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SF is rich and unequal. So are dozens of places. Yet I don't know of any other major urban area in a developed country that has the kind of crime we see here.

Yes, let's create great safety nets. As a city with a $9 billion budget (for just 800,000 people; that's $11k for every person living here) they can afford better safety nets than anywhere.

So if it's not the inequality, and it's not lack of funding, what's the cause of all the crime and homelessness?

Here are a few examples of how dysfunctional SF politics is: [1] Chris Sacca tried to give SF free wifi 15 years ago, and they wouldn't accept it. https://www.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisco/comments/mf1x52/chris_...

[2] During covid, the SF school board decided one of their highest priorities would be to spend 10s of millions to rename their schools https://www.npr.org/2021/04/07/984919925/san-francisco-schoo...

[3] Because they claimed the law disproportionately impacted people of color, SF made all shoplifting of goods valued less than $950 a misdemeanor. https://www.hoover.org/research/why-shoplifting-now-de-facto...

So maybe — just maybe — it's not the insane inequality. It's utterly horrible governance.

Why not both? The governance could be horrible because its serving the political philosophy of the resident unequally rich to assuage their guilt over their unequal position in society while keeping their unequal position.

That to me still sounds like inequality. Sure, it can arise because of horrible governance, which just means that money is not spent where it should be.

Money spent by the government is NEVER really spent “where it should be” it’s all mostly a grift and everyone has their hands in the cash drawer. Not much actually makes it to the cause. It goes to the administration, research and pontification that does nothing to help the people in need.

One side is adamantly agains _trickle down economics_ but if you look at their social safety net or programs it’s all trickle down with barely anything hitting the people in need.

> SF is rich and unequal. So are dozens of places.

Out of curiosity: Can you provide some cities with similar equivalence and violence?

Unfortunately, Portland is one. Been living here for the past 6 years and I've watched the city rapidly fall apart in the last couple of years. We've had the most violent years on record. Homelessness has skyrocketed.

I can't say that this is directly caused by reduced police budget (there are a ton of factors), but I can confidently say the city is horribly managed.

The most recent example is the city government's proposal to force homeless folks into designated camps that would cost a minimum of $4k per tent (this number comes from the city's own report). That's more than what many Portlanders live on, and they'd still be living in tents.

Seattle also has a similar profile.

But to the point, no, I can't cite a dozen cities that have is quite as bad as SF.

Boston is also a rich city, has similar inequality, and has 1/3 the crime rate of SF.

> Yet I don't know of any other major urban area in a developed country that has the kind of crime we see here.

Every other major city in America has similar levels of violent crime https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-...

Crime in the USA is high compared to most developed nations, that is true, however, this helps your OP's argument, as many attribute this to the USA's stark income disparity, which correlates strongly with crime.

https://journalofeconomicstructures.springeropen.com/article...

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-80897-8

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/06/07/the-star...

> As a city with a $9 billion budget (for just 800,000 people; that's $11k for every person living here) they can afford better safety nets than anywhere.

Just because the money is there, doesn't mean it's being spent correctly. This seems true for the entire nation: the richest country on earth for some reason still has homeless people. In my opinion this is because the most progressive politician that can managed to be elected in the USA at any level of government would be considered a conservative in most other countries. Therefore the kinds of "safety net" an American politician might try to introduce aren't actual, evidence-based effective solutions. For example, as linked prior, healthcare access likely causes reduced crime. The USA clearly has enough money to provide free healthcare for all citizens, since Americans pay more than anyone on earth for healthcare: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4193322/ . So, it's a good idea for many reasons to simply provide free healthcare for all citizens. Yet we need not discuss here the myriad of reasons such propositions in ANY form are dead on arrival at any level of government in the USA.

This issue seems mirrored in SF. The SF government seems more interested in engaging in performative politics than actual progressivism.

> Chris Sacca tried to give SF free wifi 15 years ago, and they wouldn't accept it.

This seems too out of date to matter. Anyway, the reason for rejection seems sound to me: https://web.archive.org/web/20091009152536/http://www.sfgov.... TLDR google wanted user data and control of utility poles.

> During covid, the SF school board decided one of their highest priorities would be to spend 10s of millions to rename their schools

The first sentence of this article is: "The San Francisco Board of Education will ultimately keep the names of dozens of public schools in a case of high-stakes second thoughts."

They didn't end up changing the names so I'm not sure what you're talking about.

