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.

“Just part & parcel of living in a _big city_.”

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3801018/Terror-atta...

My town of 80k, which feels perfectly safe 99% of the time, has had >2x the per capita murder rate of NYC, and has for years.

I dare say my town is a great deal safer than your town. I wonder what the difference is.

"Part and parcel of living in a great global city is you’ve got to be prepared for these things, you’ve got to be vigilant, you’ve got to support the police doing an incredibly hard job, you got to support the security services."

https://www.aap.com.au/factcheck/what-londons-mayor-really-s...

This is a quote that I'm sure you would agree with, as would anyone. Stop spreading this misinformation.

A person is stabbed to death in public in downtown SF, and you're suggesting it was not a random attack? That it was a premeditated killing, in public, with a knife? Give me a break. This is not an isolated incident. We are absolutely sick of this in SF.

Could it be random? Sure.

Are you shying away from discussing politics whenever there is a school shooting as well?

It is always poor taste to project one’s politics into the uncertainty around a tragedy and then turn around and use the imagined facts to argue politics.

I’m less opposed to using established, non-imaginary facts.

This to me sounds like you like to talk politics when a tragedy strikes, but only if the politics is on your side.

For example, SF decaying can be argued as an established, non-imaginary fact. It's easy to hide behind "facts", 'statistics", "science" to push your political point, thinking you are infallible. Even more so, a lot of people say "it's not even politics, it's basic science" - but these are all fallacies. In the end, almost everything can be traced back to politics.

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 that has dramatically lower crime rate where these people will actually feel safe?

At least based on that data set (and it's easy to find disagreeing data sets), murders are actually below average.

But the problem is: There isn't a definitive data source. The FBIs UCR[1] is closest, but because they split by agency, it's hard to find relevant geographic data. For SF, you're looking at BART Alamenda, BART Contra Costa, SF County Highway Patrol, BART SF, SF Sheriff's office, SFPD, SF State University,Union Pacific Railroad, UCLA SF, San Mateo BART, South SF PD, Santa Clara BART. (If the US stopped encouraging everybody to play cops and robbers on their own, that'd be nice)

But even if you settle for one of them, data is only reported up to 2021, and that means graphs stop at 2020. It's almost as if there was profit in making current crime a matter of opinion instead of facts.But for the data set? Violent crime is down.

Fine, let's ask sfgov.org then: https://sfgov.org/scorecards/public-safety/violent-crime-rat...

Turns out, homicide is pretty much stable over the last decade. Same for aggravated assault.Rape is down to 2010 levels again. Robbery is down. None of the numbers are significantly up.

This might be more dangerous than other cities, but it's at current levels for a long while now.

[1] https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crim...

When you look at the statistics you see that shootings have gone up markedly.

"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."

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

Then why is the PD of every single major American city dramatically understaffed?

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.

I don't trust these numbers, or at least how meaningful they are. Vancouver officially has a similar homeless population, but on a sunny day you can go to the downtown eastside and see 8000 people who you might assume are homeless. Maybe some of them are sleeping in cars, or SROs, or squats, and don't identify as homeless. Or they're currently in jail, incarcerated, a hospital, or a mental health facility, and also don't get counted towards the number. The number is entirely determined by groups that come up with them coordinating an effort to go out over a 24 hour period and ask people if they're homeless. Whoever says yes gets added to the count.

I think the number would be more meaningful if they instead asked people about their living conditions, and came up with a number of people who fall below some basic standard of housing (possibly a combination of: >100 sq ft per person, working stove, working bathroom, working utilities)

I have friends in London Breed's cabinent and most of her choices are made in the context of her political aspirations for her next office. This means bandaids and duct tape for the city if that doesn't rock the boat.

This political problem isn't unique and I don't know how to fix it. The public needs leaders who's number 1 priority is their current job, not building towards their next job.

In a vacuum, where news of free apartments don’t leak out and invite more people to coke for them, maybe

Sure, you can install a sort of feudal society and then keep the miserable plebs in check with a heavily militarized police force, but you could also ostensibly have a society that provides good safety nets, particularly in a region with one of the highest concentrations of wealth on the planet.

