a 4.4% increase from 2019 to 2022.

SamoyedFurFluff10• 3 years ago

Small question: does anyone have any actual numbers about crime in SF and whether or not it is actually more dangerous than other comparable cities (population, wealth, density)? I want to believe the claims of people who’ve been there that is quite dangerous but very few of them are actually giving out numbers to justify this position.

reustle• 3 years ago

https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/ca/san-francisco/crime#des...

This has a bit of relevant data

CTmystery3• 3 years ago

It's a good ask. I have perused the SFPD crime stats and left dissatisfied. If someone can compel this to provide a longer timeframe, I think it would be helpful: https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/stay-safe/crime-data/crim...

All anecdotal: I believe many, like me, that are claiming the decline in safety are actually living here. I've been here since 2010, FWIW (not saying that is long, but long enough to see changes, IMO). When I first got here, I remember seeing someone shoot up in an alley. I remember a drunk or drugged man smashing his head into the window of a bus. But, against the expectation that I would become assimilated and desensitized over time, I am more shocked now. The last time I went to the TL (six months ago), I was actually scared, and vowed not to return without good reason. I wish I could point to a single thing. Maybe it was the needles strewn, the folks dazed and walking into traffic, the knocked out folks on the sidewalk; it felt lawless. Maybe I'm getting older and scare more easily, that's also a possibility.

btbuildem• 3 years ago

From what I've heard about SF, there is an insane level of inequality there -- abject poverty and homelessness, next to gleaming wealth and SV opulence.

For all the "problems" that tech bros solve, it's somehow tragically fitting that the two worlds collide undeniably this way. The city didn't get like this overnight, and the tech culture that it supports has been one of the drivers of the economic divide.

Now the bubble is burst at the point of a knife... or is it? Will people see the root of the problem? Or will they just call for more police, more coercion, to double-down on the status quo? You could take this as a call to solve real problems, right there, at home.

jfranche• 3 years ago

This is very sad. On comparing city safety. SF has 1M people and 55 homicides. Jacksonville, FL has 1M and 162. Is there a reason people in the US seem to highlight SF more in situations like this?

alphabettsy3• 3 years ago

There’s an agenda.

AbrahamParangi• 3 years ago

For those of us who consider ourselves liberals, at what point do we have to ask ourselves if decriminalization/restorative justice is actually working?

I mean, we obviously want to believe it works- but does it actually? And if, hypothetically, it were counterproductive- what then?

KoftaBob2• 3 years ago

To those who are going to be curious about crime statistics, it appears that while SF isn't high up in terms of violent crime rates, it is unusually high for robberies (#20) and *very* high when it comes to property crime rates (burglary, theft, etc) where it ranks 4th in the nation.

If we think logically about what allows property crimes to remain high in one city vs another, a couple things come to mind:

1. A higher poverty/homelessness rate leading to people resorting to property crimes 2. A higher repeat offender rate if the DA of that city chooses not to prosecute/press charges against many of those who commit that crime

For factor #1, this would be remedied by tackling the causes of persistent homelessness with things like Housing First initiatives to house people dealing with those conditions, and to also give them medical assistance since a good chunk of them are dealing with mental illnesses.

For factor #2, this seems like it would be a simple case of the DA needing to be more aggressive in prosecuting property crime perpetrators to both deter the act and to keep them off the streets to begin with. The SF DA office is particularly known for being too loose with this, unsurprisingly.

I'm by no means a crime expert or a lawyer, but this is what seems like is going on at face value.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...

KoftaBob2• 3 years ago

If we think logically about what allows property crimes to remain high in one city vs another, a couple things come to mind:

I'm by no means a crime expert or a lawyer, but this is what seems like is going on at face value.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...

fortran775• 3 years ago

There's a reason that, while I spend 9 months of the year in Sunnyvale, CA, I never, ever, go to San Francisco.

labrador5• 3 years ago

People in big cities get mugged, sometimes violently. This happened in Republican led cities when I was young. It happens in Democratic led cities now. It happens in London. It happens in Moscow. You can have policy differences with the government of San Francisco, but please don't capitalize on this tragic death to advance them. It's exploitive and disrespectful to Bob Lee's family. I know I'm whistling in the wind, but I needed to say it for myself.

Vervious4• 3 years ago

It’s not every day that a big tech exec gets stabbed and killed. It’s like a bank exec getting mugged in nyc, it just doesn’t happen.

labrador5• 3 years ago

I don't recommend anyone walk alone at 2:30 am in any big city. Get an Uber.

ronnier• 3 years ago

China, Korea, Japan, has some of the largest cities in the world and violent crime is extremely rare in those cities. Crime was never on my mind when I lived in Tokyo. “Big cities” isn’t the cause.

sleigh-bells2• 3 years ago

Don't you know we can only compare the US to Europe???

MAGZine3• 3 years ago

This is mostly a cultural thing, isn't it? Isn't that even more difficult to import?

Rapzid• 3 years ago

Yep, it's white people.

tatrajim• 3 years ago

Yes, lived in Seoul (~20 million in metro area) for over a decade and never once feared for crime any time day or night.

TurkishPoptart• 3 years ago

Demographics in Tokyo are different than in SF.

jfdbcv• 3 years ago

Do you comment something similar on school shooting threads too?

labrador5• 3 years ago

What about this? What about that? Tiresome.

zacharytelschow5• 3 years ago

The countries biggest cities virtually all have Democrat mayors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mayors_of_the_50_large...

CTmystery3• 3 years ago

On the other hand, a good time to debate about how to make our cities safer is now. Today. Bob Lee's tragic death can be a catalyst. The loss must be immeasurable to his family. Wow. That doesn't mean we should throw our hands up and say violence happens everywhere. I think spurring us to action would be a small positive in a sea of tragic loss. It's not at all commensurate, but it's something.

brodouevencode6• 3 years ago

How long before companies start putting moratoriums on travel to SF? We've talked about it on our team w.r.t. conferences and non-direct-business related things.

Dem_Boys• 3 years ago

Could someone please enlighten me on why we don't treat governing like we do software solutions?

When I'm given a task to complete, my first instinct is to find where other developers have done what I'm asked to do and then utilize their wisdom into my own solution which will likely look very similar to theirs.

Why do we see such drastically different approaches to solving issues in society and government?

Want better education? Step 1: Find a state/city that has great education and study what they did to achieve it

Want less crime? Step 1: Mimic a state/city that has successfully reduced crime

Seems so simple to me but yet I never hear politicians/people saying things like "Boston has successfully raised their level of education by doing XYZ so we're going to follow those steps here with minor tweaks to best suite our area"

redleggedfrog• 3 years ago

Crime is a for profit business for the perpetrators, politicians, and law enforcement, and the only victims are, well, the victims. There isn't much profit in peace.

JetSpiegel3• 3 years ago

Didn't SF's mayor's brother murder someone?

trentnix2• 3 years ago

Could someone please enlighten me on why we don't treat governing like we do software solutions?

We do. It’s called “product-market fit” in software. It’s called “elections” in democratic government. The government provides the services and competence its leaders, and consequently its electorate, demands.

San Francisco’s electorate demanded what it’s getting. As you can see just from these comments, “the facts” are twisted, distorted, and obfuscated to confirm a preferred narrative. But the faith in the narrative, whichever narrative you hold, never wavers.

zacharytelschow5• 3 years ago

Elections don't decide which policies will work, only which will be implemented. It's quite simple to see what worked elsewhere and in the past if people would care to look.

Gareth3213• 3 years ago

Politics has always had an emotional component because many people are led by emotions, but things are pretty bad right now. Question the emotional orthodoxy on either side and prepare for war.

zacharytelschow5• 3 years ago

Could someone please enlighten me on why we don't treat governing like we do software solutions?

Because half the country doesn't like the answers that experience produces. Reducing crime isn't hard: support and hire police, put criminals behind bars, and ticket even small/petty crime (broken windows policing). The formula works but because evenly applying the rules produces disparate outcomes among various groups it's evidently racist and it's preferable to just allow violent criminals to run unchecked on the streets.

callalex3• 3 years ago

It’s the “evenly applying the rules” part where everything breaks down in the US.

lajy• 3 years ago

Reducing crime isn't hard: support and hire police, put criminals behind bars, and ticket even small/petty crime

Am I taking crazy pills, or is this just simply not the approach that countries with globally low crime rates take? At the very least, it's insanely reductive. USA already has the highest incarceration rate per capita in the world. Supporting and hiring more police officers into a broken system won't help anything, especially when the cops are often criminals themselves (let alone the fact that their priorities so frequently seem to be contrary to the community's).

On some level, sure, we need a form of policing that the public trusts, and we need to take crime seriously when appropriate. USA is nowhere near the first point, and is fumbling the bag terribly when trying to apply the second point.

Strong social support nets and programs, fostering community and civic culture, a focus on rehabilitation instead of punishment, working to prevent the conditions that create violent crime in the first place--these are all much more effective steps as opposed to "more cops, more people in jail."

roolah3• 3 years ago

You need to go one level lower. Your proposed solution works in countries that have a working social system. Current state and history of the US prevents your proposal to improve anything.

If everyone in a country feels valuable and equitable coming up with solutions that benefit everyone is very easy. As it stands in the US there will always be someone that sees themselves losing something and prevents any improvement.

btown2• 3 years ago

The formula works

It is far from proven that "broken windows policing" is effective, and in fact there is much evidence to the contrary. See, for instance, the peer-reviewed meta-analyses described here: https://news.northeastern.edu/2019/05/15/northeastern-univer...

MAGZine3• 3 years ago

Which city should San Francisco look to to solve all of its problems?

Fwiw, "governance" does exactly that. Many states literally copy, or copy-then-tweak California law (e.g. motor vehicle efficiency requirements).

flappyeagle2• 3 years ago

Singapore

buzzert4• 3 years ago

Tokyo, Singapore, heck maybe even Dallas.

anjc• 3 years ago

The approach you suggest is very common in the public sector, almost to a rule.

Public services are just massive, costly, complicated, and cater to all sorts of vulnerable populations, and the public have pay for it. The time horizon on some complicated projects is so long that knowledge can change in the meantime and make the project/strategies look incoherent. E.g., some countries decommissioned public transport options over decades when cars became more widespread, and are undoing it now because cars became too widespread, and it'll take decades to rectify. Then there are world events that upend everything, such as Ukraine or COVID-19. It's just very complicated, far more complicated than anything in software development in my experience.

FractalHQ• 3 years ago

I wonder, do livable minimum wages and affordable healthcare / education / housing have any significant effect on crime rates?

iancmceachern4• 3 years ago

Yes, they're called "social determinants of health"

collegeburner4• 3 years ago

we were supposed to be set up for this

the point of having a bunch of different states and municipalities is you can test something in one place and see if it works. like weed legalization, some states did it and the world didn't end so others try. or constitutional carry, some states did it and the world didn't end so others try.

there's some poli sci theory that politics is actually about the majority's schadenfreude at fucking over the minority. which seems increasingly credible. but that means we've been pushing more and more stuff to the feds for years so this is now harder to do.

let states and counties do more stuff again. like this should be a party neutral issue, let the dems to more dem stuff and the reps to more rep stuff.

chmod6004• 3 years ago

If the police and or DA won't protect you for political reasons, that's a pretty good argument that you should be able to defend yourself.

It's fundamentally unfair to deny carry permits for decades and then also fail at effective policing.

Most murderers have already committed a lot of crimes, sometimes including other murders. If the police are ineffective many won't be known or reported, but I will hazard a guess that the attacker did commit them. In other words, the effective police+DA could have prevented the stabbing and didn't.

It sucks that the answer is to shoot criminals rather than prosecute them. But that is what the answer will be in the world of ineffective police+DA after Bruen. And frankly, it's good that the option will be there as a last resort for vulnerable citizens.

I know people will suggest all kinds of "better options". But those better options have been known for a long time and nothing has been done. The victims are just a statistic... collateral damage of politics.

AustinDev2• 3 years ago

Out of curiosity, what was your take on firearms 5 years ago? I’m glad to see there are people realizing that in this country the only person responsible for your own safety is yourself.

Be careful defending yourself in a city like SF. You’ll likely end up in jail without the right attorneys.

hotpotamus7• 3 years ago

My take is that if someone is close enough to stab you, you probably aren't going to be able to pull your gun in time to stop them, so it's better just to avoid situations where you might get stabbed.

chmod6004• 3 years ago

Firearms rights are an intellectual exercise to me, for the most part. I know they are personal to some, but this is an intellectual forum.

In the last five years, the pro-gun-rights side of the equation has moved more away from the idea of fighting a tyrannical government to an idea of self defense.

