Hacker News Reader

Comment by glerk | Hacker News Reader

The truth is we are letting antisocial criminal trash walk freely around downtown and terrorize the local population. I think a lot of people live in their nice neighborhood bubble and have never stepped foot in FiDi or SOMA.

Since I moved here, I have sen people break into cars (numerous times), fill suitcases with products from Target and Walgreens and leave without paying, casually smoke meth in a crowded bus, empty their bladder and bowels in the middle of the sidewalk, etc. all of this brazenly and in broad daylight. In other cities, this type of behavior usually earns you at least a good beating and a night in jail. The negative feedback is very important for conditioning antisocial people to behave in a civilized community, but for some reason, SF has decided to not bother with it.

Some other comments conflate this with the "homeless problem". This is not a "homeless problem". Homeless people living in a shelter or pitching a tent under a bridge are not the problem in SF. Criminal antisocial nutcases getting no consequences for their actions are the problem.

View on HN

SF is very very good at marketing itself

Crime was pretty crazy during dot com days, just tolerated more. Maritime Park next to the Hyatt / Embarcadero was always hip deep in homeless people at night. Very scary. Even worse when the freeway was still there. Market always had overly bright lights at night and looked like a sci fi dystopia. Absolutely no one wanted to be in SOMA at night which is a real problem for a startup working late hours. Hence small startups preferred renting private homes in Menlo Park etc. (Silicon Valley HBO)

I remember about 20 years ago going to a conference at the Moscone Center and as I was busy I let someone book my hotel for me.

Got to the airport and the taxi driver said "Do you really want to go there?" - which was a bad sign and things just got worse when I got to the hotel and noticed that my room had 3 huge sliding bolts on the door.... I was told by the receptionist NOT to walk directly along Geary (I think) to get to the hotel but go two blocks north first and then cut back down.

Being an idiot I ignored this advice one night and got the fright of my life!

This was in a hotel that was a fairly short walk from Union Square.

In 2006, for my first visit to SF, I booked a room in a hotel near Union Square. I was awakened around 2 a.m. by a group of crazed homeless people screaming like sopranos. The concert went on for 2 hours. Coming from a European country, the very cowardly (by governments and much of the public) accepted "culture" of homelessness surprised me in no small measure.

I think I know the hotel you're talking about. It's still like that in 2023 on Geary St west of Taylor St.

My partner, not knowing the city, was about to book a hotel in this area but felt the vibes of the neighborhood and got the hell out of there.

I had a look on Google maps and I honestly can't say which hotel it was - I didn't spend much time hanging around outside looking at it!

Buddy here just skipped past the distinction about anti-social criminals and conflated homelessness with it, much to contradict the parent post.

I mean, this is limited to small part of the city, you see techies complaining about it now because this is where we built new housing.

SF caused new housing to be built there precisely because those areas are dangerous neighborhoods where few NIMBY neighbors protest housing. Even then housing still get blocked all the time.

I worked in FiDi, I worked in SOMA, and I worked in the Western Addition for many years. I saw a lot of shit (literally), addicts shooting up on the Civic Center station steps, my coworker got punched in the arm by a homeless person on the way home. I've walked through the Tenderloin at night numerous times (some of the best food in the city). Yeah, there's some nasty stuff going on. But the comments here make it seem like SF is a lawless hellhole, a failed city. This is just not true. I never felt too unsafe, and I explored the city on foot by night constantly. Of course everyone takes a chance walking around at night in a US city. I love SF and I intend to visit again someday soon.

I'm guessing you're not a (biological) woman?

Nice qualifier about 'biological' there, was totally necessary to make your point, really. Because, you know, if you're a trans woman you totally won't get harassed in the Tenderloin. So insightful, you must have a deep understanding of both presenting as a woman and living near the Tenderloin.

I think you might get harassed as a trans woman in the Tenderloin, but the reasons would be different from the reasons you would get harassed as a cis woman.

Those burly fellows can look after themselves. We're talking about real women here, not blokes in drag.

Your tolerance for danger must be very high. If I saw any of that stuff you described, I'd be considering getting out.

