Ask HN: How can you stand to live in San Francisco given the crime? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How can you stand to live in San Francisco given the crime?

crimemapping.com

26 pointsstaunch37 comments

I moved to SF from NYC, and NYC was way safer by comparison. I used to work for the NYC Dept. of Correction crunching the numbers on arrests and inmates and I can tell you this is the biggest difference between the two cities:

NYC -- There's a cop standing on nearly every corner in most of Manhattan, and actually standing, giving directions to tourists and being friendly but professional. If there's a big crime in an area they show up, on foot, and patrol like a damn army to say, "That ain't gonna happen again, try it." In the words of one very sketchy NYC taxi driver, "You can't do anything in this fucking town with all the goddamn cops around!" In NYC the police presence is direct, visible, and makes them feel like part of the community.

SF -- Not a cop in sight, even in cars. They never patrol on foot. Even in places like Union Square and Haight Ashbury you rarely see them. They might show up for an event but they don't do shit but stand there and maybe harass a homeless guy or two. I walk all over this city at all hours of the day and night, and even seeing a cop car is a surprise. Usually they only show up after something major has happened. They do show up quickly, but they are not present and do not feel like part of the community.

If all SF did was make cops walk a beat and arrest people for every petty crime (like NYC did) they could drastically improve things. After that, making sure every street was well lit with good street lamps would help even more. Hell I'd willingly pay more taxes if it was agreed that the SFPD motorpool budget was cut in half and officers were forced to walk.

> If all SF did was make cops walk a beat and arrest people for every petty crime (like NYC did) they could drastically improve things. After that, making sure every street was well lit with good street lamps would help even more. Hell I'd willingly pay more taxes if it was agreed that the SFPD motorpool budget was cut in half and officers were forced to walk.

Hopefully we won't have to elect a Rudy Guiliani or a Frank Rizzo to make that happen.

When I lived in the Mission, I regularly saw a pair of cops walking a beat on 24th (with old-school plain wooden batons, no less).

However, this was the exception, rather than the rule.

I've been saying "cops need to walk beats" for years here in southern California. I interviewed in SF for about a week in October and noticed the same lack of police presence. Walk a beat, prevent crime. Hideout in car, take reports.

1) Almost everywhere is safe during the day.

2) At night most issues happen in certain areas where you can take steps to minimize your risk.

3) Most crime doesn't cause permanent damage. Getting mugged sucks, but physical things can be replaced.

4) It's a risk/reward proposition. If it's worth it to you to live in the city then you deal with it. If it's not worth it to you then there are plenty of safe suburbs.

I'm interning in SF this summer. Any tips where the "certain areas" to avoid are?

You'll know them immediately, and getting back out is easy once your spidey sense tingles. Mostly, stay out of the Tenderloin.

I stayed at a hostel in the Tenderloin when I was in town for a conference last year. Walked to/from Moscone with my $2k MBP in a Timbuk2 bag every day. Never had any trouble, not even when I was walking back at 1AM and fairly intoxicated.

Am I just a lucky idiot?

Most people are going to say Tenderloin. Honestly, if you're just not paying attention, you'd get robbed in South Beach.

Just pay attention, stop texting on your phone and don't walk around like you're looking to get something taken from you.

San Francisco is somewhere in the middle of the pack for US Cities by rate of violent crime. It has about half the number of violent crimes per capita of Philadelphia, for example.

As a side node, San Jose has shockingly little crime. It had the sixth least violent crime per capita of US cities in 2010, at about half the rate of San Francisco.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_cities_by_crime_r...

I always take stats like crime with a grain of salt, though, as everyone in the community has an incentive to juice them. Crimes have a tendency to get "lost" or downgraded in the stats, and that happens at different rates in different places.

As a former crime reporter, I just have to chime in and say that not all crime statistics are created equal. For example, when I was building a crime map for my region, some large departments provided no data, which made their areas look rather safe in comparison.

There is no universal standard for granularity. Or even classification (even if jurisdictions are within the same state).

This is less of a problem if you are only focusing on SF as I think there is only one jurisdiction there (SF police), but something to keep in mind when trying to make comparisons with SF to anywhere else in the Bay Area.