Yes, let's create great safety nets. As a city with a $9 billion budget (for just 800,000 people; that's $11k for every person living here) they can afford better safety nets than anywhere.

So if it's not the inequality, and it's not lack of funding, what's the cause of all the crime and homelessness?

Here are a few examples of how dysfunctional SF politics is: [1] Chris Sacca tried to give SF free wifi 15 years ago, and they wouldn't accept it. https://www.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/mf1x52/chris_...

[2] During covid, the SF school board decided one of their highest priorities would be to spend 10s of millions to rename their schools https://www.npr.org/2021/04/07/984919925/san-francisco-schoo...

[3] Because they claimed the law disproportionately impacted people of color, SF made all shoplifting of goods valued less than $950 a misdemeanor. https://www.hoover.org/research/why-shoplifting-now-de-facto...

So maybe — just maybe — it's not the insane inequality. It's utterly horrible governance.

Out of curiosity: Can you provide some cities with similar equivalence and violence?

I can't say that this is directly caused by reduced police budget (there are a ton of factors), but I can confidently say the city is horribly managed.

The most recent example is the city government's proposal to force homeless folks into designated camps that would cost a minimum of $4k per tent (this number comes from the city's own report). That's more than what many Portlanders live on, and they'd still be living in tents.

But to the point, no, I can't cite a dozen cities that have is quite as bad as SF.

One side is adamantly agains _trickle down economics_ but if you look at their social safety net or programs it’s all trickle down with barely anything hitting the people in need.

Every other major city in America has similar levels of violent crime https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-...

Crime in the USA is high compared to most developed nations, that is true, however, this helps your OP's argument, as many attribute this to the USA's stark income disparity, which correlates strongly with crime.

https://journalofeconomicstructures.springeropen.com/article...

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-80897-8

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/06/07/the-star...

> As a city with a $9 billion budget (for just 800,000 people; that's $11k for every person living here) they can afford better safety nets than anywhere.

Just because the money is there, doesn't mean it's being spent correctly. This seems true for the entire nation: the richest country on earth for some reason still has homeless people. In my opinion this is because the most progressive politician that can managed to be elected in the USA at any level of government would be considered a conservative in most other countries. Therefore the kinds of "safety net" an American politician might try to introduce aren't actual, evidence-based effective solutions. For example, as linked prior, healthcare access likely causes reduced crime. The USA clearly has enough money to provide free healthcare for all citizens, since Americans pay more than anyone on earth for healthcare: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4193322/ . So, it's a good idea for many reasons to simply provide free healthcare for all citizens. Yet we need not discuss here the myriad of reasons such propositions in ANY form are dead on arrival at any level of government in the USA.

This issue seems mirrored in SF. The SF government seems more interested in engaging in performative politics than actual progressivism.

> Chris Sacca tried to give SF free wifi 15 years ago, and they wouldn't accept it.

This seems too out of date to matter. Anyway, the reason for rejection seems sound to me: https://web.archive.org/web/20091009152536/http://www.sfgov.... TLDR google wanted user data and control of utility poles.

> During covid, the SF school board decided one of their highest priorities would be to spend 10s of millions to rename their schools

The first sentence of this article is: "The San Francisco Board of Education will ultimately keep the names of dozens of public schools in a case of high-stakes second thoughts."

They didn't end up changing the names so I'm not sure what you're talking about.

> SF made all shoplifting of goods valued less than $950 a misdemeanor.

Which means it's up to the cops whether they want to investigate, and the DA whether they want to prosecute. Not sure who you're trying to blame here, in my experience SF cops are notoriously lazy. Are you suggesting that if we dangle the "carrot" of nuking some kid's life with a felony charge for stealing an expensive bag, the cops will work harder at their job? Misdemeanor charges aren't a good enough motivator for cops? Anyway, not sure how this is dysfunctional, I don't want resources spent on protecting the interests of Balenciaga or whatever, I'd much rather cops focus on, you know, solving murders.

So far every reply making blind jabs at a spectre of "progressive politics" has been like this. It saddens me that so many on this forum are thirsty for simple Hammurabi code style punitive justice systems despite the reams of evidence that it's ineffective.

