The High Cost of Low-level Crime in San Francisco
city-journal.org
city-journal.org
As an example, Allan Beats, who has run the specialty sci-fi shop Borderlands Books, just closed down his adjoining cafe. He was clear about the problems, and crime doesn't come up: http://borderlands-books.blogspot.com/2019/04/borderlands-ca...
Or Lucca Ravioli, just down Valencia Street, closed on the same day. The owner was selling the building, and there's no way anybody could buy the business without having millions to buy the building too. In sum, it was real estate costs: https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/article/94-year-old-Lucca-R...
I absolutely agree that crime is a problem; I've had 7 bikes stolen over the years. I also agree that the insane rents guarantee people will end up on the streets, and homelessness is comorbid with addictions, which are often fed by crime. But this strikes me as overdramatic. It makes me wonder who funds the organization that produces this.
I fear we're seeing a massive ramp up in propaganda leading up to the 2020 elections. San Francisco will play a prominent role of "look how bad $FOO are at government!".
I believe this qualifies as propoganda because it intentionally paints a different reality, misinforming viewers and potentially causing them to make meaningful decisions against their best interest.
As I said, the article, which is on a topic where I'm reasonably well informed, seemed at best badly written to me. When an article is a) bad, and b) bad in a way that's convenient to somebody, it's worth asking how it got published.
Personally, I think "evaluate the content on its merits and evidence" is a bad heuristic for general-audience media like this. If somebody is going to cover a topic like "20+ years of the history of San Francisco crime and its economic and social impacts, plus the implications for urban policy" in 1000 words, they're leaving a lot out. This article lacks both an explicit argument and real evidence. It's basically saying, "Trust me, the writer, that I know what I'm talking about."
That can be fine when the person is an expert who works for an organization that is very good at producing solid journalism. But when it's disinformation, propaganda, or just the sort of bias-confirmation piece that many agenda-driven publishers put out, then it can be enormously harmful. So it's absolutely worth asking who paid for the piece to exist.
https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Iconic-Stores-in-SFs-M...
Besides noting shoplifting, there is no other mention of crime while noting explicitly gentrification and real estate prices.
And the smell of piss and shit everywhere.
Agressive sales people trying to buttonhole you.
(Not specific to SF. I experienced such in San Diego.)
Also if you’re in a good neighborhood and not involved in the drug trade, the occurrence of violent crime is very low.
I’ve lived all over San Francisco and am now in the Inner Richmond. It’s easily my favorite place I’ve ever lived. Amazing food, easy access to two of the more incredible city parks in the country (Golden Gate and Presidio), and very safe [1]. I’ve gone for many a walk listening to music after midnight with no threat of danger.
Though I’ve never been to Colombia, I’ve been to Tijuana, Mexico City, San José, Buenos Aires, Bangkok, Saigon… in none one of those places would I want to walk around with AirPods, take pictures with a nice digital camera, or have my phone out in public for more than a few seconds. There’s simply too big of an income disparity between you and the average citizen.
[1] https://www.trulia.com/real_estate/San_Francisco-California/...
And you’re right - I can’t say for sure what Medellin is like because I’ve never been there.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
You have to deliberately go into the wrong neighborhood and mess with the wrong people.
Every time I’m in SF I’m on edge when I walk in the street.
In Medellin I feel safe walking around with AirPods and iphone out, plus I’m not on defensive mode ready to dodge feces or harassment.
- You’re a board member of a programming school based in Colombia. There’s inherent bias and conflict of interest in sharing your experiences.
- You are fluent in Spanish and appear to be of Latin American descent. I imagine that adds to your relative comfort level when in Colombia.
When I am in the areas near downtown SF, I also feel on edge and weary of my surroundings.
I encourage you to leave SoMa/Tenderloin/FiDi and check out the Richmond, Sunset, Japantown, Potrero Hill, North Beach, Marina, Pacific Heights, Mount Sutro, Presidio, or Golden Gate Park.
I think you’ll find SF has a lot to offer.
Now, I'm not trying to suggest it's any better or worse than San Francisco. It's bad for the simple reason that Montreal is in this climate zone where it's fucking COLD for 50% of the year.
Anyway, the point I'm getting at is, I had always been under the assumption that San Francisco, (and Oakland) were unique in the temperate climate that enabled the insane amounts of homelessness you see here. Instead what I've just come to realize, it's 110% SF's policies that have enabled this culture.
