It's misleading to lump violent crime and property crime together. SF is skewed very heavily towards property crime. This stabbing incident is a rare event, and broken auto glass is common. They're not the same.
From personal experience, people don’t even report property and violent crime anymore in SF. The rate of property crime is way more than those statistics say.
What sort of violent crime in SF do you suspect is going unreported? I get that there's some earnest frustration that reporting things like car break ins, shoplifting, etc. is futile and wasting your time but is the any reason to think people aren't reporting being assaulted or face-to-face robberies?
SFPD in the Mission is useless: they came to a property theft and told the residents to watch youtube videos about how thieves are opening garage doors, issued a perfunctory report for insurance, and left. No -- none, zilch -- attempt to find the perpetrators. Total time on site was less than 5 minutes. They were scared to be out of their cruiser and on the actual sidewalks!!!
SFPD's office is a a mere 3 blocks from the BART/16th street open-air drug market, there is very rarely a police officer on site. Another 3 blocks away, Capp street, just got closed to auto traffic by SF politicians because the police were so incompetent that it was becoming a fire risk (for SFFD vehicles on 19th). They cannot even police their immediate vicinity!
SFPD mostly are known for zooming around in their SUV cruisers in packs of two, blocking traffic, shooting at the unhoused, and ignoring traffic violations. This after arriving in caravans of police SUV cars (at least 3!) with lights blazing, streets on which mission residents walk every day unarmed.
Completely useless. I've seen one cop walking patrol on the central mission sidewalks in 11 years. SFPD mission station is so afraid of the people they are ostensibly there to protect that they barricaded themselves from the street for 3 years after the BML marches. Should be completely disbanded and rebuilt from the ground up to be a violent crime unit only, with traffic, property, unhoused, responses going to another entity entirely. Since the SF homeless outreach campaign went into effect I've felt much safter walking around the mission. More of that, less of SFPD. Is there even a vice squad? SFPD doesn't care about sex trafficking.
SFPD leadership should be publicly accountable and subject to recall. Looking at you William Scott.
I may be old fashioned, but I believe that when someone intentionally creates a situation with predictable bad outcomes, they should be fired--even if they didn't intend to produce the bad outcome. Chesa Boudin was one of many people in SF who did that - the saying "the fish rots from the head" is not wrong. His recall was a good start.
Right... but none of the things you are describing are violent crime.
Yes, it is obvious that SFPD doesn't give a shit about the sex work on Shotwell st, etc. in the Mission - but that is different from saying they would not follow up on a violent assault or murder.
My neighbor’s car was stolen, he knew where it was to within meters from the tracker, in Oakland. SF police and Oakland police bounced him back and forth until they eventually found the car on their own, totaled, after being used in a crime.
That has not been my experience at all. For one of my break ins, I had a license plate and footage, they never bothered to even come out to get it. The next few times, they responded in a way that basically meant “stop calling us for smashed car windows, just call your insurance and get it fixed”. I stopped reporting after that unless it’s something major.
When I had a break-in, they came within an hour or so and apologized for taking so long. It was a weird experience after hearing complaints like yours for so long.
There was no suspect or anything, I didn't have good evidence, I did not expect them to solve anything because that would be an unreasonable expectation. They gave me a report number to give to insurance.
I'd like to Echo the importance of reporting. It is an important part of holding police and City Hall accountable and creating change.
I had a half dozen car and home break-ins in San Francisco that I did not report. I now regret this as I should have done my part to at least make the statistics accurate, even if it wouldn't help me recover my goods. I see it as being part of the solution opposed to part of the problem
I also recommend getting renters insurance, which can help with the financial burden
Really? I sent this video to SFPD, they called me, told me that they knew the suspect, asked if I was willing to testify and never called me back.
https://youtu.be/xRjuii_jtgM
I don't believe this at all. I've participated in numerous debates with people who have a tough on crime position in regards to San Francisco, and you hear this one a lot. When the statistics show that crime is lower than 10 years ago, they say that there's some phantom crime going unreported and a conspiracy to conceal it. I literally do not have the energy to explain why this is nonsense anymore, because I've had this discussion too many times.
Prop 47 at the state level, plus local-level decisions to not go after misdemeanors, plus political influencers telling the public not to report crime because ACAB or whatever.
Plus the city cops are “quiet quitting”, which is a huge and rarely-discussed dysfunction that heavily contributes to demoralized citizenry failing to report crimes - maybe it’s uniquely a Portland thing? Are SF/Seattle people having this issue?
