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Comment by x0x0 | Hacker News Reader

Since you just finished insulting me, here's my story:

My petite SO made the mistake of parking in the wrong parking spot outside a verizon store next to Tenderloin and a homeless person chased her around our car trying to stab her with a screwdriver. In the middle of the afternoon on a weekday. And because it's sf, a couple guys saw what was happening and crossed the street to avoid getting involved, and the useless sf police took 8+ minutes to show up.

SF tolerates street trash acting up and acting out in ways real cities -- eg nyc -- simply don't.

I get off at the civic center bart station and coworkers are regularly worried about their safety.

I don't know what the solution is, but I don't care about them. It's fundamentally unreasonable to expect people to be unsafe walking around sf in the middle of the afternoon.

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SF tolerates street trash acting up and acting out in ways real cities -- eg nyc -- simply don't.

"street trash" is a particularly nasty way to refer to people. They might be mentally ill, drug-addicted, and perhaps criminal, but they're still human beings. Maybe, just maybe, if society treated people who find themselves at rock bottom with a bit of respect and compassion then they wouldn't end up in a situation where they chase women around cars with screwdrivers.

There's an interesting theory that suggests there's two different sorts of wealth - private wealth and public wealth. Private wealth is living in a nice house and driving a fancy car. Public wealth is living in a clean, beautiful community where it's safe to walk around without fear. If you want to be happy then both sorts of wealth are equally important.

You've managed to mix in victim blaming, middle class guilt, and tolerance of crime into a wonderful stew.

Here's a tip; if someone is engaging in crime, they're a criminal. In this case it sounds like at least assault. This isn't a downtrodden Okie with his family in a hooptie trying to make ends meet until the Depression is over, it's a nutjob trying to attack someone with a lethal weapon.

if someone is engaging in crime, they're a criminal

There are reasons why people turn to crime. If we deal with those reasons before the crime happens then, in general, everyone is better off.

it's a nutjob trying to attack someone with a lethal weapon.

Someone who is dangerously insane probably shouldn't be living on the streets. They represent a danger to the public. It's clearly preferable that those people are given aid in whatever ways necessary so no one gets stabbed. That's the problem with looking down on these people and referring to them as trash - you put yourself in the position of thinking they shouldn't be helped at all, so you end up having to live with the threat they pose.

Never called them trash, never looked down on them. But this person is clearly a criminal; we don't know their mental status. Not all people with mental conditions turn to crime, nor do all homeless people. Crime is crime however.

I would prefer to give aid to the poor women accosted and assaulted by this criminal, than give aid to the criminal. Life is full of choices.

That is a bit short-sighted, though. People can end up labled criminal without doing much of anything - plenty bad stories about that. Then there are folks with psychological issues - you can't blame somebody with a psychosis for what they do. Then there are people who have been abused and never got a decent chance in life to be decent people - not fair to lock them up without furtherfurther help either.

Now therr might be people who had a good upbringing and education, no psychological issues and all opportunities in life but they still become criminals. These are generally corrupt politicians and bankers and asshole CEO's and such, NOT the kind of people who would be hurt by harsh anti-crime policy.

Just how anti-encryption laws don't hinder cruminals, only good-meaning activists and journalists, neither do harsh laws against crime help against actual crime. See how Denmark and other nordic countries treat criminals - they have extremely low crime rates as result.

We don't know the root causes in this specific case, just the outcome. Barring a psych eval, we have to assume this is just a violent person, and restrict their freedom appropriately. In the end, it doesn't really matter the root cause, since we can't go back in time to ameliorate those factors; violent criminals need to have their freedom restricted. I'm not talking about "criminals" who misunderstand the law and get caught in a technicality. That's your strawman. I'm talking specifically about a violent person committing assault and battery.

In many parts of the country, she would have every right to shoot him dead. Chasing women with screwdrivers is, sooner or later, a fatal mistake.

A very similar thing happened to me in SOMA when I was apartment hunting. I was walking to the next scheduled apartment viewing, when a homeless man started following me. He started shouting "Fight me faggot!", clearly trying to provoke me. Much like in your SO's case, there were bystanders that didn't want to get involved; they simply stared blankly at the spectacle.

Then he spit on me.

I can't describe in words the pure unadulterated rage and anger I felt in that moment. I wanted to pulverize every single bone in his body, over and over again, until he was a bloody pulp. Until there was nothing left, except a blood stain on the ground. But I didn't. I turned the other cheek, but not for a pretty reason. I simply didn't want to get his blood on me.

It's hard to love someone that hates you and possibly wants to harm you, but I think that's the first step to solving the homeless problem in SF. Compassion is a difficult trait to master.

I go to San Francisco about once a year, and man, I can't imagine why anyone want to live or work there. San Francisco sucks. There are other tech cities, people.

Agree 100%.

I wouldn't tolerate unleashed dogs begging for food, shitting in the streets and otherwise accosting strangers for no reason.

I refuse to tolerate this behavior from Human Beings.

Act like a human or cease to expect to be treated as one. (Mental illness aside, of course.)

That definitely happens in NYC. And people do tolerate it.

I lived in NYC 7 years and SF 5 years, NYC felt much safer. SF could benefit from a Guiliani type mayor to clean up the streets.

Nothing like in sf.

Between me + SO, 9 years in nyc, 10 years in sf.

I'm really sorry that that happened to your wife, and that no one helped her. That's a shitty situation, and it needs to be fixed. But it doesn't make sense to say that thousands of people are all the same because you had a bad experience with one of them. I got beat up by a black guy a couple of times, but I don't assume that all black guys are thugs.

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