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Comment by speakfreely | Hacker News Reader

The problem with examining violent crime per city is that the majority of violent crime occurs in specific areas, typically poor areas that are known to be dangerous by most locals who avoid them unless they live there.

What the majority of people are concerned about is the chances of violent crime that is likely to affect them. Yes, there might be 80 gang murders a year in Atlanta but a $100k+ income working professional in downtown has a very different threat model than a gang member in some of the worst neighborhoods of the city.

I think the reason SF gets so much negative attention is because the threat to "average people" (realistically, above average income people) is anecdotally quite high in SF, even in "nice" areas of the city where affluent people frequent.

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The event that sparked all this conversation is the homicide of Bob Lee. If we're talking about the problem of car break-ins, robberies, or vandalism, that's one thing. But on the matter of homicide, SF (6.35)¹ tracks closely to the national average (7.8)².

Property crime is what substantially contributes to the image that SF is an unsafe city.

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[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...

[2]: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/homicide.htm

You’re still missing the point. The fact that it was Bob Lee and not a drug dealer in a turf war is why the murder statistics don’t capture the issue. 50 random murders is much worse than 50 gang members killing each other from a “how safe is a non-violent person” perspective.

Right, but given that San Francisco has average levels of homicide and presumably drug turf wars are more common in urban areas, that means that SF is particularly safe for a non-violent person relative to baseline.

This argument makes no sense at all. San Francisco homicide count is close to the national average, however, unlike most cities, these homicides aren't confined to bad neighborhoods and criminals operating within them, but can affect anyone.

Which makes SF far more dangerous to law abiding professionals like ourselves, compared to cities that have the same homicide count, but where the victims are other demographics and not our own.

> Which makes SF far more dangerous to law abiding professionals like ourselves

If San Francisco has national average drug crime as well as above national average rates of "professionals" as well as organized crime, then it seems to follow that if SF homicide count is close to the national average, you are actually less likely to be a victim of a homicide than if all of those homicides were among a small population of "professionals."

There's been plenty of evidence posted to this thread showing that SF is more dangerous to law-abiding civilians than other cities. This in addition to the incident that started this thread in the first place: the homicide of a law-abiding professional in an upscale part of SF.

You keep trying to counter that with wild speculation that contradicts well-established facts. It simply won't do.

Could you link me some of this evidence?

Or maybe show me how the fact that Bob Lee was murdered proves that SF is more dangerous to law-abiding civilians than other cities?

> because the threat to "average people" (realistically, above average income people) is anecdotally quite high in SF, even in "nice" areas of the city where affluent people frequent.

But is it actually quite high?

Anecdotally, I notice many more people going through psychotic episodes here, but generally less organized violent crime. The drug dealing/prostitution is mostly restricted to a few parts of the Mission and the TL.

The issue is you often find yourself there even when attempting to avoid. For instance, once I got a flat tire right as I went through a few mile stretch of bad town. The locals saw I got a flat tire and was distracted, took the opportunity to put a gun to my head. The chance of that happening while you have a working vehicle is 0% and few people plan to have a vehicle failure exactly at the wrong spot.

> What the majority of people are concerned about is the chances of violent crime that is likely to affect them.

I don't know, I also care about violent crime that happens to anyone. I care about all life, not just my own.

Why isn't this thread about New Orleans, Baltimore, St. Louis, or Detroit then?

NOLA used to be quite terrifying. Yet downtown French Qtr is a different world now. You can walk Warehouse to Frenchmen Marigny 3am just fine. Canal St. is really the only dicey area

Both Manhattan and SF are now more dangerous than downtown NOLA imo, but NYC is tame compared to SF. SF is getting next level - almost comparable to Johannesburg ZA

NOLA has higher violent crime (but lower property crime) than San Francisco.

Oakland and San Jose usually had more violent crime than SF but founders knew better than to put an office there, knowing ppl will be regularly working well past midnight

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