> SF made all shoplifting of goods valued less than $950 a misdemeanor.

Which means it's up to the cops whether they want to investigate, and the DA whether they want to prosecute. Not sure who you're trying to blame here, in my experience SF cops are notoriously lazy. Are you suggesting that if we dangle the "carrot" of nuking some kid's life with a felony charge for stealing an expensive bag, the cops will work harder at their job? Misdemeanor charges aren't a good enough motivator for cops? Anyway, not sure how this is dysfunctional, I don't want resources spent on protecting the interests of Balenciaga or whatever, I'd much rather cops focus on, you know, solving murders.

Also, apparently the governor and the mayor both kicked off concerted efforts to target crime rings involved in this kind of shoplifting?

This article has a lot of good fact checking: https://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/San-Francisco-crime-Che...

So far every reply making blind jabs at a spectre of "progressive politics" has been like this. It saddens me that so many on this forum are thirsty for simple Hammurabi code style punitive justice systems despite the reams of evidence that it's ineffective.

I love this debate and I expect it will go on forever. It boils down to, A: "California's problems are because California is too California!" "B: Nooo, we have not yet begun to California! If we California harder we can solve all the problems!"

Submitted with humor and best regards.

To add to that...there are a not-insignificant volume of people escaping California, which leaves more of those who are ULTRA-California.

So you're concentrating the California of California as well.

IMO this is what has been happening in virtually all US cities. The people that stay in them are increasingly in agreement with themselves politically simply because the others leave.

Seems to be true everywhere. Florida is certainly selecting for Christian nationalists, for instance.

Agreed. It's not a uniquely California phenomenon the US is obviously becoming increasingly divided politically.

California would be "I got mine, but we can make things more fair for you by lowering your standards and giving you measly benefits so the feudal stratification is okay."

People are free to leave but it's hard to move in. That's pretty much the opposite of feudal.

EDIT: Also no-competes are illegal in CA. Also very anti-feudal. Where's all this feudalism?

Right.... so, then why have progressive policies piled on top of progressive policies for DECADES in SF only served to turn it into a feces/needle ridden homeless encampment???

Not to worry though, because the SF government is now pushing $5 million reparation payouts and $1 housing for "black residents". According to you, this should fix everything right?

So SF is dangerous because it's so rich? Or because the US is poor? I don't really follow the logic here.

The wealth disparity in SF is huge and definitely part of the issue, but it's mostly created by very local problems, like allowing sidewalks to be campgrounds while housing goes insane.

No. I'm arguing that systemic rise of crime is generally a symptom. Sure, you can repress the symptom (temporarily and at large cost) by heavily policing. But IMO it's much better to treat the root cause of the issue, which is that for a very large and growing part of the society in US, there's no future.

The reason I bring wealth into the equation is because out of all the places in the US, SF and California has enough wealth to be able to afford to do well in this respect.

> there's no future.

That's a problem of perception much more than fact, a perception that's created by people pushing it baselessly. Wealth inequality is real and a problem, but the "there is no future" garbage is ridiculous. Big blips in household income and prices happen every few decades. It's not the end of the world.

Most people aren't low income or in poverty because "there is no future". It's because they're injured, addicted, handicapped, or just made a few bad calls. Most crimes are passion or survival, not "there is no future".

As much as crime shot up during COVID, it's still down from when your parents were your age.

> It's not the end of the world.

It is if you are suddenly homeless due to those blips.

I love the line of thinking that police can "prevent" or "stop" crime as anything other than a deterrent. One of the "lies to children" we repeat over and over. Policing is entirely reactive, responding and arriving long after the crime has taken place. The solution is never adding beat cops, it's fixing the underlying issues in society.

A small percentage of people commit crimes over and over and over again. Usually when you learn the perpetrator of a stabbing like this, they have priors. And when someone has priors, odds are they have committed many other crimes for which they weren't caught.

So "reactive policing", as you say, can't stop every crime. But consistently catching and enforcing the law on repeat offenders can have a dramatic impact on overall crime rate.

Yep. It’s quite uncommon for a murderer here to be arrested without a history of multiple violent offenses. But they keep being released until they finally kill someone. Just a few days ago a young woman was randomly stabbed to death by a man with a long history of priors who had just been convicted of armed robbery and was awaiting sentencing. One judge said he was much too dangerous to be released, but was released anyway, and when he didn’t show up for sentencing no one went after him.