Also, in any urban area, extremely violent crime is most heavily centered on drug-related incidents (a drug dealer collecting, for example). Not all (or even most) of these crimes happen across a random distribution of the population.

Wait, you would make crime maps that showed areas that didn't report crime as having no crime? That seems like a pretty dishonest map.

Lock your bike up! And the tires! Avoid drunks. You'll survive.

Moving here from Boston, I was actually pretty taken aback by the amount of property crime. More than anything, it was the way that people here think "Oh, that's just how things are here. Your stuff gets stolen."

Californians are too mellow for their own good!

It's the only city where leaving your car windows down is safer than leaving them up.

"In the long run we are all dead." --John Maynard Keynes

Second what dkasper said, but I would add that I love the culture of San Francisco. There is so much energy, so much excitement, such a mixture of people pushing their limits, doing exciting things, and doing them damn well. To live in the city is to be in the center of it.

I actually worked at Stanford (until recently, when work took me away from California), thirty miles south, and I loved San Francisco too much not to live there.

Ah, yes. Crime mapping. As an LA resident, I've lost quite a bit of time playing around with the crime mapper at the LA Times website, poking around places I used to live, checking out demographics, average amount of education, income, etc. and it would be safe to say that LA is significantly more dangerous than SF, at least going by the numbers.

So, what keeps me from bolting for the cozy countryside? Well, it's tempting to hit you with the one-word answer "Work." which is certainly compelling, but obviously there are alternatives in the age of telecommuting to living in the risky city.

The best I can come up with is that I'm alright here. I might be better somewhere else, but I'm ok with LA. I have friends, family, and fond memories here, and those mean a lot to me. I'm no romantic, and I would up and leave if opportunity in SF, Austin, NYC, or Mumbai called, but this is where I am right now, and it's not bad.

Try not to get caught up in the crime maps. You know very little about what lead to the unfortunate incidents represented by those ominous buttons. Control what you can, keep your eyes open, and, should you ever find yourself in a precarious position, don't be a hero.

West LA / Santa Monica, which is similar in size and population to SF, is significantly safer than San Francisco. I've lived for extended periods in both locations.

For example, you don't have to take all the change out of your ashtrays and hide your phone charger/other electronics every time you park your car on the street, or see drug deals going on in broad daylight, walk past brothels on your way to get coffee, or see drunk people get into extremely violent fights at night outside the bars. Frequent murders occur in the city.

Anyway, my point is that SF is really unsafe when it comes to property crime and vice. Like, to the point that it's really obvious that the police just aren't enforcing laws at ALL in most neighborhoods. For what it's worth, I lived in one of the nicest neighborhoods, Pacific Heights (Fillmore & California), and saw most of that stuff within 2-3 blocks from my front door. Japantown and Divisadero were where most of it happened, but my friends' cars got broken into EVERY time they parked on the street near my place.

Oh, no doubt. LA is a big place, and some bits are clearly nicer than others, but I guess I was just trying to point out that crime can happen anywhere for any number of reasons. You're more likely to get robbed in South LA than in Santa Monica, absolutely, but you can stay reasonably safe in both places by just doing a few simple things, like keeping valuables, especially smartphones out of sight at all times, walking with a bit of purpose, and making sure to straight up avoid places at certain hours.

Interesting line about SFPD though. I wasn't aware they were so inept.

I agree - East LA, South LA, all are not nearly as safe as West LA. My main point is that West LA, as a whole (and by that, I mean you never have to leave it), is safer than SF, which is more akin to taking the different east/west/south LA's and packing them all together into one peninsula.

In other words the bad parts are impossible to avoid.

Having said that, the restaurant food in SF is better on average (LA = driving to eat good food) and of course there's more/better/bigger tech companies/activity in the bay.

This map doesn't show any information about population density. It's impossible to judge risk without normalizing for that. It's certainly possible to get scared from the shear number of incidents, but it's not a rational fear.

Hey, an Argentinean here... You REALLY don't know what insecurity is...

As someone who used to live in SF and now lives in Baltimore, this question strikes me as pretty funny.