Also, I see those two ideas as related. A tyrannical government need not turn the military against disfavored citizens. It need only deny them police protection and turn criminals loose.

Ukraine is also interesting and there's probably some lesson there about gun rights, but I'm not well informed on that matter.

mr_beans• 3 years ago

Agree. I started carrying during Covid and have had to draw once to stop a mugger attacking me when I was with my elementary school age kid on the way to the science museum downtown (Seattle).

publius_0xf3• 3 years ago

oski2• 3 years ago

Link?

sleigh-bells2• 3 years ago

Assuming that the murderer has lots of priors, why is it so hard for cities to (1) not overpolice minor crimes (i.e. weed) and also (2) take violent crimes seriously and incarcerate anyone who commits X number or X severity of them?

Instead every time at least in NYC when you hear about someone killing an elderly Asian, turns out they had like 20+ priors, including some violent misdemeanors, which are often quite serious. No one wants to put people in jail for stealing a loaf of bread (a straw man that often comes out) but if repeat violent offenders keep committing more violent crimes, maybe we actually need to keep them in prison longer?

Why are people such bleeding hearts for repeat violent offenders?

kfrzcode• 3 years ago

I believe the term is "murdered with assault weapon"

vlovich1234• 3 years ago

In this thread everyone blaming homeless and the poor without any context of who the perpetrator is. It’s a big leap from shoplifting to a stabbing/murder. Also consider that even if the shoplifting/car break ins is being committed by the poor, they could be being directed by organized crime which is quite active in the area (look at the high profile heists in downtown that occurred in the past few years). The car break-ins in particular are as I understand it primarily organized crime not the homeless.

hnburnsy4• 3 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory

butt____hugger• 3 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory#Criticis...

vlovich1234• 3 years ago

Oh I understand that. The sad part is that the evidence is extremely limited and careful experiments done to empirically validate it have failed with other more plausible alternatives provided (see the criticism section).

The most compelling one to me is that the cities that applied this theory and the ones that didn’t saw similar decrease in crime suggesting an overall downward trend that couldn’t be attributed to this theory. That’s basically an A/B test at scale that fails to find anything.

Also:

Baltimore criminologist Ralph B. Taylor argues in his book that fixing windows is only a partial and short-term solution. His data supports a materialist view: changes in levels of physical decay, superficial social disorder, and racial composition do not lead to higher crime, but economic decline does. He contends that the example shows that real, long-term reductions in crime require that urban politicians, businesses, and community leaders work together to improve the economic fortunes of residents in high-crime areas.

That sounds like the theory has cause and effect reversed and treating the effect does not actually address the underlying cause. If your wood beam is rotting, a fresh coat of paint can help but at some point it will collapse.

In the winter 2006 edition of the University of Chicago Law Review, Bernard Harcourt and Jens Ludwig looked at the later Department of Housing and Urban Development program that rehoused inner-city project tenants in New York into more-orderly neighborhoods.[25] The broken windows theory would suggest that these tenants would commit less crime once moved because of the more stable conditions on the streets. However, Harcourt and Ludwig found that the tenants continued to commit crime at the same rate.

Oh look, another controlled A/B experiment that fails to validate anything.

In his 2012 book Uncontrolled: The Surprising Payoff of Trial-and-Error for Business, Politics, and Society, Jim Manzi writes that of the randomized field trials conducted in criminology, only nuisance abatement per broken windows theory has been successfully replicated

So the only thing we can link it to is nuisance calls. All that work and hassling for a super minor win.

It’s impossible to scientifically prove something but there’s enough holes to indicate that this theory provides an exceedingly poor model for crime. It’s also easy to consider a hypothetical scenario where one person or a small group of people steals all the money in the neighborhood such that everyone is poor and can barely feed themselves, if that. The poor now need to steal and commit crimes to feed themselves and their families and cause disorder by using drugs too try to escape their situation / self-medicate. Would broken windows policing actually accomplish anything when the root cause is that the money was stolen from the area?

vorpalhex4• 3 years ago

Crime requires force. If you are stealing stuff, especially ala mugging, you need a threat.

It's a short jump to actually stabbing someone.

This wasn't some kind of hitman assassination.

ashwagary6• 3 years ago

You are assuming there is no motive for someone in his circle or that he personally knows to commit this kind of crime.

vlovich1234• 3 years ago

I witnessed a guy steal someone’s phone on the bus. When the phone owner ran out of the bus and caught him, the thief punched him in the face.

Just saying. It’s not clear to me the kind of personality that uses the threat of a weapon but it’s not going to be your average thief / shoplifter. I’m not saying it’s a hit man assassination but it could be a gang member (violence is escalated there) or a gang initiation (severe violence is a hallmark). My coworker got mugged in Austin and beaten up extremely bad. I believe the police found the people and it was a gang initiation.

ashwagary6• 3 years ago

In this thread everyone blaming homeless and the poor without any context of who the perpetrator is.

You are right. Nothing in the report points to the demographic being blamed in the majority of comments. It could be a person in his circle, a stalker, or even a rich drug dealer that stabbed this guy.

Non-premeditated street crime is generally among the least of the dangers a crypto industry exec is exposed to. Pinning it on the homeless is a bit premature.

Jackie4Chan• 3 years ago

interestingly these type of comments are being greyed out while top comments are happy comments with trees and little bushes.

cheeseblubber3• 3 years ago

Here are some statistics that might help the discussion:

https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/ca/san-francisco/crime#des...

And here is New York for comparison "The crime rate in New York is considerably higher than the national average across all communities in America from the largest to the smallest, although at 25 crimes per one thousand residents, it is not among the communities with the very highest crime rate. The chance of becoming a victim of either violent or property crime in New York is 1 in 40. Based on FBI crime data, New York is not one of the safest communities in America." https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/ny/new-york/crime#descript...

Edit: I know this neighborhoodscout's methodology is not perfect. I wanted to use this as a starting to add more data to the discussion. Would love to see more stats on this

PM_me_your_math• 3 years ago

Speaking from experience, if you go walking the Bronx Concourse at 2am, you are getting robbed at gun point.

sokoloff3• 3 years ago

There are a lot of places in the world where "nothing good happens after 2 AM..."

baremetal3• 3 years ago

I can hear a liberal right now "that is victim blaming".

If I say that everyone should have a means of self-defense in their own house, I get down voted. If I say I don't leave the house without a handgun, I'd probably get flagged.

Liberals made their bed, now its time to lie in it.

ajmurmann2• 3 years ago

A big difference between SF (and Portland for that matter) and other US cities seems to be that there is no clear line between "the good parts" of town and "the bad parts". You know the Bronx Concourse is bad, but in SF it's less clear which part isn't bad. Even 14 years ago I had friends visit from LA who walked 1 or 2 blocks in the wrong direction from Union Square and felt unsafe enough that they walked into a store and called a taxi to not have to walk "back to safety".

dehrmann3• 3 years ago

That's not a fair comparison. This murder was FiDi-adjacent. Pre-pandemic, I wouldn't have been worried in that neighborhood. No idea these days.

dxbydt3• 3 years ago

You clicked on the "Descriptions" tab. Instead, if you click on the "Data" tab, it says:

Murder Rape Robbery Assault UNREPORTED UNREPORTED UNREPORTED UNREPORTED

If none of these stats are being made public, how are they able to compute 1 in 18 odds ?

starkd3• 3 years ago

From those that are reported, I assume. Unreported cases make the actual number much higher.

smachiz2• 3 years ago

These stats for NYC are heavily skewed, I don't see an easy link to the source data for neighborhoodscout, but I think their methodology is _very_ flawed for popular cities. They list the population of Manhattan as 1.6M, but there's probably closer to 3-4M people there during the average day.

cheeseblubber3• 3 years ago

According to Google: https://www.google.com/search?q=manhattan+population It is 1.6M

sporkland• 3 years ago

Anecdata: My friend who lives around Alamo square has had her car windows smashed 3 times, all her tires stolen off her car once, and had someone come into her garage knock her down and steal her phone.

starkd3• 3 years ago

So, in effect, property crime is really the same as violent crime.

asveikau12• 3 years ago

It's misleading to lump violent crime and property crime together. SF is skewed very heavily towards property crime. This stabbing incident is a rare event, and broken auto glass is common. They're not the same.

Ekaros• 3 years ago

Both from outside USA seem insane. Broken auto glasses are extremely rare here. Stabbings sometimes, but nearly always not in public but in homes between junkies drinking ethanol. Not on streets like this case.

darth_avocado2• 3 years ago

From personal experience, people don’t even report property and violent crime anymore in SF. The rate of property crime is way more than those statistics say.

xiphias22• 3 years ago

Maybe SF was skewed towards property crime, but attracting all types of criminals at this point. It's not hard to imagine SF being a great place to locate to for violant criminals as well.

mrangle6• 3 years ago

"Rare" isn't a relevant descriptor when speaking of correlative crime. Non-violent and violent crime rates are correlated. More of one class means more of the other. Though, environments that are different than anywhere else, like NYC, will tend to show a differing correlative relationship.

biggoodwolf3• 3 years ago

It's not misleading, the solution is the same.

quartz• 3 years ago

The second paragraph for both your links tries to compare the cities in terms of apples-to-apples by population:

NYC: "However, compared to other communities of similar population size, New York has a crime rate that is noticeably lower than the average. This means that for comparably sized cities all across America, New York is actually safer than most according to NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis of FBI crime data."

SF: "Importantly, when you compare San Francisco to other communities of similar population, then San Francisco crime rate (violent and property crimes combined) is quite a bit higher than average. Regardless of how San Francisco does relative to all communities in America of all sizes, when NeighborhoodScout compared it to communities of similar population size, its crime rate per thousand residents stands out as higher than most."

Edit: having lived in both (currently in NYC) I also want to point out the two cities are incredibly different in almost every way. It's really tough to compare data across the whole "city" between the two because of the differences in geography, population density & distribution, types of crime, history & expectations, and overall city governance.

screye4• 3 years ago

Crime in East Coast NYC/Boston/DC and West-coast-cities (SF/Seattle/Portland) is very different.

The remarkable thing about SF and Seattle, is that crime is highest in high desirability/high-foot-fall areas. Many folks I know all go to downtown SF/Oakland/Seattle for work, drinks, dinner, concerts and public events.

At the same time, it seems impossible to park your car on the street in any of these neighborhoods. I thought it was an exaggeration, but "every" person I know, who has parked their car for a week in one of these neighborhoods, has had their cars broken in. It's shocking.

On the other hand, the high-footfall / popular parts of east coast cities are fairly safe. (Pickpockets are an exception). For better or for worse, a person would never accidentally find themselves in a bad neighborhood in NYC, Boston or DC. (Bad neighborhoods aren't always correlated with race or poverty. Sometimes it's just a self fulfilling prophecy) This means that violent crime on the east-coast has very little spill-over outside the communities ravaged by it. IE. The average stranger is safe.

In that sense, west coast's 'open drug market in the most important parts of the city' policy is a uniquely west coast problem. It really doesn't affect other cities in the US or elsewhere in the same way. The unique incompetence of west coast politics is squarely to blame for the dilapidation of their cities. This is not endemic to cities at large, and cities around the world should actively distance themselves from the sort of accusations that get flung at 'all cities', when it is meant to be targeting west-coast cities in particular.

tempsy2• 3 years ago

SF does not have many violent crimes. It’s mostly car break ins.

Regardless I’m waiting to hear if his wallet or phone was stolen. If it’s still on him I’m more suspicious this was just some random mugging gone wrong.

rirze• 3 years ago

He was reportedly seen trying to wave down a car for help after being stabbed (on camera footage). I suspect if he could do that, then he could've easily called 911 instead, but couldn't. It's very likely he was mugged, stabbed in the process, and died due to excessive blood loss.

qikInNdOutReply• 3 years ago

All this is seems so alien, compared to european cities, even the acceptance standards to which citizens have been negotiated down too. https://www.numbeo.com/crime/in/Munich

zukzuk• 3 years ago

Also, maybe for more direct comparison, Canadian cities.

SF has 4X the murder rate of Toronto, for example. (And Toronto has about the same murder rate as London, and less than Amsterdam — I can't find the comparative stat for Munich though)

ninjagoo• 3 years ago

So Wikipedia has a list of US Cities, sortable by crime rate, and has separate statistics for violent crime and property crime [1]. This list is based on FBI's data from 2019.

By that list, sorted by the total violent crime rate from highest to lowest, SF is 37th on the list of 100 cities, NYC is 59th, Austin is 73rd. In absolute numbers, SF is 715/100k, NYC is 539/100k, Austin is 415/100k.

Also, by that list, the top cities for violent crime with population over 1M are: Chicago #17, Houston #18, Philly #25, Tuscon #29, Dallas #31, LA #32, Phoenix #33.