I think there is a large intersection between the sets "homeless people" and "antisocial nutcases" though. I've been to SF once, and the amount of crazy shit I've seen in just two days was staggering.

But there was also a lot of good stuff.

Define large. By a percentage, it's not large. What is closer to reality is one is often a neccessary condition for the other, which is anti-social nutcases are generally homeless, while homeless people are not by fraction largely anti-social.

> at least a good beating

In what cities does any of this earn you a good beating?

Very few rich cities, formally speaking. I know Singapore uses formal physical punishment. In worldwide practice, however, police will often be a bit rougher than they perhaps have to (or have the right to) be when arresting if they feel someone deserves it. Many judges also silently tolerate this.

> Very few rich cities, formally speaking. I know Singapore uses formal physical punishment.

For extremely serious crimes, not his list of public indecency. For instance:

* Under the Environmental Public Health Act, it is an offence to urinate or defecate "in or upon any street, arcade, vacant land, river, canal, ditch, drain or watercourse or in any place to which the public has access except in any sanitary convenience provided for such purpose." The penalty is a fine of up to $1,000 for a first offence, and up to $2,000 and $5,000 for the second and third offence respectively. [1] [2]

[1] https://www.asiaone.com/singapore/totally-unacceptable-man-p...

[2] https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/nea-issues-warning-wom...

What is the penalty for not being able to pay any of those fines?

We know that the rich are allowed to do what they want. I’m more interested in the people likely to actually do it.

Same as most countries, you get thrown in prison. You still won't get caned though.

It's not a formal punishment, it's an informal punishment from police.

No, caning is something you can be sentenced to.

I'm very well aware.

The GP was talking about an informal punishment though, not canning.

Munich. Police will teach you to keep your trashy behaviour to your home. There's barely any homeless here, they get cleaned up at night.

There is a presence of street beggars that doesn't exist back in Australia / New Zealand that are quite noticable here (although less than in other european cities). Knowing how die Bayerische Polizei operate I am surprised they aren't surpressed as well. I just wonder why that is?

You’re right. The peaceful homeless camp at the Kolumbusplaz vanished from one day to the next but the accordion beggar near the Viktualienmarkt remains. No clue.

I'd consider the usual process for a street arrest to be a beating by itself. That's not even to say it isn't "reasonable force" to protect the officers, just that it often looks like it must hurt like hell.

Standard procedure, especially if its not feasible/convenient to actually charge someone.

I've been wondering what cops are using these days since phonebooks aren't a thing any more.

Guess a lot of people are 'falling down stairs' instead (outside SF).

This person is promoting police brutality as a social good.

People are at the end of their wits with organized gangs and homeless. What do you expect?

I mean, they aren’t wrong, per se. I think if that’s the price we pay to not have people doing the things GP described then it seems like an acceptable price.

I would prefer that criminals were not beaten and that we find a better solution. I don’t think we have to choose between police brutality and crime.

PBaaS

I'm imagining that if a tech startup ran a protection racket, this is how they would brand it.

In NYC we call that a "tune up".

Elsewhere that is called 'police brutality' and should result in the sacking of the associated officers.

Ideally it should result in the prosecution of the perpetrating officers, the same as for anyone else who beats someone up.

Agreed. But once convicted they should never be allowed back on the force. That kind of stupidity is one of the driving forces behind the whole defund the police movement and one of the side effects of that is that you end up with less police rather than with more disciplined police which would have been a far better solution.

Without a police force dense societies usually can not function.

I swear the same pattern happens to every political movement. As soon as they get the limelight, the dumbest ideas take over. It's probably related to the bikeshed phenomenon.

Defund the police does have a certain legitimate point in the US, where police are basically the catch all for dealing with any kind of social problem. In fact I think if it were phrased differently, most cops would rather there be another type of department that responded to sticky social situations.

But yes, the fundamental issue is really a lack of law and order for law enforcement itself, which decreases the public trust and increases adversarialism. The average person seeing a cop and reflexively thinking how to avoid getting their attention and avoid getting hassled for some bullshit is an indicator of a deep set problem. The cancer was fueled by drug criminalization and other crushing nanny statism (eg the draconian ways that traffic laws are enforced), but it would take a lot more than simply rolling those back to regain the public trust.