Submitted with humor and best regards.

So you're concentrating the California of California as well.

EDIT: Also no-competes are illegal in CA. Also very anti-feudal. Where's all this feudalism?

The wealth disparity in SF is huge and definitely part of the issue, but it's mostly created by very local problems, like allowing sidewalks to be campgrounds while housing goes insane.

The reason I bring wealth into the equation is because out of all the places in the US, SF and California has enough wealth to be able to afford to do well in this respect.

That's a problem of perception much more than fact, a perception that's created by people pushing it baselessly. Wealth inequality is real and a problem, but the "there is no future" garbage is ridiculous. Big blips in household income and prices happen every few decades. It's not the end of the world.

Most people aren't low income or in poverty because "there is no future". It's because they're injured, addicted, handicapped, or just made a few bad calls. Most crimes are passion or survival, not "there is no future".

As much as crime shot up during COVID, it's still down from when your parents were your age.

It is if you are suddenly homeless due to those blips.

So "reactive policing", as you say, can't stop every crime. But consistently catching and enforcing the law on repeat offenders can have a dramatic impact on overall crime rate.

It’s hard to think anyone actually believes that there’s no difference between a society that gives violent criminals free rein and one that actually takes them off the street.

Unfortunately, a lot of elected officials have very strange priorities these days. A few months ago, a teenager was part of a group of criminals carjacking cars in the middle of the night, got into some confrontation with a resident, and ended up shot to death. There was a huge outrage among elected officials, community meetings, calls for justice, etc. When an innocent bystander gets randomly stabbed to death by a violent career criminal that was let free when they were supposed to be in prison? Absolutely zero mention from any of our elected officials so far.

The evidence is so overwhelming I don't know where to begin. How about https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/five-things-about-deterr...

San Francisco has the 8th highest police budget per capita, and 7th overall, despite being the 18th largest city.

https://d33wubrfki0l68.cloudfront.net/1b57c13c04baed2bc1c218...

It has some of the highest rates of income inequality in the world, and it's also one of the safest places in the world.

Yes you need some prevention by fixing societal issues that underlie criminal activity, but you also need police and prosecution of crimes to deter them.

The two are not mutually exclusive.

Additionally, you need to fire every worthless DA cities like SF and NYC have. They deliberately go soft on crime and let criminals right back on the streets to commit more crimes. So, if you want a fix you can start there. Throwing money at homeless people and "minorities" is not a fix.

The (2nd) greatest deterrent of crime is the likelihood of being caught. Police deter crime by increasing the perception that criminals will be caught and punished.

Fact is, the vast majority of criminals are dumb, or mentally ill, or both. They aren’t doing an ROI analysis.

It’s a little hard to keep a straight face though.

Almost all crime in San Francisco is committed by repeat criminals. You add beat cops to arrest those criminals, and you elect a DA who will prosecute those criminals when they are arrested, and you elect legislators who make sure there are laws that allow convicted criminals, especially repeat offenders, to be sentenced to long prison sentences.

That process is called "fixing the underlying issues in society".

Not saying that SFs approach to policing hasn't had an impact, but there are plenty of other cities with bigger or equivalent populations, similar per capita policing, and lower come rate.

It seems willfully ignorant to presume that there aren't other factors that have led to an increase in crime

I.e. I wouldn't compare SF to a rural part of California to and use that as a metric for how good / bad SF's law enforcement policies are. I would compare it to other large, metropolitan cities throughout the US and the world.

Choosing such and out-of-left-field comparison makes it seem like you have a specific agenda that you'd like to make a point about.

Cops can only show up after the fact.

Crime is a byproduct of poverty. If you give people something to live for, they're less anti-social. If they have mental health issues making those connections harder to make, we need social safety nets for them.

SF crime seems exaggerated. I spent a week walking around that city and the worst thing I saw was an opiate shit the size of a hoagie.

SF is terrible for the plebs, because basic safe and sanitary conditions are no longer accessible without great wealth.

[1] - https://www.businessinsider.com/why-housing-is-so-expensive-...

