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Comment by systemvoltage | Hacker News Reader

I am well aware of the colloquial term "Defund the police" which is often met by "No, not literally defund it". But the reality is that there is a strong support to reduce resources and move towards soft-policing.

Have you been to the Bay Area? Apartment complexes and condominiums are hardened like castles while their kids play in the safe courtyards and the outside is rotting to the point of unsafe for male padestrians, let alone women and kids. These are the same people voting for these policies. Completely deranged.

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Dude, I literally live in the Bay Area. And crime here is no where even close to bad as it was where I used to live in Texas. It’s all relative. Especially when politics is involved.

I see absolutely no reason to believe that raising police budgets would somehow magically fix this. It wouldn’t. We have deeper societal issues at hand.

Certain areas in Bay Area (may be south bay) are probably better than others.

Digging around a bit, SF (and generally the rest of the bay area follows) has a substantially higher crime rate than say Austin or the US average: https://www.bestplaces.net/compare-cities/austin_tx/san_fran...

There are probably better sources than what I linked. It is really bad here in my experience and I want to move out.

What kinds of crime are you talking about? Loitering? Murder? Again, it’s all relative. How would increased police funding help with ANY of that…?

There are plenty of reasons to want to move out of the Bay Area. Christ, traffic on the 101 often makes me want to jump off the golden gate bridge - but I don’t see how snarky remarks about “defund the police” help one way or another without dramatically misunderstanding and oversimplifying the real causes of this city’s problems.

For me the main reason to leave is crime and general third-worldlyness. Got my car broken into several times, several parks are occupied by the homeless, Citizen app is going crazy where I live, the whole thing is not what I think of a developed nation.

I can deal with traffic, weather is wonderful.

Crime in SF itself is pretty localized.

The Tenderloin is practically like a South African slum. Sunnydale, Bayview/Hunter's Point and the south side of Potrero are dangerous. You have to watch yourself in the Mission, downtown, SoMa, and a few other neighborhoods.

But in Forest Hill you might as well be in Menlo Park. Pac Heights is generally safe. So is the Presidio. Even Noe Valley, right next to the Mission, is much safer. Crime doesn't like to climb.

> Have you been to the Bay Area? Apartment complexes and condominiums are hardened like castles while their kids play in the safe courtyards and the outside is rotting to the point of unsafe for male padestrians, let alone women and kids.

I don't think this is a fair description of the vast majority of the SF Bay Area. Perhaps it describes well some bits of Hayward and Oakland.

Large amounts of the SF Bay Area have crime rates well below the national median.

It's a fairly accurate description of the apartment towers in downtown SF.

Police are focusing all of their efforts elsewhere. They don't care about property crime like this. Also, as pointed out elsewhere on the thread, policing the tracks is the responsibility of the railroad company, not LAPD.

Do they publish what they do spend time on?

Catching pokemon apparently :)

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-01-10/appeals-...

The police are already ridiculously well-funded (on average, there are exceptions). Look at their budgets and start asking "where the hell does the money go?"

They don't need more money. They need to be held accountable.

Do you think the police in the jurisdiction where these train thefts occurred was underfunded? I’d be thrilled to hear your solution…

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