[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
SF is different. Within my first year there i had already seen someone shot in front my building (i didn’t witness it but the aftermath). An asian friend was slapped and her phone taken - she’d have given the phone anyway so the slap felt unnecessary. You fear parking your car - not trembling in your pants fear but a dread that you’ll have to deal with that shit again (now the breakins happen while you’re still in the car). You don’t know when someone is yelling on the street whether they are harmless or gonna attack you - doesn’t have to be a weapon just yelling at your face with saliva splattering all over you would traumatise you enough - yup, that happened too. My girlfriend and I used to try to help them. We’d give them leftover food - bakery items mostly. We’d see that all tossed on sidewalk when we walk that way again. There was always glass on the sidewalk. There’d be random tents you’ll have to get around. This is daily and adds up.
Like I said, I grew up in a violent town. So avoiding travel at night or going around the house locking windows or being aware of the approaching blind dark spot is something I’m used to. Most everyone around me was not. Even those from the Bay Area haven’t seen. I used to think they were weak but the truth is no one has to put up with it and I think people have the right to “feel” safe as well.
(Again, none if this will show up in a statistic and I’m not saying these people should be locked up in the name of tough on crime either. These are absolutely property crimes and quality of life crimes but you do feel fear and dread almost everyday)
If it has a high murder rate, that obviously is not true for all values of “you”.
Ultimately, random acts of violence are scary but even in the "most dangerous cities" statistically rare. The politicization of city violence "What about Chicago? What about SF?" is an instant red flag that whomever you're speaking with is making a bad faith argument.
[1]: https://hudsonvalleypost.com/hudson-valley-city-among-most-d...
Portland might not have a lot of gang violence (which is what really gets numbers up), but not violent isn't how I would describe the city.
It was shockingly bad. Crazy, violent people "everywhere". Tents covering the sidewalks. There wasn't a parking garage around where there weren't piles of human excrement.
Portland has a ton of gang violence.
>but not violent isn't how I would describe the city.
It depends on where you are in the city. I live in Portland and I don't think I've someone get attacked in the entire time I've lived here. But I also live in an area that is less popular with the mentally ill and drug addicted
https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/stay-safe/crime-data/crim...
Did you look at your own source? SF is 37 out of 100 for violent crime. That's comfortably above average, not "average or less"
Police in big cities go after big crimes like murders, but tend to ignore "lesser" crimes, so as a result, gangsters and other career criminals stick to those lesser crimes, and generally do a lot more of them.
/s lived in NYC for almost 40 years.
As to the ignoring crimes, here you go: https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/06/us/alvin-bragg-manhattan-dist...
> marijuana misdemeanors, including selling more than three ounces; not paying public transportation fare; trespassing except a fourth degree stalking charge, resisting arrest, obstructing governmental administration in certain cases, and prostitution
Literally nothing you insinuated. Please stop peddling lazy lies and ideas.
By the way, the full list of crimes that are not getting prosecuted is very long (covering a lot of misdemeanors and a few felonies), and CNN wanted to write an uplifitng story, so they chose the crimes that I presume are popular to not prosecute. It's not that complicated to understand the bias, and I'm not suggesting that anyone has done anything malicious. I only said that they were "peddling 'lazy lies'" because that source did exactly what you accused me of (misrepresenting what they will and won't prosecute).
A lot of people (particularly on this forum) try this form of lazy argumentation where they ask for sources for any claim they don't like so they can go try to poke holes in one source or another without actually doing any research. If you want to argue about something, go do some research and stop accusing other people of "lying" and "irrationality." What you are doing here is a textbook example of arguing in bad faith.
People in this thread are specifically talking about violent crimes, not all crimes, which murder rate seems to be one of the good metrics to use, no?