Quite. It's really a pity because as things are they will have to get much worse before they can get better again. And the ones who stand the most to lose are the ones that are the least likely to have any appreciation for the complexity of this all. Simplistic solutions only get you worse problems.

As ever, "The Simpsons" were insightful.

> Because you need me, Springfield. Your guilty conscience may force you to vote Democratic, but deep down inside, you secretly long for a cold-hearted Republican to lower taxes, brutalise criminals and rule you like a king!

That's almost 30 years old now.

You are presenting two false dilemmas:

First, that addressing the core causes behind most crime (poverty, drugs, mental health, etc.) implies not enforcing the laws. We could address the root causes while also enforcing laws.

Second, that enforcing the laws requires extreme punishment like beatings.

> I think a lot of people live in their nice neighborhood bubble and have never stepped foot in FiDi or SOMA.

We have similar problems here in the UK. A lot of people are disconnected by class which leads to misunderstands and bad politics. I personally think this class disconnect contributed far more to events like Brexit and Trump in recent years than social media.

Most of family are working class and things like mass 3rd world migration, homelessness, drug use, etc has caused huge problems in working class communities here in the UK. But when you try to raise these issues (as a working class person) you always get accused by some progressive middle-class person of racism, intolerance, or being anti-progress, etc.

You basically have to wait for things to get so bad that middle class people are also impacted, then they'll stop slandering you and let you have an opinion.

As an outsider it would seem San Francisco is reaching that tipping point now – it's not just poor people being impacted by these bad political decisions, but also the wealthy progressives responsible for them.

Although from what I've seen in the case of SF it seems the progressives who caused the issues rather just flee than fix the problems they created.

> try to raise these issues (as a working class person) you always get accused by some progressive middle-class person of racism, intolerance, or being anti-progress, etc.

The problem is that almost no one tries to "raise these issues". Instead you get:

> Migrants take ALL new jobs in Britain

> The swarm on our streets

> Migrants swarm to Britain

> 3.8Million EU migrants allowed to stay here

> Send in army to halt migrant invasion

> 4,000 foreign murderers and rapists we can't through out

> Illegals have landed

That's after it's been sanitised for front page news. The fact is that those ideas were seeded by a right wing press, fire-hosing propaganda about how subhuman migrants are raping your daughters. The result was open racism and bigotry, not an expression of concern for job stability or integration.

I can't imagine that anyone is taking you to task for saying that homelessness and drug use are a blight on any community.

So let's take a look at the other list item...

Poland and Romania are not the third world, nor are Spain, Italy or Ireland.

India is borderline third world, but Indians are one of the most successful migrant groups in the UK.

Nigerians, too, are seeing success in education, business, politics and sport. My partner works for a YC-funded startup founded by two Nigerian Londoners.

So, by process of elimination, are you are saying that Pakistanis and Bengalis are a major source of problems? Hardly surprising that people accuse you of intolerance in that case.

Would you like to be more specific?

(And before you start up about class again: my dad drove a van for a living)

It's not that Pakistanis, Albanians, Somalians, Iraqis and so on are more inclined to crime, but that many of those who chose to immigrate to the UK are from parts of those societies who are inclined to crime. No one is worried about educated professionals from those cultures coming here; but many are worried about uneducated young men in particular and the types of people who tend to be settled in working class communities. I know many Nigerian and Indian immigrants who work hard, pay their taxes, and don't make a problem. I also experience what it's like when a small town has a large number of uneducated, criminally-inclined Albanians settled in their midst—it's not pretty.

> but that many of those who chose to immigrate to the UK are from parts of those societies who are inclined to crime

This doesn't get acknowledged in the West too much, that is that we (meaning countries that used to be East of the Wall) have outsourced many of our social problems to the West (which had created many of them in the first place in the '90s by ideologically imposing the Shock Doctrine therapies on us, but that's another discussion).

