Violent crime is lower than 10 years ago, and much lower than 30 years ago.

"Domestic Violence is lower than X years ago", [let's not worry about it].

Eh, so you name drop a nasty topic and I'll look bad defending it. Cheap trick.

Do you think that people in healthy relationships should fear that outcome? Do you think people should become celibate because some percentages of relationships end up that way? The point is you are encouraging living in fear of low likelihood events.

The world is not perfect, crime and poverty exist, as do disease, many types of suffering, it's bad, but we don't need to be afraid and motivated by irrational fear.

No, you're proposing that if things are statistically demonstrably better and also low probability events, then we can look elsewhere for problems and de-emphasize resources to fight these things not warranting attention.

There are lots of things that were statistically demonstrably worse in the past and also statistically miniscule in occurrence, but I think you would get righteously clobbered if you proposed defending their current rate of occurrence as acceptable. Lots of things.

I agree with your first paragraph unironically. If we don't measure it as an important problem, it probably does not deserve disproportionate resources.

There are outliers to that. I think medical research for something like a rare disease is a good one. High cost, and by some metrics, low payout, but worthy. I don't think this recent right wing paranoia about crime is a good example. Especially since the "tough on crime" policies that people want to enact in reaction to it do not work and have a tendency to incarcerate innocent and undeserving people as collateral damage.

It's not paranoia in SF. It's gotten worse. It's affected poor and middle class working people's quality of life. It's not a clinical, detached exercise. It affects people's ability to pay their bills afford rent, mental health, etc. There is a Reason more a moderate like J Engardio won this time round. People are getting fed up.

I've spent the last 11 years in SF. It's largely paranoia. It is a funny sight, I do see people who got here more recently than I have are describing things as new, but they are old problems, I've heard the same complaints the whole time.

One small anecdote, the first year or two I got here, I felt I was being sized up for muggings a couple times. Has not happened in a long time.

What you want to be looking at is murder rates, as they are always counted the same way.

By that measure the us seems to be the most violent it’s been in 25 years, roughly equivalent to 1997.

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/murd...

Since you made duplicate claims, I'll refer to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33830274

“Measured” violent crime is lower.

Conspiracy theory. I feel unsafe, therefore all the crime stats are wrong!

Let's say x% of crimes are reported. This would mean the stats are not an accurate count. But a huge enough spike in crime, like the phantom ones I see claimed in fear mongering internet threads, would not evade some number of them being reported.

For those of us (myself included) that have had their vehicles broken into and been personally told by police "there's no point in filing a report", it sure seems like more than a conspiracy theory. It seems like a new standard for how crime is defined.

I got my home office broken into and filed a police report. Big fucking deal.

The cops will absolutely NOT say that to you in SF. They know the report is necessary for your insurance claim. They will do it for you. They will recommend it.

Your situations were not the same. One is a car where the criminals may not have taken anything of significant value (and this the police suggested futility) and presumably when they broke into your home, they took something of value where a report would be necessary to make insurance claims.

No, I do not keep lightweight valuables in my home so nothing major was stolen and the glass bill was the only thing worth putting on the insurance claim.

I would suggest to you that you don't simply guess what happens in the world due to preconceived notions and instead listen to people and ask questions.

To be fair, the rich wealthy snobs are doing plenty of criming as well. It’s unfair to label only those who commit crimes against the wealthy snobs as “criminals”. We should at least realize that the wealthy snobs are criminals as well in their own right.

Unfortunately, wealthy snobs can sustain crime --they can buy bigger houses with guards, cameras, fences and beckon the DA when needed.

It's your poor and middle class who do not have the means to deal with the crime who suffer the crime brought on by opportunistic criminals. Mundane examples are people have had their third and fourth catalytic converters stolen. It may not be a lot of money to you, but for your average worker, it's a day or two of inconvenience and a few hundred each time --money that now has to be reallocated.

I've been victim to two home burglaries when my wife and I were starting out and living in Prince George's county, Maryland. At the time I was working at DIA as a measly GS-9, which means that I was basically 2 or 3 paychecks away from being completely broke.

The few possesions we had were taken. The most unfortunate was my wife's grandmather's wedding band. It probably wouldn't have fetched more than 20 or 30 bucks, but given that it was a family heirloom from WWII-wrought Finland, the sentimental value was high.

Being white and working for the government in a predominantly minority area, I'm sure I was stereotyped as being able to handle some abuse (in fact my neighboor informed me so). Fortunately we didn't own anything of serious financial value, but having your personal space violated by petty theives is not a pleasant experience.

Totally. I remember working with friends of thieves during HS who'd say, yeah, "my friends hit the rich areas because rich people call their insurance instead of coming at you with a baseball bat".