Now if only we could get a graph of this data mapped over time, it would be interesting to see trends.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...

pclmulqdq4• 3 years ago

NYC in particular suffers from rampant under-reporting on crime stats. Most burglaries and petty property crimes in NYC that I have heard of went completely unreported - either they didn't bother to go into the station, or they went in to make a report and the police basically turned them away. They openly don't care about "small" property crimes, and demonstrate disdain for you if you are coming in to make a police report for anything short of an attempted murder. The alternative that happens in a some communities is vigilante justice.

droptablemain• 3 years ago

A lot has changed since 2019.

nashashmi2• 3 years ago

where is Camden and Compton on that list?

smsm4216• 3 years ago

Property crime in SF is likely grossly under-reported. E.g. constant car break-ins is useless to report - the crimes are done openly and brazenly, and the police is doing nothing about it, which is understandable given they are in colossal staffing shortage - organized purposely by the city government for political and ideological reasons. In fact, a lot of things like shoplifting is not even counted as a "crime" anymore. And certainly quality of life issues - like tent cities on the street, open air drug markets, garbage everywhere - is not technically a "crime" either...

As for the violent crime, I expect post-2019 data to be much worse than 2019, 2019 was before the whole "defund the police" movement.

speakfreely3• 3 years ago

The problem with examining violent crime per city is that the majority of violent crime occurs in specific areas, typically poor areas that are known to be dangerous by most locals who avoid them unless they live there.

What the majority of people are concerned about is the chances of violent crime that is likely to affect them. Yes, there might be 80 gang murders a year in Atlanta but a $100k+ income working professional in downtown has a very different threat model than a gang member in some of the worst neighborhoods of the city.

I think the reason SF gets so much negative attention is because the threat to "average people" (realistically, above average income people) is anecdotally quite high in SF, even in "nice" areas of the city where affluent people frequent.

squeaky-clean4• 3 years ago

These rates have gotten a lot higher during/post covid. 2019 data is pretty out of date considering that.

josephcsible8• 3 years ago

It's misleading to look at 2019 crime data for San Francisco when the biggest reason for crime going up there recently was Chesa Boudin, who was only DA from 2020 to 2022.

fortran775• 3 years ago

SF's population is below 1MM

seanmcdirmid6• 3 years ago

When someone says C = A + B, you begin to wonder how much A (violent crime) and B (property crime) are. Yes, SF has a lot of B, but it hasn't had a lot of A, so this stabbing is really shocking to me.

syzarian27• 3 years ago

Murders in the U.S. are very high compared to other rich nations. San Francisco has a very high murder rate compared to cities in Japan, England, France, Sweden, etc.

verteu3• 3 years ago

Per FBI Crime Report statistics[1] the murder rate in SF is LOW for a major city.

It's 60th of 83 major cities (Top 3 most dangerous are St Louis, Baltimore, Detroit).

I defined murder rate as "Murder and nonnegligent manslaughter" / "Population" and "major city" as "Population > 250k."

PS: Someone should update Wikipedia; its numbers appear outdated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...

[1] https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-... [2]

syzarian27• 3 years ago

To illustrate how bad things are in the U.S. it should be noted that SF’s low murder rate is quite a bit higher than London’s murder rate. London had 124 homicides last year with a population of 8.7 million people. SF had 40 murders per 100,000 people and London had less than 40 murders per 2,000,000 people. We are a violent people.

austinl• 3 years ago

I've lived in SF for almost 10 years, and it saddens me to live in such low trust community because of all the crime. It changes people.

I've had my car stolen once and broken into several times. I've had two bikes stolen, once out of an office building, and another time through an iron gate that blocks my doorway. My neighbor had his motorcycle stolen out of his garage. I've caught someone stealing packages from a building I lived in. Last time I moved, someone tried to break into my U-Haul. I've seen people walking out of several stores with bags stuffed full of stolen goods (going to Westfield mall feels surreal—even inside the mall, shops need to hire their own private security to protect themselves).

These are just a few incidents that come to mind—I could list many more. My point in listing all of these cases is to say—it's not enough to look at crime metrics. Not to say that we shouldn't look at metrics and try to improve them, but the current metrics are flawed to some degree. People in SF-proper (e.g. mid-market, SoMA, Mission, Haight) are living with a constant low-to-moderate anxiety that they will be robbed at any time.

In all cases that I've been close to, there have been no arrests or prosecution. You won't find that I had to chase away someone trying to break into my U-Haul in any crime statistic report. No one from SF is comfortable leaving anything in their car, leaving their garage open, parking their bike outside.

All I want is a candidate to run on the platform of simply enforcing the law—it's baffling to me how controversial that is. Perhaps we'll get the right catalyst for that to happen someday.

AverageDude7• 3 years ago

All I want is a candidate to run the platform of simply enforcing the law—it's baffling to me how controversial that is. Perhaps we'll get the right catalyst for that to happen someday.

And this is what gives a chance for extremist to flourish. For some reasons, US politics has no centre, it’s always far away from the axis. I think it’s time to have a “Balance Party” in the US :)

maratbn8• 3 years ago

As for me I used to go to SF at every opportunity. Now I only go there if it is absolutely necessary for some short errand, and as soon as I'm done I leave ASAP before my car gets broken into.

In my view the main problem is not the politicians but the ineffective opaque police that does not have to produce any metrics and is not subject to any kind of oversight, not in SF and not anywhere else either.

For example, I had a car window smashed not in SF but in Fremont, and when I went to the police, they informed me that that is not even an arrestable offense. Window was smashed in front of a hotel with a prominent security camera overlooking the street. The police told me they left a voicemail with the hotel asking if their camera caught anything. The hotel never returned the police voicemail, the police never bothered to follow-up with the hotel, and told me they don't have authority to take the security footage of the public street without hotel's consent. Some time later I noticed that the hotel removed that street-facing security camera they had, leaving just an empty pole.

I wrote a letter to the Fremont city council regarding their police not wanting to work and lying to victims of crime. And that's when I got back some police action -- in the form of a mental Fremont PD police sergeant calling me in the morning to harass me and bitch about my letter.

So even if SF is bad, outside SF it is not much better. Another nugget to consider is that back in 2014, back when crime was nowhere as bad as today, CA voters, not liberal politicians, voted for Proposition 47 "Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act" which made potential felonies chargeable only as misdemeanors.

okdood644• 3 years ago

I'm with you, people don't even report crime here because it's so commonplace. What a sad state of affairs.

Fact: the last 4 out of 7 friends I had that got their car broken into didn't bother reporting. They just fixed their car and went about their life.

lobsterthief• 3 years ago

You won't find that I had to chase away someone trying to break into my U-Haul in any crime statistic report.

This is known as the “dark figure of crime” btw: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_figure_of_crime

baby2• 3 years ago

I’m in process of leaving SF. As someone who has lived all over the world, what a mismanaged town. That being said, I think SF ended up this way not only due to that, but also due to national issues. Lack of safety nets, lack of healthcare, lack of worker rights, etc.

IG_Semmelweiss4• 3 years ago

Shouldn't a city stand on its own ?

What makes Austin shine, and SF not ?

Don't national issues affect everyone more or less equally ? And even if they didn't, why is it that the outcomes are so wildly different between SFO and comparable large cities that have huge net inflows of people ?

mvkel• 3 years ago

It's unfair to combine "violent" with "property" crime, considering property crime accounts for the vast majority of crime in SF, where lives are not in danger.

Aeroi2• 3 years ago

This is sad, but the reality is the homicide rate in San Francisco isn't that bad, in fact it's been steadily declining for 30 years and doesn't sit in the top 50 in the united states.

enono• 3 years ago

This is false

https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/ca/san-francisco/crime#des...

sokoloff3• 3 years ago

I see as #29 on this list (when sorted by Q4 2022 per capita rate): https://wallethub.com/edu/cities-homicide-rate/94070

Aeroi2• 3 years ago

Both of those sources are from third party sites without valid sourcing. I think it's important to note that while researching a rebuttal for both of these sources you guys provided, solid data from reputable sources is VERY hard to come by, which I found interesting.

I'll also think one reason might be because municipalities report to the FBI UCR on a voluntary basis for their reports, and cities don't stand to gain much from reporting very bad numbers.

xivzgrev• 3 years ago

This is sad. Scary too - That area is ok crime wise so seems like a freak accident. Or possibly an argument gone wrong.

Lot of people here railing on homeless people - police don’t have any suspects.

aEJ04Izw5HYm• 3 years ago

Can we take a minute to re-direct this conversation away from just the politics of SF?

I want to draw attention to Bob Lee, a well-respected technologist and prototype hacker, always curious and sharing lots of interesting technical developments. He was a great role model for how Engineers should be respected in an executive capacity as he advanced his career from 'Software' to 'Product'. His efforts contributed to technology used by millions. What happened to him is tragic and wrong; he deserved better. Thank you, I'll miss you 'crazybob'.

Please share your stories featuring Bob Lee, who I'm sure would like to be remembered for his contributions rather than as a victim of this unfortunate awful event.

excerionsforte• 3 years ago

I wish some of the comments from below were merged into this comment for better visibility of those comments. There are things in those comments about what he did in his lifetime that are great to hear about.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35454844

2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35454971

3. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35451821

4. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35449584

dang19• 3 years ago

I've moved all those comments to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35457341 now and will try to find the rest that belong there and move them too.

BigCryo3• 3 years ago

Here is a quote from an article describing the security camera footage of the incident...

https://sfstandard.com/criminal-justice/video-appears-to-sho...

"Surveillance footage reviewed by The Standard shows Lee, who had already been stabbed, walking up Main Street away from the Bay Bridge.....Lee crosses the intersection at Harrison Street and walks up to a parked white Camry with its hazard lights flashing.

Lee then lifts his shirt—as if to show the driver his wound and ask for help—and falls to the ground after the car drives away, the footage shows. He gets up and walks back toward the Bay Bridge before falling to the ground again ....

At some point, Lee dialed 911 and repeatedly screamed for help, saying he needed to go to the hospital....

Lee was unconscious when officers found him on the ground, police said."

So looks like he was stabbed and he was wandering around in the middle of San Fran trying to get someone to help him even lifting up his shirt to show people his wound and no one would help him..

The reason our large cities are hellscapes is because in part all institutions censor dissenting comments.. cough cough cough cough...

dang19• 3 years ago

I agree and am going to partition these threads so that there's a place to remember Bob Lee that isn't an argument about current affairs.

To facilitate this, I've taken the liberty of converting your text here into a new submission (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35457341) and am going to move the relevant comments there. I hope that's ok with you (and if not, let me know and I'll rework this).

igetspam3• 3 years ago

Thank you.

patcon2• 3 years ago

Yeah, thanks so much. I actually had regret for engaging and piling on to a comment. It was pretty tasteless on my part :(

victor96• 3 years ago

Sad to hear about this, was it just a random attack?

arzanr• 3 years ago

Everyone commenting on here about how bad things are in SF has likely rarely or never stepped into the core parts of Protrero Hill, Noe Valley, Richmond, Sunset, Glenn Park, Forest Hill etc. SF is a tale of two cities divided by natural barriers. There is a side to the city where you see almost no drugs, or homelessness. This is not a dismissal of the real issues facing the city but an acknowledgement that it is still a very livable city.

msoad• 3 years ago

You can not totally avoid the other side even if you are able to spend your way into the nice part.

asveikau12• 3 years ago

The block this happened on is one I think of as quiet. I think this is an uncommon situation.

sk55• 3 years ago

I've been to all of those areas and though they are nice, they are not as safe as I'd like. Especially compared to other major international cities.

hackitup7• 3 years ago

I lived in two of those areas for several years, and still saw more scary things happening on the street than I have in significantly longer time periods in other major metro areas. (The biggest difference fwiw was whether I lived on a very steep hill or not; the hill reduced the amount of street-side madness that I saw to near 0).

The clean and safe neighborhoods of SF are livable (I loved living there), but at least personally I have found them to be notably sketchier than any other city I've ever lived in and I agree with you that the contrast is not particularly close. >95% of the shoplifting I've personally witnessed in my life happened in SF despite it being a relatively small part of my total life experience.

coldsauce• 3 years ago

While I agree those areas are much nicer, most people still need to commute to go work in, and spend considerable amount of time in soma, fidi, etc.

I used to live in one of those areas you talk about, yet still was attacked and threatened several times in the span of 6 months during my commute to our office on Market street.

ironman14782• 3 years ago

Noe valley and Richmond have homeless people. In the Richmond, on geary you'll see a lot of homelessness and drugs, especially from 4th-10th. There are also a few near Safeway on cabrillo. In noe you'd definitely see it on 12th Street. I've seen some really unstable people clear out coffee shops because they we were ranting in the middle of the shop.

