We eliminated benches to reduce the rate at which the problematic homeless cross paths with the complainers.
The DPW as an organization doesn't give a shit about how many commuter's asses a bench serves from 6am to 8pm. It just knows that every day when Karen sees a homeless man sleeping on that bench at 5AM she submits a complaint from the web form.
From their stupid "not my job, I just solve tickets" keyhole view of the situation removing the benches makes the problem smaller and they will iterate on that until complaint equilibrium is reached.
Suffice to say, I don't think it's fair to categorize me as a Karen for asserting that San Francisco has a large number of problematic homeless people. I could give about 8 other stories (from SF, Boston, NYC, and Chicago) that happened to me, two of which (both SF) include grown men dropping their pants, exposing their genitals, and visibly pooping on public streets where children were present, with no attempt to obtain any degree of privacy.
These aren't stories from my friends, these are things that I personally witnessed and experienced. These aren't 'oh that guy is ugly and smelly' stories, these are 'if I did that myself I would be arrested' stories.
Did you call the police after this person made a threat on your life?
I probably would not have called the police after this person if this happened to me, because I expect they would do nothing about it.
In the U.S. police will show up, investigate, and absolutely arrest someone who made a loud, direct, threat to murder another human being in public.
It’s a pretty common experience for anyone who is out and about using public transit in public spaces. They know nothing will be done to the suspect so what’s the point of bothering to respond at all?
We're not talking about the people who have been genuinly victimized. We're talking about the people who wring their hands over some smelly guy in some corner on the subway. Because they dominate the stats.