It’s hard to think anyone actually believes that there’s no difference between a society that gives violent criminals free rein and one that actually takes them off the street.

Unfortunately, a lot of elected officials have very strange priorities these days. A few months ago, a teenager was part of a group of criminals carjacking cars in the middle of the night, got into some confrontation with a resident, and ended up shot to death. There was a huge outrage among elected officials, community meetings, calls for justice, etc. When an innocent bystander gets randomly stabbed to death by a violent career criminal that was let free when they were supposed to be in prison? Absolutely zero mention from any of our elected officials so far.

Police deter crime by increasing the perception that criminals will be caught and punished.

The evidence is so overwhelming I don't know where to begin. How about https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/five-things-about-deterr...

> One of the "lies to children" we repeat over and over.

The (2nd) greatest deterrent of crime is the likelihood of being caught. Police deter crime by increasing the perception that criminals will be caught and punished.

To say this you have to pretend as if there is no history of cities successfully deterring and dealing with crime via law enforcement.

I don't think you have to pretend.

San Francisco has the 8th highest police budget per capita, and 7th overall, despite being the 18th largest city.

Police budget != law enforcement

Fine, then you have to quantify what metric you are using for "law enforcement".

There have been multiple links posted in this comment chain alone

Show me a city that has high income inequality but also low crime because of law enforcement.

Hong Kong!

It has some of the highest rates of income inequality in the world, and it's also one of the safest places in the world.

Singapore

Singapore has publicly stated that reducing wealth inequality is their top priority and reached a record low in 2020.

Is that of their citizens, or their population. Because The citizens have become more equal at the expense of taxing an enormous permanent resident and migrant work force who do not get the full benefits. The US and most other countries can't hope to have such a deep reservoir of foreigners to bleed dry in the name of equality.

https://d33wubrfki0l68.cloudfront.net/1b57c13c04baed2bc1c218...

Now try the US

The largest cities in the US are politically in sync and have been for decades. It’s no surprise there’s not much diversity of outcome when everyone is calling the same plays from the same playbook.

Singapore, Hong Kong, Seoul, Shanghai (most of China tbh), Dubai, Geneva, Oslo...

Zurich

Why not both?

Yes you need some prevention by fixing societal issues that underlie criminal activity, but you also need police and prosecution of crimes to deter them.

The two are not mutually exclusive.

100% agreed. I don't think we should get rid of police. They are an important institution in modern society and when functioning well, they in fact can reinforce democracy.

Remove the police and enjoy what you get. Its been tried before, in no distant history.

If you expect to be caught for committing a crime then it is a deterrent. But that is hard to maintain, and once you hit a tipping point and it’s out of control, it is much harder to get it back under control. Then it’s a question of is the juice worth the squeeze? Because you need to squeeze hard. If you have no reason to commit a crime that is the better way to go (eliminate poverty, inequities), but way more complex and and way more political. It’s easy for people to say just add police.

That’s all true for premeditated crimes by someone mentally healthy enough to be processing likely outcomes and consequences, and making a very rational decision whether to crime or not.

Fact is, the vast majority of criminals are dumb, or mentally ill, or both. They aren’t doing an ROI analysis.

Utter nonsense. Anyone driving on the highway will check their speed when passing a police car.

If you think speeding and murder are mere differences in degree, at that a mental model of a typical speeder also applies to a typical murderer, I guess I could see a “highway patrols deter speeding, therefore beat cops deter murder” argument.

It’s a little hard to keep a straight face though.

This might be shocking but if you legalize a crime i.e. shoplifting, you shouldn't be surprised this increases the rate of that thing occurring.

Except it has worked in almost every city that's done it. A strong police presence deters crime, there's no arguing that. Yes, you should also "fix underlying issues". Whether those issues have led to crime is debatable depending on what issue you're referring to.

Additionally, you need to fire every worthless DA cities like SF and NYC have. They deliberately go soft on crime and let criminals right back on the streets to commit more crimes. So, if you want a fix you can start there. Throwing money at homeless people and "minorities" is not a fix.

When they find the murderer who killed Bob Lee, it is a good bet that it will not be the first crime they've committed, nor the first crime for which they were arrested.

Almost all crime in San Francisco is committed by repeat criminals. You add beat cops to arrest those criminals, and you elect a DA who will prosecute those criminals when they are arrested, and you elect legislators who make sure there are laws that allow convicted criminals, especially repeat offenders, to be sentenced to long prison sentences.

