The other thing it doesn’t take into account is that the stats are the product of:

1) Crimes that are actually reported to the police

2) The subset of the above that the police accepts a report on and chooses to tell us about

It seems obvious at first glance that those numbers are highly dependent on a bunch if things, and there’s plenty of ways the final number would get divorced from a close coupling with the “actual” real world number.

Or said a different way. Taking that as an argument has as a premise that you trust the police, which seems incompatible with other parts of the same open conversation we’re having about all this.

I think this is absolutely correct on both counts. It is obvious that people don't feel safe or David Sacks (you may recall him from what's currently happening on Twitter) wouldn't have been able to successfully fund the Boudin recall.

But we're engineers. It behooves us to step back and be rational about what the data tells us instead of deciding that data that contradicts our emotions is false.

Agreed. But analysis of data requires context, and good baselines.

And point (1) of my list is based off of not just a general feeling, but comparing it to cities who are touted as being “safe”. And their numbers are incredibly low.