There aren't many homeless people in the purely residential areas, but they are definitely where the businesses are.

FanaHOVA2• 3 years ago

12th St isn't even close to being in Noe. There's usually two homeless people in Noe, one woman who always sleeps between Church and Noe on 24th St, and an older man. Outside of the misfortune of being homeless, they don't really cause any troubles, and most people in the neighborhood often give them food or a warm tea / coffee. There's not much we can do on our own, and the city doesn't really seem to help sadly.

ChancyChance3• 3 years ago

Literally every generation of suburbanites and ruralites think cities are big scary places with violence and drugs on every corner. It's just being amplified in this thread because that's what social media does.

rabuse7• 3 years ago

We have literal video proof that this is the case in a lot of American cities. Are you denying this reality?

horns4lyfe2• 3 years ago

Well no, it was the stabbing of a man in broad daylight that did it.

staticautomatic• 3 years ago

All kinds of scary shit happened to me when I lived in Pacific Heights. Really nowhere is safe except maybe Seacliff or something.

okdood644• 3 years ago

I'm sorry, I'm glad you've had it fine but that's bullshit, I've lived in those areas and have seen rampant crime that would not be tolerated in most other cities.

This city has lost it.

okdood644• 3 years ago

Well this comment has aged well. I bought into the narrative. Hope to learn from this.

Though I supposed my concerns were misplaced, but not totally incorrect? Shrug.

vecinu• 3 years ago

I lived in Potrero Hill (I see you misspelled it, are you familiar with the neighborhood?) for over a decade and can tell you it didn't feel safe at all.

Had a bike stolen from my garage with power tools, caught a man with an angle grinder in another garage cutting through locks and threatening my life, mentally ill people yelling in the street and saw a few people with machetes walking around.

I used to go to Whole Foods, to Chez Maman, to the library and the rec center all the time. I moved out in 2020 and will never return, my mental health has improved significantly and I'm not exaggerating. I feel so much better now, it's like a flip switched and I started appreciating the beauty of life and community again...

diebeforei48512• 3 years ago

Potrero is unsafe now. Noe and Richmond are also slowly getting unsafe, and Sunset isn't far behind.

roflyear6• 3 years ago

This thread is full of

"I left SF 1,000 years ago, it's awful! I know, because I haven't lived there in 1,000 years!"

and

"I'll never move to SF, this is why! I know it's awful, because of the news!"

Not saying SF doesn't have problems. I don't live there, so I don't know! I do know that I live next to some cities that have similar or worse reputations, and I also know those reputations are overplayed.

oh_sigh3• 3 years ago

You have to ask yourself - why would SF get this reputation among all possible cities, for no reason at all?

A lot of people have fun anecdotes about visiting San Francisco. For example, I was in SF for 3 days and was chased by a man with a knife in a park near a major tourist attraction. I lived in NYC for 12 years and nothing of that sort happened my entire time there.

Maybe SF is unique in the dangers are equally dispersed among residents, non residents, and across neighborhoods of varied socio-economic status. Chicago is reputationally dangerous, but the violence is really limited to non-tourist neighborhoods that mostly poor people live in. So probably not the type of people who will be posting stories on HN, or get a CNN article written about them when they die.

roflyear6• 3 years ago

You have to ask yourself - why would SF get this reputation among all possible cities, for no reason at all?

This isn't an argument.

A lot of people have fun anecdotes about visiting San Francisco.

Also not an argument.

For example, I was in SF for 3 days and was chased by a man with a knife in a park near a major tourist attraction. I lived in NYC for 12 years and nothing of that sort happened my entire time there.

Also not an argument. But I have had close calls in NYC as a tourist!

browningstreet2• 3 years ago

I'm not putting any blame on Bob here (I've always been a dawn guy, not a night owl), but the city I'm in (not CA anymore) has lots of its bad things happening at 2am (the time of his stabbing) too.

When I was working in SF (downtown, SoMa, FiDi) I had a schedule that got me to a gym at 5am, the office at 7am, and back on Bart before 4pm. I can't remember the last time I was in SF after dark. Walking the city at 5-7am is like wandering the aftermath of a war zone. It's sleepy, but the overnight destruction and misfortune was on display.

That said, all the talk of crime here feels slightly premature -- the linked story doesn't clarify whether he was the victim of a random attack or by someone known to him.

Apofis• 3 years ago

It really struck me that he was out that late on a Tuesday... could have been a mugging when he was on the way back home from something... but the time just doesn't feel right. A mugging on the weekend late night seems more likely for a variety of reasons. Then again, I've seen recordings of individuals with mental health issues that literally just randomly attack a stranger completely unprovoked, so who knows anymore.

stickyribs• 3 years ago

Precisely. It’s intriguing to observe that the prevailing emotional response appears to be based on presumptions, despite the limited information available regarding the actual events.

rasengan2• 3 years ago

This caught my eye just because I remember reading an article about this company being engaged in alleged mischievous activity very recently [1]. Thanks for sharing!

[1] https://hindenburgresearch.com/block/

rideontime• 3 years ago

“I paid them hitters through Cash App”— Block paid to promote a video for a song called “Cash App” which described paying contract killers through the app. The song’s artist was later arrested for attempted murder.

Oh, the irony!

rasengan2• 3 years ago

Timing of this is worth noting [1] since they were recently accused of fraud.

[1] https://hindenburgresearch.com/block/

dxbydt3• 3 years ago

Speaking as an immigrant - Worked in SF most of last decade. Left in 2018. Crime was on a steady uptick while I was there. Once in the Bart, a young man grabbed a cellphone from the guy seated right next to me & bolted out of the train. The train started, and the cellphone owner gave chase. The Bart police arrived soon after, with guns pointed straight at the passengers. The robber was fast and jumped over the turnstile & got away with the cellphone. I felt like I was like in a cops and robbers movie. People are trying to peacefully commute to work and instead you are subjected to guns in your face because of some shiny iphone. Rest of the train trip was some heated political debate between the left & the left-left, arguing what should be done. The left wanted to integrate the youth into the tech community by offering free coding classes so they wouldn't rob cellphones. The left-left argued for free iphones for everybody. I was like, hey how about catching the robber & some jailtime, which is what they'd have done where I come from. Ofcourse I didn't actually say anything, I don't feel comfortable talking about your politics.

I work in a suburb in the rural midwest now. Neighborhoodscout says my odds are 1 in 1100. So my chances of being a victim have improved from 1 in 18 to 1 in 1100. How does it feel ? 8 year old kids here bike to school a mile away, snow or shine, no cps, nothing. As to property crime - once we went away for the weekend & the garage door acted up in our absence. So for a whole 3 days, the garage was wide open & anybody could have walked in & grabbed whatever. Nothing was taken. On the contrary there was a nice note from the neighbor about applying grease on the railing so the garage door stays closed.

So if you are an immigrant & safety is a priority, yeah there are many towns in the midwest southwest etc. where you can be very safe. Houses are quite cheap & I was able to buy my house with straight cash, but ironically that cash was earned in SF! Indeed, I now get paid 4x less than what I made as a programmer back in SF.

So yeah, from an immigrant pov, it looks like in this country you first have to pay your dues. Work in some high-crime zone like SF,NYC etc, accumulate capital. Then move to some peaceful rural place in the midwest with no crime & no nothing. We don't even have a mall.

s53003• 3 years ago

> Houses are quite cheap & I was able to buy my house with straight cash, but ironically that cash was earned in SF!

So… you came to the MidWest just to contribute here to the very problem you were trying to escape

This is going to end well for society. Remind me in 20 years.

throwaway0492• 3 years ago

The problem they escaped was high crime rates. Do you think they came to the Midwest to commit crime?

rcpt• 3 years ago

The Midwest famously has no empty space

dang19• 3 years ago

Personal attacks and flamewar are not allowed here. We ban accounts that post like that, so please don't.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

silisili3• 3 years ago

Do you mind if I ask whereabouts you moved to?

dxbydt3• 3 years ago

suburb 2 hours from chicago. i have a few friends i visit in illinois, also in indiana and in columbus,ohio. its all very similar here, hard to tell apart. full of corn fields, windmills, large homes with giant basement, poorly funded schools with an outdated syllabus that lags behind asian schools by 5+ years, looking at my kids textbooks. people are quite poor out here. median household income stats is like 60k. if you like water view you can try michigan, otherwise its basically landlocked. again, i am just an average asian immigrant. i am not trying to "disrupt the local economy" like the person below claims. i am sorry he feels that way.

ClumsyPilot4• 3 years ago

So for a whole 3 days, the garage was wide open & anybody could have walked in & grabbed whatever. Nothing was taken. On the contrary there was a nice note from the neighbor about applying grease on the railing so the garage door stays closed.

Everyone seems to be missing a piece of critical non-political information.

One setting is rural, everyone owns the house, lives there long-term, everyone knows neighbours. You don't want to ruin relationship with neighbours for $100.

The other setting is Urban, you don't know neighbours, you don't care what they think. Everyone appears out of nowhere and disappears into obscurity.

The social dynamics is totally different, and the housing crisis has a big role to play in it.

Also you do not Have_To own the house to feel like you live there long term and know neighbours - many European countries have social housing, or massive restrictions on landlords kicking out tenants. So tenants stay in the same place for decades, and there is a real community.

smsm4216• 3 years ago

You can have Urban setting without the squalor that is currently swallowing the Bay Area. I know it because I have seen it - in the same place. The difference between what I have seen in SF when I came there for the first time, in early 2000s, and what I am seeing now, in 2023, is striking. Everybody has a long list of reasons why, but the basics are clear here I think - it's not that you can't have urban setting with reasonable quality of life. It's that somehow whatever is being done in the Bay Area does not lead to this - very possible otherwise - outcome. It's not some inevitable law of nature - it's what people do, how they organize their society, and it's clear that the way they do it now leads to some consequences and so far they are not intent to change their ways substantially - so the consequences will continue.

foolinaround• 3 years ago

this "not knowing the neighbors" is a flimsy excuse at best. This is mostly true of any densely populated city around the world, where people move in for jobs.

In the past few years, crime in some US cities are committed by certain groups of the population - who are partly encouraged by the local powers.

inglor_cz4• 3 years ago

"The other setting is Urban, you don't know neighbours, you don't care what they think. Everyone appears out of nowhere and disappears into obscurity."

And yet crime levels in various urban settings are wildly different, from places like Johannesburg on one extreme of the continuum to Reykjavík or Tokio on the other one.

Looking at the worst cities worldwide as far as homicide goes, almost all the top contenders are from Mexico, South Africa, Brazil, the US or Colombia, with Mexico being heavily overrepresented. 17 of the top 50 homicide metropolises are Mexican. Damn.

There isn't a single European or Asian city in that list. Germany has some 60 per cent of the Mexican population, but isn't present in the top 50 at all. Heck, even India and China just aren't there, and they together account for almost half of mankind.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_homicide_rat...

The pattern is too non-random to claim that urban life in itself is somehow inherently dangerous. It is only dangerous if your governance sucks.

And yes, SF governance sucks, though not to the degree of Ciudad Juarez - but that is a low, low hurdle to clear.

robopsychology2• 3 years ago

Have you ever been to Tokyo? One of the largest cities in the world yet has way way lower robberies/homicides than US cities.

BrandoElFollito• 3 years ago

As much as I love my country (France), our housing laws are fucked beyond repair.

Someone gets in your house while you are on vacation? Bad luck, you will live on the street before the law sloooo...ooo..wly makes is way and you are almost there but, bad luck this is winter now and you cannot get anyone out and then comes summer and, shit, they now have a baby and they cannot be thrown out.

You will also get a fine if you try to do it your own way, and they will sue you on top of that. And sue you if they get harmed in your house

No surprise that in other to rent a box you need to be royal.

We have a great social system I wholeheartedly support. And then come the leeches we are to week to get rid of and everyone suffers because of that.

JPKab6• 3 years ago

SF was always unequal. I lived there in 2002-2003 for a year. There was a ton of inequality. The crime is out of control NOW for obvious reasons that conflict with your prior beliefs, so you embrace this silly theory of "if people had more free/cheap stuff they'd be nicer".

Massively reducing prosecutions causes police to stop arresting people since they get released without being charged. This changes the incentive structure for criminals. They get more aggressive, more brazen, and they tell their friends. This isn't complicated.

smsm4216• 3 years ago

Yeah, that's what I did too. SF has the money, but once you get certain amount of money you start to ask yourself if it's time to get some quality of life, and whether to have to wade around drug addicts and excrement on the street is worth a chance of having more money. SF area (not only SF, same for San Jose) has gone downhill a real lot last ~15 or so years. And somehow people there are completely fine with it, judging from their voting patterns. I don't understand that, but I can't do anything about it, just move out to a place where people value quality of life more. Ironically, covid helped a lot here - many more companies became ok with remote work, and developed processes that allow to accommodate people working outside of the physical office.