That process is called "fixing the underlying issues in society".

California already has overflowing prisons. It's not like people aren't being arrested and put in jail.

Not saying that SFs approach to policing hasn't had an impact, but there are plenty of other cities with bigger or equivalent populations, similar per capita policing, and lower come rate.

It seems willfully ignorant to presume that there aren't other factors that have led to an increase in crime

How would you compare the law enforcement south of the border to California? Do you think Mexico throws too many people in prison in Baja California or not enough? Do you think California is more or less safe than Baja California?

That's a pretty weird comparison. SF is in Northern California, which is basically another state away by distance. Baja California is a 27k square mile piece of land with a widely distributed population. San Francisco is a densely populated city, and California is both huge and not what we're discussing.

I.e. I wouldn't compare SF to a rural part of California and use that as a metric for how good / bad SF's law enforcement policies are. I would compare it to other large, metropolitan cities throughout the US and the world.

Choosing such and out-of-left-field comparison makes it seem like you have a specific agenda that you'd like to make a point about.

We have a different view of what the underlying issues in society are if you think the solution is just more cops and longer prison sentences.

Well, you can't deny that "stop and frisk"--while unfair and discriminatory--prevented and stopped crime.

Have you ever dealt with police in Tokyo or Seoul? Criminals breaking car windows and stealing your bag/valuables aren't a problem in Japan or South Korea's biggest city

If you arrest and incarcerate a criminal, more criminals will spring from the ether. Past performance is not indicative of future performance.

Exactly. There's nothing short of homeless concentration camps and AI pre-crime harassment that could have stopped this.

Cops can only show up after the fact.

Crime is a byproduct of poverty. If you give people something to live for, they're less anti-social. If they have mental health issues making those connections harder to make, we need social safety nets for them.

SF crime seems exaggerated. I spent a week walking around that city and the worst thing I saw was an opiate shit the size of a hoagie.

"Crime is a byproduct of poverty." If that was true middle America would be full of crime and the coastal cities would be free of crime That's the opposite of what is happening

It's not the miserable plebs being kept in check, it's just isolating the small minority of the criminally violent.

SF is terrible for the plebs, because basic safe and sanitary conditions are no longer accessible without great wealth.

This doesn't track. San Francisco has arguably the most generous social safety nets in the entire country. The city is spending upwards of $100k per homeless person. (https://www.hoover.org/research/only-san-francisco-61000-ten....) The more San Fran spends on social services, the worse their crime becomes. I don't think this has anything to do with social safety nets or disenfranchisement.

Just because you spend a lot of money, it doesn't mean you are doing something well. I could spend $10 million to have my front door changed, does that automatically mean I now have good security?

That's a fair argument. Current policies are clearly not working. What do think San Francisco could learn from much safer cities like Carmel, Meridian, Provo, Sugar Land, McAllen, and Pearland?

They are spending 100k per homeless person but probably cents actually reach the end person after every grifter in between have had their cut.

I think it's even worse than that: that whole system is benefitting from the situation, so has no incentive to actually do anything meaningful about the problem, just to pretend that they are. It's a variation on the Iron Law of Institutions.

Every year there's some new tax on the ballot to fix these problems. Every year they get worse. We pay more money here in SF, and the problems get worse.

Genuinely asking: How do you solve societal issues? Because we know for sure how to solve quality of life issues: See NYC in the 80s - More police enforcement and state prosecution.

Wait, are you blaming victims for provoking those crimes?

I'd argue it's well-known that income inequality is an existential threat to America. That said, I'd also argue that people _do_ care, but the SF government bureaucracy has proven woefully inept at efficiently solving housing [1] and homelessness [2].

[1] - https://www.businessinsider.com/why-housing-is-so-expensive-...

[2] - https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/S-F-officials-w...

Insane inequality justifies stabbing people to death. That's a great take.

Please tell me where I said any of this justifies murder? Oh right - that won't allow you to post empty strawman responses. How about we allow for some good faith between each other?

There's plenty of inequality in Houston but you run the risk of getting shot if you try to mug someone. Food for thought.

I thought Benioff was solving the homelessness problem... /s

But yes, agreed, societal support for others has been strategically dismantled (federal and state-level) and abuses the marketing of the "American Dream" as mechanism for allowed greed and selfishness.

So the real victim here is the murderer?

My God you people are so fucking stupid

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