If its a problem in Montreal, a place where no one should ever be allowed to sleep outside because, quite honestly, they would die, then they too lack the proper policies to deal with it.
For SF to ever fix this problem, they have to first admit that it's not OK, and for all of us here in Hacker News though it seems obvious to us, it's clearly not obvious to the city.
Some refuse to go to homeless shelters. Cops will sometimes try to find some bullshit reason to arrest them so they don’t freeze to death.
Once someone becomes a 3+ time offender, it is worth removing them from the street. The majority of cases are caused by a tiny number of people who do it serially because they can.
https://www.berkeleyside.com/2018/11/01/woman-arrested-in-do...
B) if you end up in a conflict it's always better to run. It's safer for you than to escalate. In sane countries failing to run can invalidate any claim of self-defense. Thus, you'd find yourself on the hook for "armed assult".
Even if you state or country is crazy enough to have a "stand your ground" law, you are always better served by running away or de-escalating by other means.
Your ego might be hurt, but that is rarely fatal :)
In sane countries, a victim isn't revictimized by the courts for having the audacity to defend themselves either. :)
That's not even remotely what the parent said. Random homeless people != Homeless person assaulting you.
Wouldn't it be easier to just help the homeless person to not be desperate, offer treatment, and home with TV..
(A room with a TV is a cheap way to prevent crime)
Defending yourself from a person who hits you in the head with a hard object is reasonable (at least in the rest of the world outside of California), shooting too.
That's generally how I feel when government looks away regarding crime. When you give up the monopoly on violence, you're walking down a dangerous path. Citizens have entrusted the government with law enforcement, but they will return to taking care of that themselves if the government doesn't want the job any more, and I don't see any possibility of that being a good thing.
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/25/books/review/jill-leovys-...
> As I passed them, I noticed another racial reality. It wasn’t only Brandon and the other young men in the cellblock who were black. So was everybody in the courtroom—not just the judge, but the court reporter, the bailiff, and the juvenile prosecutor. So was the police officer who had arrested Brandon, not to mention the police chief and the mayor. Even the building we were in—the H. Carl Moultrie I Courthouse, named after the city’s first black chief judge—was a reminder of the African American influence on D.C.’s legal system.
> This wasn’t my first time in an all-black D.C. courtroom, but something—probably my anger at the Martin Luther King speech—made the reality stand out that day. When I got back to my office, I continued the racial tally. I had been to the detention facility that would be Brandon’s new home more times than I wanted to count, and I knew that all the guards there were black, too. The city council that wrote the gun and drug laws Brandon had been convicted of violating was majority African American and had been so for more than twenty-five years. In cases that went to trial, the juries were often majority black. Even some of the federal officials involved in D.C.’s criminal justice system were African American, including Eric Holder, then the city’s chief prosecutor.
> In September 2014, the Sentencing Project issued a report comparing the attitudes of whites and blacks regarding crime and criminal justice policy. It found that when Americans were asked, “Do you think the courts in this area deal too harshly or not harshly enough with criminals?” more whites (73 percent) than blacks (64 percent) said “not harshly enough.” Media coverage of the report emphasized what the Sentencing Project called “the racial gap in punitiveness.” But the fact that almost two-thirds of blacks displayed such punitive attitudes received little notice. How could it be that even after forty years of tough-on-crime tactics, with their attendant toll on black America, 64 percent of African Americans still thought the courts were not harsh enough?
One of the ways we “otherize” African Americans is by denying that, just like white people, they want secure neighborhoods. And because they disproportionately live in poor neighborhoods, they are disproportionately affected by crime.
Giuliani was also a prolific mayor when it come to building housing.
I don't think any right leaning or even centrist political candidate in SF could withstand the inevitable smear campaign that far leftist groups would organize against them.
A thing that also happened with the police doing almost certainly illegal frisking of people on the street in nyc was that they disproportionately were doing this to minorities - this is hugely damaging to our democracy. I think conservatives are mostly white people and they don't see it happening to them,or if it did rarely they were treated better because they are probably white. If you are a young black man and this happens many times it really hurts your psyche, makes you mad.
But the current status quo of not enforcing laws isn't working either.
It should be noted that while “minorities” (i.e. black and Hispanic people) were disproportionately targeted by stop and frisk, 53% of hispanic people polled supported the program (similar to the 57% of white people who supported it). Indeed, 25% of black people polled supported the program: https://www.blackenterprise.com/nypd-stop-and-frisk-poll-rac.... When you account for the fact that people who vote are older and more conservative than the general public answering polling questions, it’s quite probable that a significant majority of Hispanic voters and a large minority of black voters supported the program. It’s disrespectful to all those people to say that only white people could support the program.