BonoboIO• 3 years ago

Free iPhones for everyone so nobody would steal anymore …

Hahaha. What a joke. Unbelievable. So disconnected from reality.

joseph_grobbles• 3 years ago

Do you really believe that this public discourse occurred on a public train after a theft? Do you think they had a lively debate in the commons about how to solve crime?

I'm a bit surprised people are seriously believing this. This is someone's shower thoughts six hours later when they strawmanned some ridiculous positions to caricaturize "opponents".

I will go further and say that everything the person said seems...dubious, and are claims that are unverifiable. Like, where is this low-income "suburb" (two hours from a major center...) that has no crime? As someone who grew up in a smaller town in the rust belt, I find their claim hysterical.

eBombzor• 3 years ago

I agree with Joseph

Shocka12• 3 years ago

I'm born and raised Midwest. I've lived in smaller cities and have absolutely zero desire to go back to that environment. Midwest living is one of the best kept secrets in the US, even though the secret is definitely out now. I make coastal money - it can be done although it takes some negotiating skills.

TehShrike2• 3 years ago

did you mean "larger cities"?

muyuu• 3 years ago

the wealthier cities won't remain wealthier forever with rampant crime and civil disarray

once upon a time, not that long ago from a historical PoV (the 1950s), Detroit was THE wealthiest city in the USA and it's now among the poorest

and if you look at the decay of those once-wealthy cities, the pattern is that they took it for granted and stopped caring and competing

hard times make good men, etc etc

908B64B197• 3 years ago

Rest of the train trip was some heated political debate between the left & the left-left, arguing what should be done. The left wanted to integrate the youth into the tech community by offering free coding classes so they wouldn't rob cellphones. The left-left argued for free iphones for everybody. I was like, hey how about catching the robber & some jailtime, which is what they'd have done where I come from.

What I wonder is where are the fathers in this scenario. I can't imagine the conversation about the son's income coming from stealing phones going very well with his father.

TMWNN5• 3 years ago

What I wonder is where are the fathers in this scenario.

All the fathers stepped out for a pack of smokes some years ago and didn't come back.

heartbreak2• 3 years ago

The left wanted to integrate the youth into the tech community by offering free coding classes so they wouldn't rob cellphones. The left-left argued for free iphones for everybody. I was like, hey how about catching the robber & some jailtime

For what it’s worth, these are solving two different problems. The reported train discussion was a disagreement on a solution to the systemic problem. Jailing the perpetrator only treats the problem with that specific person. Both problems need solutions.

maratbn8• 3 years ago

Jailing the perpetrator also warns other potential perpetrators that they might also be jailed if they perpetrate the same crime.

djfobbz3• 3 years ago

As an immigrant myself who moved here in the early 90s, I can no longer recognize certain parts of US as they’ve completely degraded (in terms of quality of life) at an exponential rate. My general observation is that it’s mainly been wealthy urban cities with ultra liberal policies which in-turn directly affect the local middle class…causing them to flee out to suburbs if not another state.

wolverine87612• 3 years ago

The left-left argued for free iphones for everybody.

A little implausible?

Work in some high-crime zone like SF,NYC etc, accumulate capital.

People love living in these cities, as real estate prices show. It's not 'paying dues'; those are much more preferred than small towns, as those real estate prices show. You of course are free to prefer whatever you like.

dang19• 3 years ago

I've detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35454781 and moved it to the top level (just for technical reasons - the first page of the thread is currently too comment-heavy).

hnburnsy4• 3 years ago

Hedge fund Citadel decided to leave Chicago due to employee safety issues. Wonder if this will prompt similar responses in SF.

https://nypost.com/2022/09/21/ken-griffins-citadel-left-chic...

artsytrashcan12• 3 years ago

That was the company line. Ken Griffin aiming for a cabinet post with DeSantis so that he can divest without paying capital gains taxes is also a likely factor.

https://youtu.be/kiMTRQXBol0?t=4754

peanuty14• 3 years ago

The company line was that multiple employees has been mugged on their way to work.

hnburnsy4• 3 years ago

Ken Griffin on Citadel leaving Chicago for Miami..."In April, Griffin expanded on the crime issue in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. “If people aren’t safe here, they’re not going to live here,” he said. “I’ve had multiple colleagues mugged at gunpoint. I’ve had a colleague stabbed on the way to work. Countless issues of burglary. I mean, that’s a really difficult backdrop with which to draw talent to your city from.”

skrtskrt• 3 years ago

Ken Griffin left Chicago because he wasn't able to get his little conservative candidates to win elections with all the money he was pumping in, and he didn't want to pay Illinois taxes anymore.

Chicago now is probably safer than it ever has been.

He lived in a giant half-block-long mansion a short ride from downtown, and his employees were paid well enough to never touch public transit if they wanted.

It was a transparently BS political play that everyone in Chicago saw through and rightfully ridiculed. Those quotes are designed for people who only know Chicago through right wing media like the Wall Street Journal.

peanuty14• 3 years ago

If it's as safe as you say, I wonder why so many people refer to it as "Chiraq".

hnburnsy4• 3 years ago

From the McDonalds CEO about Chicago crime via CNN...

https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/15/business/mcdonalds-ceo-chicag...

"For McDonald’s, though, the issue isn’t just about conditions in stores — it’s also about recruiting leaders to the company’s headquarters and convincing corporate workers to return to the office,” the CEO said.

“It’s more difficult today for me to convince a promising McDonald’s executive to relocate to Chicago from one of our other offices than it was just a few years ago,” he said. “It’s more difficult for me to recruit a new employee to McDonald’s, to join us in Chicago than it was in the past.”

And when it comes to returning to the office, he said, “one of the things that I hear from our employees [is] … ‘I’m not sure it’s safe to come downtown.’”

gsibble3• 3 years ago

Bob was a good friend, tried to hire me numerous tries at Square, and was my next door neighbor for 3 years. I knew him well and spent a lot of time with him. He will be dearly missed.

I have been told from very well placed sources in the US Intelligence community this is probably a hit.

That being said, I left San Francisco in 2018 because I was worried I would eventually become the random murder that would finally wake up the tech world to what an absolute crime ridden shithole San Francisco is. Don't quote statistics at me. I had numerous police officer friends who told me the statistics are all fake since they purposefully don't report over 50% of the crime in order to keep the city looking halfway decent since so much of it depends upon tourist revenue.

I tried for years to tell my friends the city needed to take the crime problem more seriously and the response I always got was dismissal or that "it's no worse than any other major city."

Well, I live in another major city now and I can tell you with great certainty, SF is much, much, much worse.

And now a good friend is fucking dead.

Fuck San Francisco.

hn_throwaway_993• 3 years ago

My condolences for your loss.

Simultaneously, I don't understand your post. The second paragraph states "I have been told from very well placed sources in the US Intelligence community this is probably a hit." But then the rest of your post rails against the SF crime problem in general, finishing with "And now a good friend is fucking dead." Starting off by saying it was likely a hit would appear to indicate that SF's general crime problems (as bad as they may be) are largely irrelevant to this particular case.

SecretDreams• 3 years ago

To be fair, it's probably easier to organize a hit in a city where murder and crime are somewhat regular occurrences. Not that I am saying this was a hit.

pphysch• 3 years ago

I have been told from very well placed sources in the US Intelligence community this is probably a hit.

Targeted hits and random street crime are quite different, no?

aww_dang• 3 years ago

If we accept this framing, we might speculate further by imagining the "random street crime" part is either a cover-up or the murderer intended it to look like, "random street crime".

A bit too morbid to speculate on for my taste, but I hope this helps to explain.

greenflame• 3 years ago

What evidence indicates that it was a hit?

jytechdevops2• 3 years ago

I have been told from very well placed sources in the US Intelligence community this is probably a hit

do you realize how specifically you have to know the right person for an individual in the intel community to even remotely come close to knowing anything similar to this? not only are there over 100,000 that technically "work" in the intel community. 95% of those are not even in operations. even 5% of those in the field, 90% of those are working in intel related to external sources.

so what is that, we're down to the last .5% of individual who happen to work in operations, who happen to work on foreign/domestic actors within US who happen to focus in SF? yes, focus in SF, because people in the field don't have intel on what neighboring fields are doing unless they are "read-on." that's what sensitive comparmentalized information means--that you don't have any access unless you're directly involved with supporting that specific operation.

it's very highly likely that you're with some dweeb that works some support role, probably not even intel related. I can't even begin to tell you how many incompetent people work in this arena and how much even love to exaggerate and that they're part of something 'important'

pcthrowaway6• 3 years ago

I imagine even if the person doesn't know the specifics of the case, they can take a look at the police report and make a professional assessment on whether it was a random attack or something else. It's also possible the phrasing resulted in a miscommunication between the "intelligence professional" and the person upthread (they could have said something like "it wasn't random", and Bob's grieving friend referred to that as a hit)

In almost every random stabbing, the person doing it is arrested, no? To be clear, I'm talking about random, unplanned, and unmotivated stabbings, not premeditated robberies and other similar crimes.

throwaway2929395• 3 years ago

Not saying you're wrong to be doubtful, but I would imagine being connected in the same locality would get you closer to "the right person"

gsibble3• 3 years ago

Forget I said anything. I made it up.

quickthrower2• 3 years ago

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/grapevine

biggoodwolf3• 3 years ago

If you knew the kind of people that are my friend's neighbors. Basically you have the 0.01% of a country there, if you know people you know people, information reaches them way faster.

ptero3• 3 years ago

I have been told from very well placed sources in the US Intelligence community this is probably a hit.

I generally agree with the rest of your post that SF has become a crime-ridden hellhole, but how do they know so quickly? Are they omniscient? Did they have Bob under a scope (if so, why did they not interfere)?

If they really had Bob under a scope for some active intel interaction and some well placed source in the US intel community started talking about this outside (no matter to how close a friend), that someone is going to lose his access, his tongue or his head very quickly. And knows it.

blog0r3• 3 years ago

all powerful people are potential targets of assassination. if someone said “shinzo abe was assasinated”, would you respond “theres no way that could happen because no one could have confirmed that unless an intel insider was talking about it, and then that insider would lose their access really quick!!” i mean my god

Jalad• 3 years ago

I have been told from very well placed sources in the US Intelligence community this is probably a hit.

As soon as I saw this thread I also thought that this could be a possibility

roolah3• 3 years ago

Fuck San Francisco.

Glad you are gone.

graderjs10• 3 years ago

Yes, it is a tragedy. On The investigation side does anyone have any actual details of how this played out?

For instance, was Bob Lee possibly at a friends apartment party or a late dinner and drinks and then he’s about to get into his car near that park on the 300 block of Main Street and then thought “oh I need to get some cash for tomorrow”, so he just cut across the park to the Charles Schwab. Someone spotted him and then when he came back towards his car they ended his journey for the paper his wallet?

I have not read any details, but the location where it happened that’s a possibility. When i heard about it at first i thought maybe it had something to do with MobileCoin… maybe someone lost a lot of money or was afraid to lose market share. I haven’t read anything, but i would love to know more details.

Also where in the body was he stabbed?

edit: some more specific details in this article https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/crime/cash...

subsubzero• 3 years ago

Its a real bummer with SF, but the problems are totally self inflicted. If the politics were of a different breed I could see it being one of the best cities to live in the US, let alone the world. Having worked there for close to a decade the stuff I have seen was really depressing. I visited my cousin who works at Ouster nearby for lunch one day and was wondering what all these white casings were littering the ground, he said they were from junkie's needles. While on our walk a man was screaming inside a car with all the windows smashed in, and there were huge piles of shit due to junkies "unloading" on the sidewalk.

I went to the local walgreens in SF and was trying to buy a tube of toothpaste, apparently the theft is so bad I had to have a person who works there open the case, and while I was waiting in line to buy it a homeless person ran out with merchandise.

