But do I feel less safe? Absolutely not! The neighborhoods (where most people live) are just fine. I regularly walk home from the bars at midnight without a care. It's simply not a problem.
Compare back to the mid-90's, when there was active gun/gang violence in the Mission corridor ... quite frankly, I feel far safer today than I used to.
That‘s not entirely fair.
One of these days the sheer weight and remaining shelter of class consciousness will break through the cognitive dissonance. One of these days.
But once you're affluent, you're almost by definition privileged, surely?
“ A privilege is a certain entitlement to immunity granted by the state or another authority to a restricted group, either by birth or on a conditional basis”
I live in the city, and travel through all parts -- including the less desirable parts. I ride down Market every day. I go to the central library at Civic Center. I do bike loops through Candlestick. I frequent bars in the Tenderloin.
So no, it's not just because I can avoid "crime-ridden areas". It's because I don't find those areas fundamentally unsafe.
But if you equate homeless people near me = unsafe, then that's a different discussion.
Unsafe is the current Baltimore or south side of Chicago.
The Tenderloin isn't anything remotely like that. Sure there are dealers on the street and people hawking stolen goods at the bus stops, but there doesn't seem to be violent unsafety.
I don't understand why it has to be "SF is perfectly safe" or "SF is a dystopian hellhole". Why not pick a middle ground?
Also, why do we never factor gun violence into these conversations about safety? In SF there are relatively few people walking around strapped. I looked it up, and in my hometown of Louisville, KY (which is no Detroit or Baltimore), there were about 130 gun injuries/deaths per 100k in a recent year -- in SF, about 30! Which is worse, getting shot, or avoiding poop on the sidewalk?
But also, for what it's worth, I'm a reasonably tall white guy. I think that affects how many unsafe situations I'm likely to encounter A LOT.
1) substitution effects. As a hypothetical example, we could have one city that has 30 gun murders per 100k and another that has 130 per 100k, but both have the same murder rate (because you can murder with things other than guns). IMHO the important rate is the murder rate, and how much of it is with guns vs. other stuff is an aside.
2) Make sure your numbers don't include suicides. If they include suicides, they're not informative.
San Francisco is number 23 for violent crime in the list of cities on wikipedia.
Your options are not "get shot in another city Vs avoiding poop on the sidewalk in San Francisco", it's "don't get hurt or killed in the average city Vs get hurt or killed in San Francisco".
You're equivocating "lack of gun crime" to safety, which is as incorrect as you can get while still misleading the audience
No. It's number 37. It's number 23 with the default sort, which is alphabetical order. (California is early in the alphabet).
It's number 66 when you sort by homicides per 100k.
I checked, you're correct, but my point that it is more dangerous than the average city is still correct, even at #37.
> It's number 66 when you sort by homicides per 100k.
So? We're talking about safety here, not fatality. When people talk about safety, which is what I was responding to[1], they literally talking about violence, not "only violence that results in death".
I specifically addressed the posters dishonest equivocation that in other cities he is likely to be shot, while in SF all he has to do is step over poop.
The clear fact is that you're, on average, less safe in San Francisco than elsewhere; the gun argument doesn't factor into this so using it to show how "safe" SF is, is pointless ideology that is both irrelevant and dishonest.
[1] This is verbatim from the post I responded to:
> I generally haven't felt nearly as unsafe as people always play up.
So? Not all violent crime is equally severe. Being forced to hand over your money is not the same as being killed.
> I specifically addressed the posters dishonest equivocation that in other cities he is likely to be shot,
Your odds of being shot seems to be significantly less in SF.
> Your odds of being shot seems to be significantly less in SF.
Irrelevant to his point that all he has to worry about in a less-safe-than-average city is to step over poop.
If you're living in a city that has more violent crime than average, it's dishonest to claim that all you have to worry about is non-violent crime because "guns bad, m'kay?"
It's not really clear to me this is the case. The average violent crime rate for the top 25 cities, excluding Charlotte (because they don't report most crimes to the feds) is 702/100,000; SF's is 715, which is a statistical tie. And then, the murder rate is way below the average.
You also need to consider demographics; e.g. a young city with an active club scene probably has a higher incidence of robberies.
