It's a concerning level of paranoia to suggest that multiple and separate data collection sources, including the city government, local police, state police, the FBI, justice advocates and local journalists, are ALL manipulating statistics to create a narrative that SF is safer than your perception. Especially considering that your person narrative would be preferable to the police agencies, since it would allow them to more easily demand (and receive) more funding if violent crime were actually on the rise.
Please go read the threads about the Bob Lee suspect arrest, so you can see all of the people who were making the same mass-hysterical argument you're making, but admitting how they now regret getting caught up in that "SF is the Thunderdome" hysteria.
βIt is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.β - Upton Sinclair
>Please go read the threads about the Bob Lee suspect arrest, so you can see all of the people who were making the same mass-hysterical argument you're making, but admitting how they now regret getting caught up in that "SF is the Thunderdome" hysteria.
Yes, you really disproved SF as a violent and lawless place with that argument.
Also statistics can be manipulated in many ways, I'd trust 1000% more the feeling of people living in the town, than official statistics.
Here, all the testimonials I see, my own experience in SF, plus all the posts really confirm that there is an issue, without having to care about the statistics or what the politics or police wants to show.
You don't see such with Tokyo for example.
And Tokyo, you get your cup of tea/coffee stolen, it may be accounted as a crime. In SF they would laugh at you and it would be a total waste of time.