https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities...
SF had similar crime rates to Miami, Corpus Cristi, TX, Mesa, AZ, Austin, TX and Chesapeake, VA.
And about 1/3 the crime rate of the worst cities: Detroit, Baltimore, St. Louis and Memphis.
Of course, individual neighborhoods and streets might be highly variable.
But as far as the 100 biggest cities go, SF seems slightly worse than average. I counted 38 cities with worse crime rates and 4 that didn’t fully report. So putting it somewhere around 39th or 43rd on the highest crime rates for the 100 biggest cities.
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2010/crime-in-the-u.s.-...
There are unquestionably different attitudes towards crime, enforcement, and reporting when comparing SF to other cities.
As a broad brush, I still think it’s fair to say in 2019 SF was around the middle of the pack for the top 100 cities in terms of reported crime per 100k known people.
1) The DA is simply not prosecuting lots of crime, and downgrading many prosecutions (felonies prosecuted as misdemeanors or not at all), and
2) Due to above and a general perception that most crimes aren’t prosecuted, dramatically fewer reports are filed at all
Anecdata and eye witness reporting can be misleading too.
For someone walking to work, getting their property taken, and aggressive harassment that is not reported in crime statistics makes them feel unsafe. The quality of life issues that SF has and are not in official crime statistics are what are making people feel that their city is a dump and they loathe walking down these streets. Human excrement, aggressive pan handlers, petty larceny through the roof, and pervasive open drug use.
The problem is that things change a lot from neighborhood to neighborhood -- the worst neighborhoods for crime are much worse than the best neighborhoods for crime. Second, municipal boundaries are mostly historical accidents; cities don't stop at their borders. Some cities draw their borders to include almost their entire surrounding region; others (like San Francisco) include a very tiny portion of their region. Depending on where the crime in the region happens to be, this can make a big difference. Why is Brooklyn part of NYC, but Jersey isn't? Why is Oakland not part of San Francisco, but Queens is part of NYC? Why are all the old inner-ring suburbs in Chicago a part of Chicago-proper, while none of the old inner-ring suburbs of St. Louis are part of St. Louis-proper?
These are just historical accidents that don't matter much if you're a human being walking around, but they have huge impacts on how statistics are compiled in each region.
So, OK, say you solve that problem by only looking at MSAs or "urbanized areas" so that you can normalize the comparison between "cities." That solves the problem, right?
Does it?
You still have the issue that you might be comparing one region with a relatively high rate of crime spread across its entire footprint to another city that has sky-high rates of crime in 5 neighborhoods and is relatively safe everywhere else. Which city has "higher" crime? Can you tell just by looking at its region-wide per-capita crime rates? Is that even a question statistics can answer, or is it philosophy? (See: the old joke about Bill Gates walking into a coffeeshop and drastically raising the average income of everybody inside.)
It's a hard problem.
[0] I see now that someone else already posted the link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30958622
But in response to the claim from the article that "SF is not safe", I don't know a better way to analyze the claim that crime stats, even though it's imperfect for all the reasons you mentioned.
"I'm shocked to find gambling in this establishment!"
Plenty of the rest of town is just fine.. but out of towners may not understand that because there are shocking displays all over. And, frankly, there are definitely parts of town I won't park on the street anymore.
The whole neighborhood cannot be parked in, and right next week had multiple cases of assault that went uninvestigated.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/01/29/san-francisco...
edit: I'm sorry everyone is taking my statement to mean that all cities are places where out of control crime happens (which I think is making a presumption about crime in SF). If you believe your city is a safe place or safer than SF great. But that doesn't make your city not a place where plenty of danger is to be found.
Moreover, I didn't say anything about crime or crime rates, I said cities are dangerous places. As in there's danger in cities, which I don't think is a false or disagreeable statement. I mean, you take Singapore as an example, Singapore has a sex trafficking problem. Literally my friend's mom just went there, and her favorite story was about all the American guys she met taking sex holidays.
If this is truly what you're saying then why say it at all? What value do you feel it contributes to the conversation?
Yes, there is danger in cities. Sometimes it rains in small towns. Restaurants serve food, some of which is good and some bad. All equally useless statements.
You said:
> No one has ever been brutally murdered in your city?
You are aware that murder is a crime, right? You are aware that you’re participating in a discussion about violent crime?
> “We shut down Kraken’s global headquarters on Market Street in San Francisco after numerous employees were attacked, harassed and robbed on their way to and from the office.”
Violent crime rates are an extremely reasonable measure of danger in a city.
> Literally my friend's mom just went there, and her favorite story was about all the American guys she met there taking sex holidays.
This is an extremely unlikely story. Singapore during the pandemic has been a difficult place to go for any kind of holiday. Tourism to Singapore essentially disappeared over the past two years. And for sex tourism specifically, venues that would ordinarily host that sort of thing are closed. You literally couldn’t even buy an alcoholic drink in a bar past 10:30pm for the past two years, give or take a week. Nightlife venues like clubs aren’t going to reopen properly for another couple of weeks. Are there some people flouting the law? Of course there will be. But nobody would choose Singapore for sex tourism at the moment given the restrictions on nightlife.
I can’t help but note that the first section of the Wikipedia page on crime in Singapore mentions sex trafficking. If you weren’t aware of the local situation regarding pandemic restrictions, I can see why you might think that “all the Americans on sex holidays” is a vivid and plausible story to suggest that Singapore is a dangerous place. But I’m sorry, it’s just not.