I'd also appreciate you to cut the aggressive language in talking about this. If we're talking about fallacies, ranking cities in alphabetical order to determine their crime rates is not awesome. People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, so perhaps reduce the amount of scorn you're piling on other people?
There's plenty to complain about in SF. My considered opinion is:
* SF is somewhat safer than the average large US city (violent crime rate is comparable; severe crimes are at a lower rate)
* Quality of life crime is really bad; #4 in your list of 100 for property crime, at a rate that is a high multiple of the average.
It's actually probably 41st, but Durham, Toledo, Greensboro and Charlotte don't report rape numbers, but their murder, and aggravated assault numbers are notably higher than SF's, and their burglary numbers are similar.
> The clear fact is that you're, on average, less safe in San Francisco than elsewhere;
Among the top 20 cities, SF is basically smack dab in the middle in terms of safety, I didn't want to spend the time normalizing by crime rate and population (and that gives the opportunity to debate what to do with NYC, who is both a massive outlier by crime and size), but I think a reasonable summary is that SF is about average in terms of violence on a city by city basis or resident-by-resident basis. And is probably safer than average on a resident-by-resident basis if you exclude NYC.
That's a different conclusion than what you're coming to.
All I'm doing is contending the OP's claim that he is safer in SF while at the same time he is not living in a city that is noticeably less violent.
Even if you do the legwork to find that SF has average violence, the OP's delusional assertion is still incorrect, because he is not safer than the average person in the average city.
If you sort by total in the violent crime section, it's well out of the top fifty.
It's number four in property crime, which is awful, but not a measure of safety.
As the other poster said, it's #37.
Because it doesn't particularly matter if you are robbed, hurt, or killed by a gun, knife, bat, or fists.
(And when looking at stats, remember: over half of gun deaths in the U.S. are self-inflicted. Which is still tragic, but different than assault.)
Therefore the need to rely on data to find more objectivity when debating public policies. Yes data can be twisted and most of the time is poorly reported and interpreted by people, but it's better than relying on personal anecdotes.
I'm sure parents with young children or elderly have a different experience but that's not different for any other larger US city.
With this said, the topic of the city turning a blind eye to property crime and "extreme", visible destitution is a whole different story.
Also, we should differentiate between the feeling of comfort / safety (which is what most people care about), and actual crime statistics (which are themselves fraught, I don't think people in SF even report car break-ins these days since the police and justice systems don't work any more).
> Brousseau was walking home from Dolores Park at 8:22 p.m. Friday when 50 to 60 shots were fired at the intersection of Rosa Parks Lane and Guerrero Street, according to San Francisco police. The gunfire left him critically wounded and caused non-life-threatening injuries to an 18-year-old victim https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/Twitter-employee-t...
And if you'd rather have the tl;dr version: https://www.sfgate.com/news/bayarea/article/22-Year-Old-Suff...
Rosa Parks Lane & Guerrero Street is one block away from Valencia Street.
I used to live in the area around the same time. I walked Guerrero frequently to go grocery shopping and get to my gym, usually between 7:00pm and 10:00pm. That easily could have been me. Needless to say I don't live there anymore.
Black Cat, Emperor Norton's, Zombie Village, Bar 888, Tempest, the EndUp...Maybe one reason the "SF is a hellhole" crowd are so negative about this town are because they shut themselves out of so many great places!
I'm very comfortable with cities, but as a visitor to SF seeing someone break into a vehicle on a busy street, 8 pm on a Saturday night is pretty bad.
That sort of crime matters too.
This is simply a narrative that certain people are trying to portray to prove that certain policy doesn’t work. It’s nonsense.
I can tell you that if you took these 3 maps and overlaid them you'd have an SF sketchiness map.
Flat-land -> easy walking, access for transients
Transit -> access for transients
Zoned for density -> lower civic engagement, more likely to end up losing out and getting navigation centers and needle exchanges.
https://sites.google.com/site/sloanestopolesson/_/rsrc/14449... https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/imumv8YZu7u... https://uploads-ssl.webflow.com/5eaf1365b8d39c82c3777a8b/5eb...
Cool maps btw.