There are thousands and thousands of similar stories from others but until residents in SF start voting different I see things getting even worse than they are now. I know that may be hard to believe but we have been experiencing a boom economy, once that changes and things go south expect crime to surge to levels unimaginable.

themitigating8• 3 years ago

How do you know the politics of the city are the cause of the crime?

infamouscow• 3 years ago

Confusing politics and policy is a tell-tale sign of political ideology failing at the most basic and fundamental level.

artsytrashcan12• 3 years ago

I will fill in the vagueness of your "vote different" statement with specifics of my own: progressive, redistributive policies that radically reduce inequality and that gives a controlling portion of the influence that currently sits with capital owners to the general public. Tax rich people, use the money to steamroll their NIMBYism, and build dense housing and public infrastructure that supports a healthy and sustainable economy, in opposition to the status quo which incentivizes people to steal and behave antisocially because there is no hope of "making it." This does indeed involve kicking much of the moderate Democratic establishment out.

alex_sf10• 3 years ago

"What if we took money from the people that have provably used it to create more value and instead gave it to drug addicts who shit on the sidewalk?

I know SF already spends 100k/yr per homeless resident, but we really need to push that up."

This whole line of thought is absurd, you're in a bubble.

pas2• 3 years ago

Law enforcement is underfunded (compared to the prevalence of crime) and mismanaged (low standards, low accountability, etc).

Even if you solve housing (NIMBYism, slow permitting process, low-density zoning) crime won't solve itself. (Because organized crime fits in its niche, and doesn't want to give it up. And it'd require changes of federal law to move it.)

kortilla5• 3 years ago

Care to provide an example of where this policy has worked?

nathanvanfleet• 3 years ago

"Ugh it's the woke"

Convolutional3• 3 years ago

until residents in SF start voting different

The author here confesses his disconnect with the majority of people in San Francisco. This assessment is correct - the author and his views are disconnected from those of the majority of working people in San Francisco.

The magnitude of the wealth disparity in San Francisco is almost hard to comprehend. Many in this thread have advocated militarizing the city, and cleaning it out of poor people so that it can be some kind of elite utopia for tech bros and VCs. The people of San Francisco do not share this view. That they do not share this view is not in my opinion (although it is) - but in the opinion of the parent poster. As those from more equitable European cities have said in this thread - Europeans don't have these kinds of problems where they live.

NeutralCrane2• 3 years ago

European nations can be even more inequitable than the US without the same issues. The Netherlands have even more wealth disparity, and is much safer without these kinds of problems. I have no doubt wealth inequality can exacerbate the issue, but I don’t think it’s the cause. It’s ultimately one of culture, and American culture is violent and borderline sociopathic, certainly more so than that of many of the European and Asian nations people point to as examples to emulate. Those countries also don’t have issues prosecuting people who commit crime for fear of being prejudicial.

cashsterling• 3 years ago

The magnitude of wealth disparity is high throughout the country... it is not just the Bay Area. High wealth disparity doesn't justify, nor should it explain violent crime, or any crime for that matter.

Umm... European cities do have high wealth disparity. Checkout an ethnic ghetto the next time you're in Manchester or Paris, for example... there are areas of these cities that get scary AF after dark.

Homelessness is not a crime... but the homeless and drug addicted commit a lot of crimes. And they (particularly the drug addicted) frequently have very little to lose and very severe motivators to rob, mug, etc. As others have said, not policing crime is recipe for disaster, chaos, and tragedy. And it is a human tragedy: for the people who are suffering homelessness, drug addiction; the people within those domains who are victims of violent crime, and for society at large.

A lot of homeless people in CA were not born in CA... and a lot of them didn't hit the street in CA... they migrated to the west coast. Drug addicted homeless people flock to SF and LA because (1) the weather is better than many places in the country, (2) the extremely lax policing, (3) availability of drugs, and (4) the social support system: food, shelter, clothes, money. Indulging depravity is not a solution.

SF needs to double/triple police presence, prosecute crime, and significantly increase drug and mental health services.

I was born in SF, lived there off and on for many years, and have family who still live in the Bay Area... parts of SF are just disgusting now (human feces and trash all over place)... parts of Oakland and Berkeley are no better. Parts of Oakland have so much broken safety glass on the street it's a glass/gravel road.

I used walk around SF late at night as little as 10 years ago; now, there are so many places in SF that I would not walk around in after dark unless I had no other choice. This is coming from a white dude who used to play basketball at playgrounds in South Central LA on saturday nights in the late 90's (because the pick-up basketball was that good).

Until you live somewhere else, you may not understand just how bad and crazy the situation in SF, Oakland, Berkeley, Los Angeles really is. Where I live now, I can leave thousands of dollars of stuff in my car in pain sight and nothing gets stolen... ever. My neighbors' kids leave their bikes on their front lawn overnight and they are still there days later.

I once saw a person break into a Telsa on Piedmont Ave. in Oakland at 2pm on Saturday in front of about 50 people to snatch a backpack. WTF?

ejb999• 3 years ago

nobody is advocating getting rid of poor people - the chief complaint is about crime going unpunished, and even rewarded.

Lots of places have poverty, not all of them have the level of crime that SF has

dang19• 3 years ago

hintymad5• 3 years ago

I don't see what's wrong with SF. /sarcasm

SF is the people's choice, no? The people in SF elected DAs who release booked violent criminals right away, multiple times. The people in SF elected politicians who told us, repeatedly and publicly, that looting is a way for people to express their anger or looters were hungry, and violent criminals are victims and questioning their policies are homophobic and racism. The people in SF elected politicians who could stand up projects in the name of helping homeless at cost of more than $100K per homeless person per year. That's $100K equivalent of after-tax income of a normal fucking American! The people in SF elected school board members who dumbed down curriculums. The people in SF painted "kill techies" on streets of SF and the people cheered it.

And most important of all, per the comments here, SF is fine and violent crimes are just the right's wild accusation.

So, what's wrong again?

micromacrofoot6• 3 years ago

Are you not connecting the dots here at all? You think SF would have headed in this direction if it wasn't heavily gentrified by enormous SF salaries and subsequent nimbyism?

It's the same gentrification -> disparity -> flight -> neglect cycle that's happened to lesser degrees elsewhere. This is unique only in its severity.

nashashmi2• 3 years ago

The government gets happy when rich people move in. The people are happy when rich people move out.

We seriously don't need rich people near us. They have too many whines and gripes and are too resourceful to not stay. I say that as a (mildly) Rich person.

But when a native sees the town go down, the native doesn't just leave. They still stay.

colpabar3• 3 years ago

I think the point was that SF is the way it is because of the people who live in SF, which includes the people making those enormous salaries.

keneda75• 3 years ago

I think you may be the one missing the dots. The comment you responded to is pointing out that cycle you list (gentrification -> disparity -> flight -> neglect) is a direct result of the residents actions. They are the ones that elect the politicians and vote on propositions. The residents made a choice to go the route they did. What you see is a direct result of the residents' choices.

I live within a couple hours of SF and I got to say I 100% agree with the person you responded too. The residents of SF caused the mess they are in.

CottonMcKnight• 3 years ago

We can have empathy for sociopaths and psychopaths, and still want them separated from the rest of society.

We can try to understand and address the socioeconomic causes of crime, while also aggressively deterring crime and punishing criminals.

We can recognize that the police are over-militarized and under-trained and burdened with too many responsibilities, while also recognizing that they face a population that is increasingly armed to the teeth and hostile due to a social media outrage machine.

We can have a sane immigration policy and protect our borders while recognizing that immigrants are vital to the economy and having empathy for refugees or people simply fleeing violence, and without separating children from their parents or locking them in cages.

hintymad5• 3 years ago

Not sure why you're downvoted, but I agree with everything you said. Whether the left is doing what you implied, though, is a different discussion.

uejfiweun8• 3 years ago

Honestly this city is a pathetic embarrassment to the United States. The most powerful, richest country in the world, and our second most expensive city is a dilapidated unsafe shithole where our societal leaders get murdered on 1-day business trips. I’ve been on the fence about moving up to SF for a year but I think this might seal the deal to keep me living in South Bay. Shame on people who continue to work their brains into overtime trying to justify the city’s policies as they currently exist.

voz_• 3 years ago

Awful city. Left after 20 years and have not looked back.

SaintSeiya84• 3 years ago

What a coincidence just when Jack Dorsey was being investigated for Square and Cash App being a shady money laundry machine

PuppyTailWags2• 3 years ago

Warning: That thread has mostly devolved into discussing crime, totally ignoring Bob Lee.

dang19• 3 years ago

I agree, but as this comment is not actually about Bob Lee either, I'm going to have to move it back to the other thread.

(It was originally a reply to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35457507.)

PuppyTailWags2• 3 years ago

Appreciated! I'd delete it if I could since you pointed it out, but I can't, so I appreciate the move. :)

huevosabio2• 3 years ago

I come from Ciudad Juarez. Between 2008-2011, the city was the murder capital in the world and basically unlivable.

My brother and I were no longer living there because we were in college. My parents decided to send my sister, then starting highschool, to a city in central Mexico with friends of the family to avoid having her grow up in what was a life and death environment. My parents stayed.

Mexicans speak a lot about cartel wars and the violence it comes with. What is not often mentioned is that what _really_ kills the city and society is the unorganized crime that pops up when laws are not applied.

The cartel wars laid bare that the police was not going to prosecute anything in fear of retaliation. This opened the door to anyone to commit any sort of crime. Carjacking was increasingly common. My uncle fled one such attempt and miraculously escaped to the US unharmed but with his truck showered with bullets. My mother saw a guy getting shot in the streets just because of road rage. Friends had their parents killed or kidnapped.

Every crime that goes unprosecuted is an invitation for a repeat crime. This is as true in Juarez as it is in San Francisco.

The most basic definition and purpose of the state is to hold the monopoly of violence. It must jealously protect this. The alternative is unsustainable anarchy followed by someone else filling that void.

San Francisco has been ceding its monopoly of violence for years if not decades.

johntiger1• 3 years ago

Thank you for sharing your personal perspective. As a fellow immigrant, have nothing to say except that I totally agree. Many of us come from countries with less than great rule of law, and the entire reason me and my parents came here is for a better life where laws are fairly and equally enforced. That means that if you work hard - you get to enjoy the fruits of your labor.

AverageDude7• 3 years ago

That sums up so well. Saving this.

atonse• 3 years ago

As an immigrant I also agree with this. I think it is mainly immigrants that appreciate how much better things are in the US. Sure they aren’t perfect but law enforcement had m worked extremely well here compared to many of the countries we’ve come From. And in chasing some form of utopian perfection we have thrown off the balance of something that worked quite well in favor of declining standards and opened the door to more crime, which affects the same people we were trying to protect in the first place.

sizzle2• 3 years ago

Broken windows theory

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory

AverageDude7• 3 years ago

They applied that in my suburb and media kept comparing it with racism. They stopped doing that from last year and car jacking and other violent crime is on the rise again. I could never understand how “Broken Window” is racist? And I am a minority.

Whatever the fix for institutional racism is need not be contradictory to Broken Window. They can work together.

komali221• 3 years ago

Is probably a fallacy of correlation being tied to causation.

The policy targeted people in areas with a significant amount of physical disorder and there appeared to be a causal relationship between the adoption of broken windows policing and the decrease in crime rate. Sridhar, however, discusses other trends (such as New York City's economic boom in the late 1990s) that created a "perfect storm" that contributed to the decrease of crime rate much more significantly than the application of the broken windows policy. Sridhar also compares this decrease of crime rate with other major cities that adopted other various policies and determined that the broken windows policy is not as effective.
In a 2007 study called "Reefer Madness" in the journal Criminology and Public Policy, Harcourt and Ludwig found further evidence confirming that mean reversion fully explained the changes in crime rates in the different precincts in New York in the 1990s.[38] Further alternative explanations that have been put forward include the waning of the crack epidemic,[39] unrelated growth in the prison population by the Rockefeller drug laws,[39] and that the number of males from 16 to 24 was dropping regardless of the shape of the US population pyramid.

As always, the wikipedia article is a good place to start to look into further sources: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory

It's time to let "broken window theory," and bloodthirsty, punitive "justice" strategies, die.

colpabar3• 3 years ago

So what would you say to the argument that the police are already too violent, and that too many people already get put in jail, especially minorities? That is the motivation behind the progressive policies of not prosecuting criminals. Every person not prosecuted is one less crime statistic; bonus points if that person-kept-out-of-jail is a minority.

I want to be absolutely clear - I am in no way suggesting minorities are genetically inclined to be criminals or asking you to speak for all minorities or anything like that. I'm just curious, given your views and your background, what you think when you hear politicians claim that they are fighting inequality by not prosecuting criminals.

huevosabio2• 3 years ago

I think the police is very violent in the US in big part because of training but also because how prevalent guns are. We certainly need better accountability and better training.

I still think we need more cops. We lag behind Europe in cops per capita, and have higher crime rates.

The idea that we should stop prosecuting crimes because it affects one type of citizen or another is ridiculous for a ton of reasons, but specially because of this: minorities are more likely to be in the receiving end of a crime.

We can do both invest in the social aspect to level the playing field and prosecute crime wherever it manifests.