The thing is that this situation also affects people from those countries/societies who are not inclined to crime, such as a close friend of mine who's now having to go through lots of procedures and loops before being allowed to sign for a rental contract (she's Romanian, her SO is Polish, they've just moved from London to Manchester). All those procedures and loops are applied by the real estate agency, so not by the British State itself, I presume because the people from agency have to financially secure their back based on previous negative (from a financial pov) interactions with people from Romania and Poland (I'm also from Romania, if it matters).

Not sure what the best route going forward might be, because when you try to put yourself in each person's shoes you can understand why and how things are done in a certain way, no need to resort to "he/she is doing that because of racism/xenophobia".

Again, this is because your definition of racism is "personal bigotry." What you are experiencing though is discrimination, whether justified or not, it is discrimination.

I didn't base my definition of racism/xenophobia on the personal bigotry of those involved, to the contrary, I explicitly mentioned that most probably some of the measures now in place that look like bigotry from the outside have been probably put in place for material (i.e. money/financial) reasons.

In the case I mentioned, most probably that real estate agency lost money by dealing with Romanians and Poles in the past in a different way than it's used to lose money by dealing with local British people, that's why it put in place more complicated procedures for Romanians/Poles than it has for the locals. Yes, it is discrimination, but, again, in many cases it is based on pure material reasons, i.e. people not wanting to lose more money than they have to.

Is there a distinct form, application, and process for Romanians/Poles? Or is it just "a lot of tenants have caused issues in the past, so we have a bunch of checks we perform before we hand over the keys to a £250K piece of property?

I feel like that's an open-and-shut case if "Oh, you need application form A1234-v-Romanian/Polish" is the case.

As far as I could understand from my friend, as a non-British resident she has to be present in person at the agency for a specific step of the rental process, and as far as I understood from her that “being there in person on a set day” step isn’t applied to British citizens. If true (it is possible that she might have gone things wrong, who knows) that could be seen as a “visual vetting for non-citizens” process.

Again, that seems to be specific to that big agency, she also told me that in the past when she and her SO had found rental arrangements through smaller agencies things were a lot more straight-forward.

"Third world" is really not a great term for these kind of discussions, it's a cold war relic. In the 'true' sense of this term, Ireland, India, Nigeria (and Sweden!) were third world countries, because they were aligned with neither NATO nor the Warsaw Pact, while Spain, Italy, Poland and Romania were not.

Somewhere along the line this term was misunderstood and repurposed into a euphemism for "underdeveloped" or worse, with racial undertones. Best to just drop the term from your vocabulary unless you're talking about the cold war.

>So, by process of elimination, are you are saying that Pakistanis and Bengalis are a major source of problems?

Yes. Sorry but while it's unpleasant to say, that's just indisputable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rochdale_child_sex_abuse_ring

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotherham_child_sexual_exploit...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telford_child_sexual_exploitat...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_child_sex_abuse_ring

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterborough_sex_abuse_case

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newcastle_sex_abuse_ring

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keighley_child_sex_abuse_ring

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huddersfield_grooming_gang

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halifax_child_sex_abuse_ring

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derby_child_sex_abuse_ring

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol_child_sex_abuse_ring

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banbury_child_sex_abuse_ring

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aylesbury_child_sex_abuse_ring

Towns all over England have seen thousands of young girls be systematically raped while the police, councils and MPs have almost all turned a deliberate blind eye. Spurred on by the same misplaced sense of righteousness and/or guilt that presumably led you to write your comment full of obfuscation and finger-pointing, rather than sitting down like grownups and having a discussion that acknowledges the serious problems that have been caused by the UK's immigration policy that has resulted in whole parts of towns and cities being replaced by a foreign culture, instead of dispersing and integrating people carefully into the country. This is to say nothing of terrorist attacks, widespread intimidation against non-muslim practices, ethnic ghettos, parallel court systems, hymen inspection clinics, massive over-representation of genetic disorders due to traditions of inbreeding, etc.

That's terrible! The King should do something about it. Maybe he could deputize one of his brothers to look into the problem?

That’s very interesting, so you think Nazir Afzal was part of a great conspiracy turning a blind eye to this?

> your comment full of obfuscation and finger-pointing

Excuse me?