I live in Lower Haight and recently joined our neighborhood block on NextDoor.com [1]

A lot of my neighbors have been posting about recent break-ins. There has been a good number of break-ins recently and people are chiming in with historical stories from the last 2 years.

Overall its nice to be in the loop. I am surprised to hear about so much burglary in Lower Haight.

On Tuesday evening my motorcycle, parked in front of my house, was vandalized. Over the last 2 years I've had to replace my spark plugs 4 times. I come out in the morning and they are either gone or half missing. Apparently you can tie the porcelain part to some wire and swing it against glass and it breaks the glass more efficiently (?). Last year my girlfriends scooter, also parked in front of our house, was vandalized.

There doesn't seem to be much rhyme or reason. Its messed up.

[1] https://haighthayes.nextdoor.com

I am an SF native - and I am about to take a very large project which will move me from SF to Dallas. I am worried more about Dallas than SF.

I have never experienced any crime in SF, aside from my bike pump being stolen when I forgot to take it off my bike which was locked at bart.

I live at the top of Noe Valley/Castro area and its quiet and fantastic.

If you don't put yourself into stupid situations, you'll not see crime.

I don't go out to shitty bars in the mission at night, I don't spend time in the tenderloin either.

But the tenderloin is surrounded by amazing areas, like union square.

Tranny valley (polk street) has some colorful characters which you'll see if you go bar hopping or to SF Grubsteak after a late night of drinking.

Overall - I find SF to be one of the safest, most wonderful cities in the world.

All cities have crime. Many areas of San Francisco are very safe, many areas are not. If you avoid going to unsafe areas, particularly at night, you'll be fine. San Francisco is once of the most dense cities in the US, looking at a map might isn't the best way to determine if a city is unsafe in general. Check out stats like these:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_cities_by_crime_r...

Also, there are many cities in the Bay Area. Oakland has a high crime rate, but other areas have very little crime.

Because the good out weighs the bad... how does anyone live in the suburbs assuming this was a loaded question.

Crime is everywhere, you can stick your head in the sand and pretend it doesn't exist or you can enjoy your life. I lived in a containment zone in SF where the cops intentionally pushed criminal activity towards a 2 block radius. It was trade off to live in a prime location. SF is dirtier than it is dangerous if you're smart about it. What got annoying fast was the amount of dog poop on the side walk(s). The end.

Because it's the 9th safest city in the US in its size category >500K.

http://www.morganquitno.com/cit05pop.htm

That does seem high. Here's downtown L.A. which seems pleasant in comparison: http://bit.ly/zdnbyn

Hey, Skid Row is crime free!

Obviously this is not actually the case.

According to this website, New York, NY doesn't have any crime.

Hmm their crime data must not be easily accessible...

Easy: live out where I live in the Inner Richmond.

How bad is the commute to SF?

Inner Richmond is a neighborhood in SF. Confusingly, there is also a Richmond city in the East Bay, but you would not want to live there if you are commuting to SF (or in general, really).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richmond_District,_San_Francis...

1- SF is a city with diverse neighborhoods; there are some that are quite safe, and others where you'd be well-advised to watch your back. The crime may appear dense on that map, but in reality, it's not like a stick-up happens every time you set foot outdoors.

2- San Francisco is not the same as the Bay Area. As someone who lives in So Cal, you may possibly think that I live in "San Francisco," whereas I actually live in the East Bay. The Bay Area is a huge, fairly dense populated area. Palo Alto, Berkeley, San Jose, Oakland, Fremont, San Mateo, Marin County—they're all in the Bay Area, but none are "San Francisco".

And the graphics on the map tend to make you think that these were all serious crimes. The "gun" symbol actually means "weapon" not "gun" which could mean a guy threatening someone with a baseball bat. "Robbery" would include low level stuff like shoplifting. Also it's worth remembering that lots of crime is low-life vs low-life (aka settling of accounts) and not much of a risk to the average person.

If you click on the icons they give you more detail as the the nature of each crime. Most of the ski-masks seem to be "STRONGARM ROB." which implies a mugging to my mind. The gun symbol means weapon, and most of them seem to be knives.

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