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Comment by johndhi | Hacker News Reader

Personally, I think my reaction to seeing extremely violent crime would be to run away and try not to get involved. I'm not going to watch the video, but that was my first thought.

When bleeding homeless people have come up to me in SF (not uncommon) I usually just try to move on. I assume a similar reaction here, though I don't know if I'd have been able to tell this was a Normal Person who was dying.

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Being approached by bleeding homeless is not uncommon in SF? As a more rural person, the nonchalance with which you deliver that statement is _shocking_ and is sort of ironic because if I was to claim such a thing was common in SF or that it's insane that it's normalized there, my friends who live in the city would be very offended, take it personally, and tell me how wrong I am

I think a lot of citizens have rose colored glasses. I just can't figure any other way to square my horrifying personal experiences in the city and anecdotes like this one with the impassioned defense the city receives whenever it is criticized

Keep in mind that urban areas don't explicitly produce these problems. People with these problems tend to congregate in urban areas because that's where the needed services/networks/etc exist. People from rural areas have the same problems - they just tend to suffer in silence (more room to hide in rural areas) or move where they can survive more easily (urban areas).

I might have overstated it a bit. I'd estimate that ~7 bleeding homeless people have approached and interacted with me over 10 years that I lived there. Some not so terrible (lots of scabs and kind of meth-vibe of "I've been scratching my skin for the last week"), a couple noticeably bad (wearing wrapped hospital-looking badges on the head and concerning-looking open wound on arm).

I've probably SEEN, from a greater distance, I don't know... 100 homeless people in pretty desperate-looking situations.

I don't know. It's the worst in SF I've seen in any city, but I haven't spend a ton of time in LA's skid row. In India, I saw a lot of limbless and child beggars, including a pair of kids who were intentionally whipping themselves for donations [0], but I've felt more "afraid" in US than in India, where it's more "this is sad."

[0] - https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/chennai/driven-by-n...

Same goes for LA.

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