A gang of your beloved Englishmen were in court just yesterday for systematically raping young girls. Must be because of the Pakistanis.

https://www.itv.com/news/granada/2023-04-04/men-appear-charg...

As of late, the drug gangs from the Balkans have been hitting the news most often.

> I can't imagine that anyone is taking you to task for saying that homelessness and drug use are a blight on any community.

I suppose the issue is more that it's hard to agree on what the problem is or how to solve it. Eg, is it drug use that's the issue or mental health? And how do you fix that?

For example, a lot of people in my family abuse drugs – cocaine, ketamine, NO2, etc... But I also know a lot of middle class people who use these same drugs "responsibly". If you use a little cocaine every now then and you have the money for it then understandably you might see it as harmless. But then I also see the other side of this coin because I have family who spend all of their benefits money on drugs like cocaine and abuse it daily.

This makes it really difficult to take a zero tolerance approach to things like drug use because you end up pissing off all the middle class liberals who like using drugs on the weekend and see banning drugs and regressive. They also simply don't understand the problem either. They commonly think bizarre things like people who failed school and who are probably < 80 IQ just need a bit of mental health support and they'll stop abusing drugs and get their lives on track...

Similar things are true with homelessness. Everyone agrees people being homeless isn't good, but then what do you do about it? If you think people agree on this then why don't you try arguing for a zero tolerance approach to homelessness and see what people say? My guess is that people will start accusing you of not caring and arguing that it's not something that should be treated as a crime because these people really just need mental health support. But the truth is you're not going to fix homelessness by giving people mental health support. And again, this is so hard to explain to middle class people because they won't accept that not everyone is like them and that some people will just end up back on the street no matter what you do.

And I think this is really the core of problem. Middle class people assume (perhaps reasonably) that everyone is like them and their middle class friends and that they will make good decisions with a bit of support. In my experience this just isn't true.

As for 3rd world migration it's hard to know where to start... There are so many issues and this is such a complicated topic. To summerise:

- Cultural incapability issues. Again, middle class people struggle to understand that not every muslim is like their friend Mo from university. And as you brought it up, yes, Pakistanis are obviously one of groups which are less culturally compatible with British communities.

- Economic issues. I'm happy to expand on this if you like, but 3rd world migration in the UK has just been bad economic policy which disproportionately impacts the working class.

- Crime. Again, very hard to talk about this because people don't like the statistics here... There are groups which are significantly over represented in certain crimes and calling working class people in communities which have to deal with these crimes intolerant doesn't solve the issue.

To your point though, I think Indian migration has been great for the country – this is basically indisputable if you look at the statistics. I also agree that there are lots of great migrants from the 3rd world, which is what's even more frustrating about this... Instead of bringing over people that would have a net-positive impact on working class communities, we instead have an immigration system which selects for stupid stuff like being fit enough survive crossing the channel on inflatable raft, or lying about your country origin.

Opinions like these involving the use of corporal punishment and ad hominem (antisocial criminal trash) are part of the reason why the pendulum has swung so far in the other direction and the bay now lives in a liberal dystopia

You apparently don’t know the meaning of ad hominem. Look it up, it’s not a synonym of “insult”.

So we're just insulting these people?

Openly defecating on the streets may open you up to being called trash. Who knew!

Sometimes it can be helpful to think about why people are doing this, put yourself in their shoes. Many times homeless people are forbidden from using bathrooms in businesses, and often cities do not provide outhouses or enough public restrooms for the amount of homeless the city has. I promise you many of these people using the street as a restroom would prefer an actual toilet. I wouldn't jump to calling someone trash because they don't have access to the basic amenities that others do.

Sometimes it can be helpful to not try to treat the systemic issue and just treat the immediate issue.

For example, it’s not possible for me to solve the systemic issue of drugs and mental health in order to stop public defecating. It is possible for me to arrest the person for pooping in the street.

I think we should do both at the same time. But we certainly shouldn’t arrest people for pooping because they have a systemic issue invisible handsing them toward public pooping.

People can be trash for different reasons. And if a systemic issue makes someone do trashy behavior, then they are still trashy.

It seems to be missing the point to point out lack of empathy for arresting poopers.