BurningFrog2• 3 years ago

I'd say that bad policing is a big problem, but it is a MUCH smaller problem than no policing.

s1artibartfast8• 3 years ago

I would say that those are not reasons to embrace a lawless society.

If the laws are bad, fix them. If the police are too brutal, curtail them.

This is the only path towards with a healthy society. This isn't always easy, and sometimes it seems impossible. However, sanctioning lawlessness and giving up on reform is no solution. It is a race to the bottom, and hurts minorities even more. If you think building towards equality is hard, imagine how much harder it is when theft, rape, and murder is rampant in your community.

This is represented in the opinions and surveys of minority communities. People want less bias and police brutality, but they also want more police on the streets and more enforcement of laws.

djfobbz3• 3 years ago

Not sure why you’re getting downvoted. I’m a minority and an immigrant and I agree with you.

anigbrowl7• 3 years ago

San Francisco has been ceding its monopoly of violence for years if not decades.

Trends suggest otherwise: https://www.ppic.org/publication/crime-trends-in-california/

The big peak in violent crime in the 1990s is the crack epidemic. I personally saw driveby shooting attacks and personal murders in broad daylight; 24th street (and the Mission in general) used to be considered a no-go area by folk in better-off neighborhoods.

It seems to me that the basic problem in SF is wealth disparity. The city is a great place to make money if you are in the finance or tech industries and have decent social skills. But the wealth that stays in SF tends to build upward rather than lift up less well off neighborhoods. Not only is housing expensive, community space for weird stores/art galleries/music events is also at a premium, which severely limits avenues for grey market enterprise and social mixing/mobility. The unorganized crime exists because regular jobs are not that profitable and there's a large and deliberately-created (at the federal level) underclass of undocumented people with no straightforward path to legal workforce participation.

SF was a remarkably different city prior to 9-11, which ushered in a securocratic mindset in many respects. A simple but telling example is that nearly BART stations used to have toilets, though as you might expect some of them were nasty. After 9-11, these were closed in the name of security, a 'temporary' situation which has persisted for over 20 years. Concession stands like news/candy/flower vendors gradually vanished too, along with buskers. Subway stations stopped being part of the city's social life in favor of pure transit functionality. Likewise bus stops now have all sorts of built-in tech to tell you when the next bus is arriving in 20 different languages, but the bus shelters are deliberately constructed not to provide any shelter from the elements, or even make it easy to sit down.

The state (qua city government) very much maintains its monopoly on violence; police budgets have gone up rather than down. It's just selectively enforced because the police are themselves a political constituency who compete with other agencies for funding.

https://abc7news.com/sfpd-budget-defund-the-police-departmen...

arcticbull• 3 years ago

I'd be careful with any crime stats other than like, murder stats. The problem is that people are less likely to report crimes if they don't think they're going to be prosecuted. There's many anecdotes of people asking for police help and they just tell them not to bother.

In April [2022], [...] the dept issued 338 tickets for traffic violations. By comparison, in April 2014, the year Vision Zero began, the department issued 11,612 tickets.

Does that mean nobody violates traffic laws in SF anymore? Of course not. But if the tickets aren't issued they're not rolled up into stats. Same with all sorts of violent and property crime.

When I lived in the mid-mission a few years ago I had to call in a shooting that happened outside my bedroom window. There were a ton of violent altercations between pimps and prostitutes that were just straight-up ignored. And 24th St became an open-air Walgreens.

The letter highlighted alarming data backing up many residents’ concerns that police have thrown up their hands. For example, last year the Department of Police Accountability opened 595 cases into alleged police wrongdoing; the largest share by far, 42.6%, related to “neglect of duty.” That percentage has ticked up steadily since 2016, when neglect of duty made up 32% of complaints. [1]

[edit] Your own source seems to back that up. Your source is for all of California, not SF. And one of the big sub-headings is "crime rates vary dramatically by region and category" and specifically calls out SF as having an outsized quantity of property crime.

The state’s highest rate of violent crime was in the San Joaquin Valley, which had 640 violent incidents per 100,000 residents. The highest rate of property crime was in the San Francisco Bay Area, at 2,718 per 100,000 residents.

[1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/bayarea/heatherknight/article...

beambot2• 3 years ago

But the wealth that stays in SF tends to build upward rather than lift up less well off neighborhoods.

How do you square this statement with gentrification? Feels like a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation...

JPKab6• 3 years ago

It seems to me that the basic problem in SF is wealth disparity.

Really?

police budgets have gone up rather than down.

And what do you think the police are supposed to do when the prosecutions by the DA fall off a cliff? Don't you think that maybe, just maybe, if the number of cops remains unchanged, but the percentage of criminals they detain being arraigned/charged/arrested drops, that maybe, just maybe, crime will go up?

The cognitive dissonance is just unbelievable here.

sammalloy2• 3 years ago

The big peak in violent crime in the 1990s is the crack epidemic. I personally saw driveby shooting attacks and personal murders in broad daylight; 24th street (and the Mission in general) used to be considered a no-go area by folk in better-off neighborhoods.

You have your dates and anecdotes off. The crack epidemic was in the 1980s, not the 1990s. There was, however, always a serious heroin trade in that area. After the gang truce in 1992, the Mission was incredibly safe and a great place to live. Going to the bars after work and spilling out into the streets after 2 am was a safe and peaceful affair. Further, a lot of the property crime that people are complaining about has nothing to do with locals; it was perpetrated by organized gangs from outside the city. This is still true today and several investigative news articles on this phenomenon have been published recently. The Mission was never a "no go" area by people who lived in the city. It was an incredibly vibrant place to live and work, with great bars, restaurants, stores, and culture. In many ways, the Mission is the heart of San Francisco given its centralized location and history. For anyone to describe it as a no go area reveals that they never lived there and know nothing about it. That all changed when the tech bros moved out from the Midwest and East coast and chased all the artists out of the city. These people who were forced out were the people who actually cared about their communities and helped each other out and were the spirit and life blood of what the city was in its heart and soul. Now the new blood doesn’t like the new city they helped create, but of course, it’s always someone else’s fault.

WillPostForFood• 3 years ago

It seems to me that the basic problem in SF is wealth disparity.

You own data suggests otherwise

https://www.ppic.org/publication/crime-trends-in-california/

The peak in violent crime was the 90s. The peak of property crime was 80s, and there were 40 years of crime decline at the exact same time wealth disparity was growing. What changed recently was the new lax attitude on crime, decarceration, and hated towards the police.

Truth is, San Francisco did not follow the pattern of the rest of CA and saw rising murders through the 2000's. It finally declined in 2009 after a huge federal and local crackdown on gangs and MS13 in San Francisco.

nyarlathotep_• 3 years ago

It seems to me that the basic problem in SF is wealth disparity.

Indeed, I hate when wealth disparity breaks into my car.

AviationAtom• 3 years ago

What boggled my mind about Mexico is how some states are EXCEPTIONALLY safe, while others are EXCEPTIONALLY dangerous. Most folks tend to presume all of Mexico is dangerous.

JPKab6• 3 years ago

I'm American born, but grew up in a high crime area. Something that most Americans who grew up in very safe environments don't understand is that once order begins to decay, it accelerates exponentially. Growing up in highly orderly, safe environments, they completely take order for granted. This leads to them supporting policies that prioritize other things far above order, which basically describes San Francisco's childish, utopian politics for the last 20 years. The SF City Council sounds like a bunch of stoners in Che Guevara t-shirts hanging out in a dorm-room, instead of thoughtful policy makers.

I lived in SF for a year (in Nob Hill) in my early 20s living with my then GF, back in 2002-2003. It was a beautiful, safe, just chill place then. It's disgusting now. I was there in 2019, and one of the things that jumped out at me was how I constantly smelled piss and a big portion of the city looked the way only the Tenderloin used to. And yes, it's the fault of the SF politicians.

wolverine87612• 3 years ago

Do you have an objective way to tie to SF politicians? What about SF voters?

Growing up in highly orderly, safe environments, they completely take order for granted.

Do you have evidence for their background and reasoning?

Much of 'order' is often abusing politically vulnerable people, which provides 'order' for the wealthy white population, but not for others.

maratbn8• 3 years ago

> The most basic definition and purpose of the state is to hold the monopoly of violence. It must jealously protect this. The alternative is unsustainable anarchy followed by someone else filling that void.

Can we re-phrase "monopoly of violence" to maintaining the rule of law. The government has an obligation to maintain the rule of law. Monopoly on violence by itself does not provide real legitimacy.

midoridensha5• 3 years ago

You can't maintain a rule of law without the state having a monopoly on violence. Violence is the only way to enforce law.

graderjs10• 3 years ago

Broken windows policing, right?

mola• 3 years ago

For me it's weird you think that the origin of crime is lack of order. I mean that's the last step in a deteriorating society, but the actual reason comes much before. It's an unfairness a lack of common narrative of well being. And most of all it's from education being neglected and families being broken. The order part you get at the end, after the rot festers.

hollerith• 3 years ago

A person can reasonably disagree with the comment you are replying to, but is not weird: it is a very common opinion that you've probably seen or heard many times.

dang19• 3 years ago

YeBanKo• 3 years ago

One thing that I want to add, is how much harder it is to live in such environment. Every door needs to be reinforced, bars on windows are more common, expensive locks in residential buildings. Someone stranded on the side of the road, but you don’t want to take chances trying to help. Every transaction is much more difficult and expensive.

ajju• 3 years ago

Sorry to hear about Bob. We must do better as a city and a community to prevent this kind of tragic and senseless loss.

billconan• 3 years ago

I don't feel safe at all living in the Bay Area. Just the day before yesterday, I heard that a colleague, who works from home, had his house broken into and robbed, even though it happened during the daytime and while he was home."

tlear• 3 years ago

He was a really interesting, good guy. Getting stabbed by some filth.

Fucking shithole of a city. In the last 10 years every time I am there I can't help but wonder HOW??? How can such rich city with so much potential be turning into this?? I grew up in east Europe, in general few places in US trigger my prep for fight or flight.. SF you are having a nice conversation, walk wrong way 50meters and suddenly my heart goes to 170bpm. I started carrying a collapsible baton last time I had to stay there for business. SF is going full Detroit, 100% self inflicted.

mhardcastle• 3 years ago

If you use that baton, or even if you are seen with it by the wrong person, there is a good chance that you will be charged with a crime. Look up penal codes 12020 and 22210, possession of a club or baton in California is not legal.

(To say nothing of the desirability of such a law - just as a FYI)

JumpinJack_Cash• 3 years ago

What people fail to mention is that SF is also the capital of white collar crime, not just regular crime.

When bravado is in the air and the climate is a free for all it permeates the whole city, not just some pocket demographics.

robd003• 3 years ago

When will the people of San Francisco wake up and realize that their soft-on-crime approach is wrong?

If SF took crime seriously and actually hunted down criminals and put them in jail then normal citizens could live normal lives.

Scubabear68• 3 years ago

NYTimes picked it up as breaking news:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/05/technology/cash-app-found...

julienchastang• 3 years ago

Also WSJ: https://www.wsj.com/articles/cash-app-founder-bob-lee-fatall...

KingOfCoders• 3 years ago

Also The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/apr/05/bob-lee-cash...

rabuse7• 3 years ago

The residents of San Francisco are going to start having to wear chainmail soon to just go grocery shopping.

sedatk• 3 years ago

The greatest deterrent for crime is the person's belief that they would be caught[1]. No amount of punishment deters people, not even the death penalty, from committing crime more than being certain that they would be prosecuted.

[1] https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/247350.pdf

kspacewalk2• 3 years ago

Very sad to see something like this happen. But.

Cash App founder, a rich 42 year old father of 2, found dead at 2:35 AM, one week after an explosive report accusing his startup of being extensively used for crime and fraud[0].

This is odd.

[0] https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-news-today-03-...

kelp2• 3 years ago

Whistleblower with 9 year old information? He left Square in 2014...

flappyeagle2• 3 years ago

There are enough comments on here that I am probably not adding much new, but I lived in SF for 10 years until recently. When I arrived (from New York City) I thought — hey, it's a bit sketchy but not so bad overall. I think it got progressively worse every year.

I have no idea what policy changes would help, but it's the only place I've ever been where I saw crime being committed in broad daylight. It's the only place where leaving anything within sight in a parked car results in a break-in. A fucking bag of potato chips once.

There are nice parts; the higher your physical elevation, the less chance of your being affected by crime. Literally people living their ivory towers watching their city burn.