I'm glad you love your city and all, but whether or not you find my story unlikely you're not really denying the thrust of it. That the issue is a prominent feature on Wikipedia seems to bolster my argument and prove that it's a problem, I'm not sure why you brought that up as it doesn't help your position.
Anyway, as far as the story in question, it covers violent crimes as well as drug use, harassment, public sanitation issues, mental health, as well as just homelessness in general, not all of which are violent or crimes. Lumping all of this into "out of control violent crime" really throws the issue out of context.
It's also true that violent crime rates are an extremely reasonable measure of danger in a city, but in so far as we're talking about cities, they also show that violent crime does in fact concentrate there, and they also hide dangers which are not crimes or are not reported. For example, the crime of rape is committed at much higher rates than it's reported, so if we were to look at the stats of a place with a high rate of rape, we might conclude there is a low rate of rape based on low figures. So while they are reasonable they are not the full picture and can in fact be misleading.
Except they aren't. Western European cities are incredibly safe.
If anyone wants to offer some data about the safety of western cities in Europe, I'll show you some data that demonstrates they are dangerous. The only thing we'll be quibbling over is degrees of danger and how much one city is more dangerous than another, but again that doesn't refute a single thing I said in my original post, which was just to say that cities are dangerous. Which if you are upset about the usage of the word "are" in this context, then change it to "can be" to make you feel better.
Highest murders per capita are far higher in smaller towns. You're much more likely to get shot by a drunk angry husband anywhere in Wyoming than NYC.
San Francisco is a fcking mess — mostly by decision, it appears — but "cities are dangerous places" is just silly.
I once had a break-in and laptop stolen, tried to call the cops and to my alarm no one answered. Called another number and was told to call 911, again no answer. Filed an online report, no follow up.
1 week later, car broken in again in a parking lot with surveillance camera.
There are plenty of videos floating around out there of cops refusing to take reports on break-ins and robberies and even assaults. It’s really odd to me that anyone on a site like this would take the side of the armed authoritarian gang in this debate.
People complain about progressive polices, but from what progressive candidates lol
The left is powerless, we got trounced in the last election cycle and none of our policies, even popular ones like weed legalization, has been implemented.
If anything conservative policies are more widely implemented, and are what is failing.
The current model of policing is a failure in many ways, and now it can't even keep the peace anymore, it's pathetic. But who is going to evict your grandma so a real estate company can but hey house and sell it without the police?
Progressives have complete control of the legislation and the enforcement and this is the result of their policies in action.
[0] https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/editorials/article/Edito...
There is also a housing crisis but I am not sympathetic. SF just refuses to build buildings, everything gets mired in “affordable housing” debates. Build houses and skyscrapers until the prices go down and then build a couple more. Simple supply and demand.
Additionally SFs budget has doubled in a decade. They do less with more than practically any other city.
That is an oddly specific circumstance of murder, sounds like it may skew the statistics.
Let's look at violent crime statistics[1].
Wyoming is one of the safest states in the country. New York (as a state), has 50% more violent crimes per capita. New York City has 100% more.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
* Property crimes are much higher in cities than anywhere else
* Violent crime rates are highest in cities, but the difference isn't as stark (though still pretty big)
Source: https://twitter.com/RyanRadia/status/1461904766238404611
But even this is too kind to cities, because while the average rate of crime in cities varies a lot from neighborhood to neighborhood and city to city, all the most dangerous places in the country are in cities.
There is no rural area with a sustained 60+ per 100k homicide rate, but you'll find that in North St. Louis.
Source: https://twitter.com/RyanRadia/status/1510472732089241603
Similarly, when you're in the Tenderloin in San Francisco you are in one of the most dangerous places in the country. There is no rural area that even remotely compares.
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-...
According to those tables the state of Wyoming had a murder rate of 3.4 per 100k and New York city had a murder rate of 3.8 per 100k. It doesn't seem right to me that "You're much more likely to get shot" in Wyoming versus NYC. I think, based on the data, that you're slightly more likely to get shot in NYC. Furthermore, in the last couple years murders have substantially increased in NYC.
https://www1.nyc.gov/site/nypd/stats/crime-statistics/histor...
It's easy (for either side) to rely on stereotypes about places we haven't spent much time, but the statistics (as well as my lived experience) tell a different story than the one you are trying to spin. Admittedly, in both places the worst of the crime is experienced by people who are lower on the socio-economic ladder, especially if they can't afford a place to live. It just turns out there is a higher concentration of those folks (for a variety of reasons: cost of living, availability of services, etc...) in cities than rural towns.
US cities. Toronto, for its faults, is a large city which is very safe. Unless you’re a gangster.
I bet I could walk around Jane/Finch on my phone and have better personal security than the nice area of many US cities.
It’s sad that you can’t solve the problem as a nation, because IMO cities are the figureheads of a civilization. Look at Detroit. The Rome of High Modernity 70 years ago, now a rotten husk.
Your original comment was a straw-man attempt to dismiss all criticism of SF's crime as risible naiveté.
So what are you actually saying?
Talk about a straw man! I didn't dismiss all criticisms of SF's crime (where did I do so?), I dismissed this specific criticism of SF's crime, pointing at their risible naivete for seemingly completely disregarding the history of violence in the neighborhood that they moved into. If body parts had been found in suitcases next door, and you still choose to move in, you can't cite crime as a reason you feel the neighborhood has gone to hell. All I was really doing was agreeing with the parent and pointing out the general tone of the neighborhood. So sorry I offended everyone with my quip.