Calling someone "trash" is not helpful to the discussion. It dehumanizes them, and dehumanization is the first step down the road that historically has often lead to atrocities. We're talking about real people, not trash. People who are down on their luck, or homeless, or struggling with mental health or addiction. Even if they're out there assaulting people, they are humans that require fair justice, not "trash" that requires disposal.

The least they could do, I mean the absolute least is find a storm drain to shit down or a bush to shit behind. Anything is better than deliberately shitting in the middle of the sidewalk to fuck with as many people as possible. Make no mistake, the people who do this have antisocial intent.

Correct. If you wanted a phrasing that makes more of a statement you could suggest we are dehumanizing them.

Fair enough, I was trying to be charitable to OP but I agree, it's just a plain insult and I myself use have used this argument when insulting people ;)

look at paul grahams essay about "ways to disagree". name calling is even lower than ad hominem

I think you mean corporal punishment.

In what way does using harsh language to describe harsh people cause DAs to not enforce crimes? How does one thing directly cause the other?

I did, thanks for the catch; in my mind I said corporal but my hands and eyes apparently disagreed.

"Harsh language" isn't the problem, it's the framing and lack of empathy for these people.

> it's the framing and lack of empathy for these people

Wasn't this the argument which lead to the current policy positions? Which seem to have not helped?

Do you live in the bay? Portions of SF have always been sketchy, but I am enjoying this "liberal dystopia" quite well.

15 years in and no one in my family has been a victim to any crime.

> > > Since I moved here, I have sen people break into cars (numerous times), fill suitcases with products from Target and Walgreens and leave without paying, casually smoke meth in a crowded bus, empty their bladder and bowels in the middle of the sidewalk, etc. all of this brazenly and in broad daylight.

> 15 years in and no one in my family has been a victim to any crime.

The reason provided above is as anecdotal as the one provided by GGP, and cannot be solely used to build any arguments/conclusions from.

There's also an axiomatic conflict between this & GP: The general neighborhoods that glerk and random314 live in may not be the same neighborhoods, resulting in the conflicting self-reports written above. It is possible that random314 lives in one of the nicer neighborhoods that glerk mentions offhandedly, and unless shown otherwise, has not been to FiDi or SOMA:

> > > I think a lot of people live in their nice neighborhood bubble and have never stepped foot in FiDi or SOMA.

I live in south bay, the original silicon valley. The bay area is home to 7M+ population, it isn't just tenderloin.

I currently live in Sacramento. It's undeniable that the bay has gotten much worse even if it was "already bad" decades ago. I actually had a nice week in the bay two weeks ago, but I was in a rental in a nice neighborhood. And don't get me wrong; I've walked through SoMa at night even recently and while it was pretty sketchy I didn't feel unsafe. That doesn't mean I couldn't have gotten mugged.

Boiling frog

Just went to SF for the first time in 5 years. So much worse. Wasn’t great in 18, but back then I walked across Golden Gate Park alone during the day and it was beautiful. I cannot imagine now. Market st is hell.

GGP is more visited than ever, and a lovely hang out place with people playing the piano outdoors, tons of families and food trucks on the weekends.

I'll have you know, my ivory tower is devoid of any riffraff!

YES.

The societal dysfunctions are because tech ppl, the ones who ask the laypeople of the world to allow them to fix all their problems, have built a literal dystopia of social problems in the place where they have the most actual wealth and power to build something else. There is no greater argument for the myopia of VC-tainted tech solutionism than SF itself.

SF was a liberal mecca way before anyone knew what a "VC" was. What that means and the consequences is what's changed, not the political demographic.

Maybe someone needs to pitch an Uber for ordering someone to beat criminals up

I built this. Try it by calling 911. Monero address in my profile.

> The negative feedback is very important for conditioning antisocial people to behave in a civilized community, but for some reason, SF has decided to not bother with it.

If we go with this, let's apply it equally. SBF should get 50 lashes in a town square and any employer stealing wages or landlord failing to maintain their property gets a beating and thrown in jail for a night. Why limit this punishment to petty crimes like pooping in the street?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com