At the end of the day, it's a democracy. The voters get what they deserve. Remote work is here — the tax base is on its way out, or retreating to high ground.

blastro• 3 years ago

I used to live near the top of Buena Vista. The way the chaos of Haight, Castro, Mission neighborhoods would fade away as I climbed the hill towards my place was always a poignant experience. Calm and serene at the top, carnage below.

Pxtl3• 3 years ago

Having seen Toronto spiraling into the same mayhem of random vagrant street violence in the same moment when rents exploded, I'm firmly with the housing advocates on this:

People think mental health causes homelessness, but it looks increasingly like it's the other way around -- cities with bad housing crises and insufficient shelter systems (NYC is notable for having an excellent shelter system compared to its peers) end up with people who hit rock bottom and become destructive out on the street when they'd be trying to get their lives together if they had a place to live.

If people can't grapple with their demons in the privacy of their own homes, they will grapple with them on the subway and we'll all be collateral damage.

peanuty14• 3 years ago

Toronto's justice system has also become much more lenient to criminals in the last 8 years or so.

graderjs10• 3 years ago

I think that’s a plausible theory and good analysis. I also think another factor is crime goes where the supply is.

levzettelin5• 3 years ago

I think the problem is when people are incapable of grappling with their demons even in the privacy of their own homes. If given a place to stay, many people _choose_ to use it for non-productive things. Surely, exploding housing prices make things worse, but it's also easy enough to see why productive members of society want to distance themselves from this destructive behavior. After all, even the excellent shelter that you claim for NYC doesn't really seem to have resulted in paradise.

ashwagary6• 3 years ago

It's the only place where leaving anything within sight in a parked car results in a break-in. A fucking bag of potato chips once.

Another signal that tremendous wealth inequality in a confined region is a microcosm of what's at the root of similar outcomes around the US?

Many in the comments seem to blame local politics/policies when it's clear the major contributing factors are inflation, economic downturns, mass layoffs, etc... these have been a long time coming, were never evenly geographically distributed, and aren't created or solvable at the local political level.

The relatively minor recent attempts at criminal justice reform being used as the scapegoat for these outcomes is a distraction at best.

simonswords82• 3 years ago

I know nothing about the guy but nobody should die in a street like that. Tragic. I hope they find and hold person/people responsible accountable. His family must be in bits.

amai• 3 years ago

Time to introduce a wealth tax.

yieldcrv2• 3 years ago

Would anybody be willing to entertain the idea that he was a whistleblower to the Hindenburg short seller report against Square/Block that indicts CashApp, or that there is any link?

Something aside from “random degeneracy and vagrancy in SF with no leads”?

kelp2• 3 years ago

He left Square in 2014... 9 years is some pretty stale information. This makes no sense.

yieldcrv2• 3 years ago

Maybe he’s not it

But two weeks after the report he gets hit? Out of all possible people

Well just posting for posterity, not something I have a strong opinion about

“no” leads seems a bit of a stretch when there are glaringly obvious things to investigate and at least definitely rule out

xvector• 3 years ago

I'm so sick of crime in the Bay. We need to be way tougher on crime. Immediate life sentences without parole for murder, ending catch+release for property theft.

The mere thought of stealing, or attacking a stranger, or dealing drugs illegally, must become so unappetizing that they simply refuse to do it even when they have no other options.

a-user-you-like4• 3 years ago

Capital punishment for murder. You take a life, yours is gone. On top of justice, you don’t stick the taxpayer with lifelong care of a murderer.

burnte2• 3 years ago

Plus how cruel is it to stick a human in a box for 60 years? Rapists and murderers are dangerous animals, and we put dangerous animals down.

dingosity7• 3 years ago

meh. lotsa people have religious objections to this concept.

tablespoon4• 3 years ago

Capital punishment for murder. You take a life, yours is gone. On top of justice, you don’t stick the taxpayer with lifelong care of a murderer.

One problem with that idea is that even murder convictions are not even close to 100% accurate, so you'd end up killing lots of innocent people.

simse• 3 years ago

Few criminals consider the consequences of their actions. As crappy as it feels, harsher sentences just don't work.

havblue2• 3 years ago

Among other reasons, imprisonment is used for reasons of incapacitation, deterrence and rehabilitation. It should be fairly easy to see how light or no sentencing has compromised those goals.

threatofrain5• 3 years ago

The event that sparked all this conversation is the homicide of Bob Lee. If we're talking about the problem of car break-ins, robberies, or vandalism, that's one thing. But on the matter of homicide, SF (6.35)¹ tracks closely to the national average (7.8)².

Property crime is what substantially contributes to the image that SF is an unsafe city.

---

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...

[2] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/homicide.htm

dingosity7• 3 years ago

I think it's the fact that most of the people in the comments section here weren't alive in the 80s to have a point of reference. 6 homicides per 100,000 per year? That's high? You should have been here or NYC in the 80s.

That being said... yes... 6 homicides per 100,000 is 6 homicides per 100,000 too many.

oh_sigh3• 3 years ago

Part of the issue might be how the murders are distributed. Some cities with high murder rates have a very small segment of the population killing each other (eg drug dealers/gang members), whereas normal people go on mostly untouched save for stray bullets. Maybe SF murders are more randomly distributed among the general population?

hnbad• 3 years ago

Do you know what's a great predictor for a high crime rate? High levels of wealth inequality. Yes, the poors are more likely to turn to crime (at least the kind of crime that has officers with gun chase you around rather than the kind that requires expensive lawyers) but there's less incentive (and spite) if everyone in the neighborhood is similarly poor.

earthscienceman2• 3 years ago

Yeah. Makes total sense. That's why the wild west was crime free, because everyone feared the retributive punishments...

People don't pull out a knife then think "wait, but I'll be punished" and put the knife away. What you are proposing feels good but in no way lines up with the reality of society in a contemporary city. If you want there to be less crime you have to treat it as the social class problem it is and find ways to get people access to other ways of living, or if they're ill (mentally or otherwise) get them care and shelter.

That, or we can continue to price people out of being healthy members of our social strata. It's clearly going great in SF

dingosity7• 3 years ago

Just curious. Where are you getting your data that the wild west was crime free? (or... is this satire / sarcasm? it's hard to recognize sometimes.)

seanmcdirmid6• 3 years ago

People who want to crime do tend to avoid places where the police are more aggressive with enforcement. E.g. you don't really want to do petty property crime in Bellevue Washington when more tolerant Seattle is right across the lake.

The same problem exists for "getting care and shelter" in that the problems themselves are hardly immobile, while the solutions are expected to be provided locally.

tablespoon4• 3 years ago

> We need to be way tougher on crime. Immediate life sentences without parole for murder, ending catch+release for property theft.
If you want there to be less crime you have to treat it as the social class problem it is and find ways to get people access to other ways of living, or if they're ill (mentally or otherwise) get them care and shelter.

IMHO, you probably have to do both. There do exist people who are just antisocial, who don't have the self-control to stop themselves from committing crimes or who lack the moral framework to avoid crime if it would otherwise satisfy a goal. And even with crime was driven by "social class problems," even if you solve all those there's still the problem of transitioning from one regime to the other, and dealing with people who's habits and mindset from the old regime keep them committing crimes in the new one.

bryanlarsen• 3 years ago

Tougher sentences have almost a zero effect on crime. Somebody who isn't worried about a 25 year sentence for murder isn't going to worry about a life sentence.

Far more effective is to increase the chances of getting caught & prosecuted. A guaranteed 10 year sentence for murder is far more effective than a life sentence when you believe you won't get caught.

dingosity7• 3 years ago

It turns out that there's a pesky problem with our judicial system in that it requires people to be charged and then tried by a court before sentencing them to life in prison.

One difficult aspect of violent crime is that you have to have a suspect before you can bring them to trial. And it's funny because the murder clearance rate seems to match the police funding rate. And the police funding rate is on par with taxes collected nationally and locally.

So sure... you can have police investigating murders, or you can have a zero-tax libertarian utopia, but it appears that you can't have both.

notacoward4• 3 years ago

Immediate life sentences without parole for murder, ending catch+release for property theft.

Interesting that you skip right over any idea of prevention, deterrence (other than by threat of incarceration), or alleviation of the conditions that lead to criminality. "Tough on crime" is not the only way to actually reduce crime, and I posit not even the best. Would you care to elaborate on possible solutions other than the punitive?

dingosity7• 3 years ago

lol. dude provides "data" for the first part of this year and one year previous. Notes there's an increase and blames the city for Lee's murder. If you go back several years, you'll see that the recent past is about the same (around 6 murders per 100,000). Turns out that 2022 had a lower than average # of murders in the first three months of 2022. In 2007, the murder rate was twice what it was in the last several years.

So I guess Mr. Leahy is getting good use of his "Statistical Cherry Picking for Dummies" book.

Apparently murder is not a problem until a member of the rentier class is affected.

dang19• 3 years ago

Please don't post snarky flamebait or ideological battle comments to HN. We've had enough wretched flamewar about this already.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

dingosity7• 3 years ago

Your assertion is that pointing out someone cherry picked data is an ideological battle. Hmm.

headius• 3 years ago

So sad. Bob was brilliant and an all-around nice guy. He gave the JRuby team a tour of the Square offices when they were just getting started and advocated for our use there while he was CTO. What a tragic loss.

godzillabrennus2• 3 years ago

San Francisco is a lost cause for a generation. The political machine that controls it does not care at all about the life of the average person. They live in gated communities on private streets. They even screwed over the guy who bought the private street and started charging them tolls. https://news.yahoo.com/rich-san-francisco-residents-got-1754...

I wish a political party existed in the United States that represented my definition of "normal people". One that wasn't focused on fascism/marginalizing people who are different but also cared about middle out economics by supporting policies that deregulate, spur industry, create jobs...

dingosity7• 3 years ago

Or you could look at the data. Houston's crime rate is about 50% higher (than San Francisco.) Strangely... Chicago... that everyone talks about being "high crime" is about 50% lower.

When I was a kid, we walked 5 miles in the middle of the night to avoid being killed by rebels. So... I mean... things can always get worse. Maybe stop watching Fox News and read some data.

djfobbz3• 3 years ago

Will the Bob Lee murderer still be eligible for the $5M in reparations?

doomleika• 3 years ago

I see people excuses this as "it's part and parcel of living in a big city". No it's not, this is a West only phenomenon. Singapore is safe, The entire Japan is safe, Korea, Taiwan. I deliberately removed mainland China cities to avoid "...but authoritarian..." arguments.

Plenty of government in the world kept their citizen safe and getting murdered walking down the street is never a risk factor to those dewellers and they are way worse GDP and even wealth disparity than US.

komali221• 3 years ago

The places you mention may have higher actual wealth disparity in some cases, but they have lower economic disparity, because they all at least guarantee healthcare, among other things. Singapore even guarantees housing. The PRC allegedly guarantees all of it, but when I lived there it sure didn't look like it, I saw tons of abject poverty.

tomandrews8814• 3 years ago

In Japan you can leave your laptop at the cafe, on the table, unlocked, while you go to the bathroom.

I find it sad that in SF this is considered “amazing”. This is not amazing. This should be considered the norm.

moderntechguy• 3 years ago

Bob has his watch, wallet, and phone on him (which he used to call 911) after he was stabbed, pointing to this being a targeted hit.

junio121tva2• 3 years ago

Senci boa

junio121tva2• 3 years ago

Qro a melhor senci do ff

dial9-1• 3 years ago

he promoted the very same policies that lead to him being murdered

dang19• 3 years ago

You broke the site guidelines badly with this comment. We ban accounts that do that. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it. Note particularly the one about ideological battle.

Separately from that, you also broke the intended topic of this thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35457341), I'm going to move the post to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35448899 now.

wesapien• 3 years ago

I have such fond memories of my (work) visit in San Francisco in June 2015 during the week of the NBA Finals. I didn't know much about the city but I thought it couldn't be any worse than Manhattan.

The only time I got sketched out was when I was walking up Filmore St. near the McDonalds. Some caricature looking fella started calling me ching chong trying to mess with me. I crossed the street before crossing the light and just walked on the other side pretending that didn't hear anything (earbuds) while keeping an eye on him.

I always thought that I can go anywhere I want after growing up and living around slums in the third world at that time but every place has its own unique set of dangers.

jennastrike• 3 years ago

Where to start? I have such a special place in my heart for Bob. He was brilliant. He was a gentleman. He was kind. Shining. Thoughtful and so so very generous. On more than one occasion he was a safe place to play, a deeply heart centered friend, and always offered genuine parts of himself to our interactions. Seeing Bob was always a bright spot in my San Francisco life, even when it was dark to be there. And now, when darkness seems to have won a battle, his light will always live on in our hearts. Thank you for being such a wonderful man, Bob. I love you.

Bob Lee, former CTO of Square, has died after being stabbed in San Francisco

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