I personally think the program is unconstitutional. But there is a real danger in assuming that “minorities” have liberal policy views. Their voting with democrats because of certain key issues obscures the large representation of conservatism within minority groups. People tend to pretend like black conservatives don't exist, but almost as many black people consider themselves conservative (22%) as white people who consider themselves liberal (24%). Hispanics, meanwhile, are evenly split between conservatives, moderates, and liberals: https://news.gallup.com/poll/245813/leans-conservative-liber....
Views on marijuana legalization are a good example: https://www.people-press.org/2014/04/02/section-2-views-of-m.... 55% of whites, 60% of blacks, but only 43% of hispanics believe marijuana should be legal. Twice as many hispanic people (39%) and slightly more black people (23%) support jail time for minor marijuana possession, as compared to white people (19%). (Remarkably, Hispanics as a group support jail time for minor possession at higher rates than Republicans as a group.)
Likewise with mandatory minimums, 30% of whites, 33% of blacks, and 41% of hispanics view reducing mandatory minimums for drug crimes to be a "bad thing." Hispanics are much closer to republicans (45%) than to democrats (29%) on that measure, even though hispanics overwhelmingly vote Democrat. You see similar results with the death penalty, with almost half of hispanics supporting it, and a third of black people.
I live in a cheap studio in the Mission to save on rent. The things I see remind me of my childhood in South America. I just wonder when the kidnappings will start.
Also, even professionals have lost all respect for the city. People with a six figure salary urinating on the streets, why?
Are you honestly excusing drunken wealthy people coming out of bars and treating the streets of the Mission like it’s a public urinal?
If you don't have public toilets, then drunk people are gonna relieve themselves in alleys and the like. That's just a fact of life, not a moral issue.
That's largely true in Spain as well, but nobody shits all over the sidewalks there.
From a distance, it's really really beautiful and there's a lot of nice things about it.
But walking around it on the ground, the only place I've been that's felt dingier than it was Kuala Lumpur (and I still felt safer there).
Maybe if you live there - you get used to it - but man, was it unappealing.
Footbeats have been cut back from pretty much all police incl. in Europe.
Policing(even moreso with reduced personnel) is more reactive than preventative. Getting from A to B and dealing with issue in B is generally quicker and safer by vehicle than having somebody run to B and then dealing with issue. Limited energy stores etc.
Studies show that simply building more housing of any kind whatsoever helps alleviate the problem, even if you build more luxury housing. Lack of affordability is tied to straight up lack of availability. (Seems easy enough to infer that lack of availability should be directly to tied to incidence of homelessness as well.)
The temperature of the story and stats provided by the police don't seem to match.
Why are people so chilled-out and blasé about having their things taken or damaged? Are you genuinely not bothered about the destruction due to a political belief about property or do you think it's unavoidable? It doesn't happen in most places - it doesn't have to be that way.
Where are people from that they don't feel they have to be vigilant of opportunistic property crime? I disagree that it doesn't happen everywhere, just that the amount or frequency varies with the place.
Cars are broken into without even without any valuables in view. There is a common technique for breaking into Teslas, for example, such that the rear side window is broken to gain immediate access to the trunk release. Teslas get broken into on sheer speculation.
For you to call that victim blaming is ... Rather insulting.
> Cars are broken into without even without any valuables in view
I live in San Francisco, you think I don't know this?
When looking at the homeless who are still on the street, they're there because they refuse to go to shelters. The vast majority who are on the streets are there because of mental health issues or drugs. The visible aspect of homelessness has much more to do with us failing to provide adequate mental healthcare and a failed war on drugs than with housing prices.
What you do see in the high crime areas is a large homeless population - who of course don’t have any rent to pay. I can’t imagine higher rents making the homeless problem any better?
>we’re not solving our problems when we pretend low-level crimes aren’t important.
Those two facts are the crux of the issue. Prisons do not rehabilitate criminals; they just restrain them. Couple that with the fact it costs, on nationwide average, $84 per day to incarcerate someone and the average petty criminal steals less than $84/day and you end up with an uncomfortable conclusion. That conclusion is that it would be cheaper to offer government-funded total coverage crime insurance than it is to arrest the criminals.
I think it's worth pointing out that, while that's certainly true of most if not all of the US prison system, it's not necessarily the case that incarceration is never rehabilitative.