[2] - https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/S-F-officials-w...

Not to worry though, because the SF government is now pushing $5 million reparation payouts and $1 housing for "black residents". According to you, this should fix everything right?

But yes, agreed, societal support for others has been strategically dismantled (federal and state-level) and abuses the marketing of the "American Dream" as mechanism for allowed greed and selfishness.

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email [email protected] and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Genuinely asking: How do you solve societal issues? Because we know for sure how to solve quality of life issues: See NYC in the 80s - More police enforcement and state prosecution.

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.

Why? I’m certain more than one police officer has had to fire their weapon while responding to a domestic violence situation.

Overall deaths seems like the correct metric.

If a metro area becomes a literal Gotham City (ie drug and crime completely integrated into daily life) then the outcome is decades of lost human experience across hundreds of thousands (millions?) of people.

Addressing police brutality is one hard to solve problem, but cameras and other initiatives seem to be helping. But your city turning into a crime haven creates thousands of problems, and may not be able to solve.

Tell me more about local hero George Floyd.

Absolute retardation.

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.

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.

In most of CA misdemeanors are ignored, because of other laws and practices. So yes, it really does mean you can walk out with $950 and literally nothing will happen to you - unless you do it in front of a police officer or something. This is why Apple stores here pay police officers to hang out at the entrance.

Again, supported statements are more convincing.

Then they have to go back to reporting by filling forms, and they report a lot less.

What does that tell you about the accuracy of "the statistics"?

Separately, I have personally witnessed 3 instances of store shoplifting (like filling a whole bag with anything that you can and just walking out) where the police weren't even called because it was useless. They were just yelled at until they casually walked away.

I have watched a car window get smashed and a bag stolen from the car on Haight St. near Ameoba at 1PM on a Saturday. Everyone just watched, no one called the cops from what I could see (I didn't).

Last night I watched two guys use an angle grinder to cut a bike lock and steal a bike on Mission st. I didn't call the police.

I'm probably part of the problem now since I don't even call the cops anymore like I used to, but its hard to feel like you can do anything about it when I have seen them just let people go time and time again.

Talk to literally anyone who lived there for more than a few years and you'll heard endless stories of crimes against them or their friends that go unreported. I can give you a handful of them myself, and seems like basically everyone I knew who lived there had their own.

Over the years I've read story after story of horrific crimes committed there by 10, 20, 30-time repeat offenders. You can look no further than Boudin's own words and actions.

To try and claim otherwise is basically politically motivated gaslighting. Walk down any number of streets, talk to locals, it's clear as day to anyone with a brain and eyes that there's something uniquely wrong with that city.

Talking to multiple individuals is not statistics.

Poll, noun, …

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.

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.

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.

But I do not feel safe at all. What do you kids and grandkids say about SF? Maybe that is generational - I’m in 50s.

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.

Please don't. This is not safe, even if you have managed not to be a victim so far.

Not commenting on the current DA's performance yet, but even "good changes" take time. SF didn't get this way overnight.

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

Outside the US, maybe.

The bar is leaving your stuff in your car, not feeling safe everywhere all the time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jDdyDBdJZg

Don't worry, we'll destroy what little is left of this great nation.

You can reform and adopt working policies here too.

According to the LELDF, about 70 active DAs receiving funding from Soros-based groups [3].

[1]: https://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/george-soros-criminal...

[2]: https://cbsaustin.com/news/nation-world/all-progressive-das-...

[3]: https://twitter.com/LELDF/status/1641212886663020546

It is absurd to conflate any criticism of a person's actions to a "dog whistle". I say this as an observant Jew who is excited for the first night of Passover and attending a seder tonight with one of the local Chabads. Is it still an anti-semitic dog whistling if I try to shed light on the misdeeds of one of our own? But regardless of my identity/religion, it shouldn't be off-the-table to discuss an individual's public behavior on our politics.

I don't know what your real motives are, but it's simply anti-intellectual to try to shut down discussion with this nonsense.

Calling someone "antisemitic" is akin to calling them a "square".

Both words are dated artifacts so overplayed they've lost their original meaning.

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.