Yes, overwhelmingly. In 3 experiences asking SFPD for help with property crimes (1 stolen car and 2 car break-ins), they seemed highly annoyed that I was even asking or reporting. My car was stolen 2 blocks from an SFPD station with a GPS tag. So I walked over, showed the cops exactly where the car was on my phone, and asked if they could send a car to meet me there. The dude at the desk rolled his eyes and told me to go get my extra set of keys and retrieve the car myself. No regard for the fact that that might be dangerous if the thief were around. And in fact, the thief was around. I walked past the car on the street, saw a big dude eating in the front seat, and kept walking. So I called the cops again and told them the thief was with my stolen car. They begrudgingly said they'd send a car, but didn't give a time estimate. 2 hours later, after repeated calls to dispatch, I was still hiding around the corner, occasionally peeking at my car, and the cops finally arrived. I told them the thief had walked away but I didn't know if he was still in the vicinity. The cops were pissed at me and said I shouldn't have wasted their time. They explained they can't do anything unless they catch the guy red-handed with the actual car. I get that, but it's not my fault they didn't show up for 2 hours. At least I was lucky enough to get my car back.
It's hard to say without actually knowing the internal workings of the police departments, but one thing that's happened in Seattle is that although the police budget did go up, the SPD is having a really hard time hiring, and a lot of that money has gone to headcount that has remained vacant.
I've certainly read theories that it's a malicious strategy of the police union to make the city council look bad, and the SPOG president has made some pretty shocking political statements, so it honestly wouldn't be that surprising.
I'm guessing it's a mix of both, but I can't really prove anything.
Both from outside USA seem insane. Broken auto glasses are extremely rare here. Stabbings sometimes, but nearly always not in public but in homes between junkies drinking ethanol. Not on streets like this case.
It is just in cities, and specifically in SF/Oakland. Smashing a car window is not really going to be punished in any way in those cities, at most they will take you in and release you within 24 hours. Most likely police will not bother, even if they witness it occurring.
When I was younger and walked around at night me and my friends would get mugged fairly regularly (~6X over 4 years) and the police would maybe show up 24 hours later at a random time. One time I even had a clip from a gun the dudes dropped as they were running away (it was empty) and the police never came and took it. I probably still have it around somewhere.
I moved to the suburbs recently and it is amazing being able to park and walk around without being afraid of break ins or muggings.
It's important to note that violent crime in the United States has been at a low for about 29 years. I don't know how old you are, but for me, "feeling unsafe when you were younger" is a pretty meaningless observation with respect to present reality. Speaking personally, I feel totally safe in San Francisco parks with my children; we've got a lot of peaceful, blissful parks in this city, which in my understanding is substantially safer than it was in the 90s.
Risk is obviously much higher if you re-use the needles to inject drugs. Casual contact with the needle is low risk.
That's assuming lots of needles. I see needles sometimes. I use the 311 app when I see needles. But I don't see them in an area where my kids are going to play.
San Francisco isn't anywhere near the top of US cities by violent crime.
You've been taken in by a lot of false media narratives. Trump said his bit about "American Carnage in our cities" and set about this revival of the tough on crime rhetoric from the 80s and 90s, a time when violent crime was much higher than today.
This is a thread about violent crime. SF is not, by any means, one of the most dangerous cities in the US - but it does have a big problem with "bipping" ie. theft from autos.
Who even mentioned Trump? That man lives in peoples minds so blatantly, it's insane. Crime is crime, and when you let property crime grow and go unpunished, it's a guarantee violent crime will also rise.
Trump has a lot to do with the perception today that San Francisco and cities generally are unsafe. He did more than anyone else to further that perception. You would have to be foolish to deny it.
I can 100% assure you it's not crime rates driving this perception. There were pandemic related increases but the trend of the last 30 years runs counter to the narrative.
Trump gross but in 2007, 2008 and many other visits prior to him being president my visits to San Francisco were shocking/gross me out when compared to living life in Baltimore County and visiting Baltimore city MD frequently.
I don't think Trump has anything to do with that perception. I don't think I've ever made it through a full minute of listening to that clown talk.
I regularly stay in SF in SOMA, and the thing that gives the impression it is unsafe is all the violent, mentally ill addicts roaming around accosting people. The last time I was there, I couldn't go a single day of walking two blocks from hotel to office without encountering at least one.
You can deny that reality all you like, but it is a reality.
Do you make eye contact with them while they are shitting on your porch? Do you smile at them while they're shooting up outside your kids school bus stop, and talk to them as they stab you to death?
yes, yes i do -- just like i would make eye contact with a sick individual or disabled individual who has shit themselves, and could use some help cleaning up.
to address your immediate example(s), ignoring your obvious hyperbole which shouldn't need to be addressed in this discussion, as it's not related to the types of human interactions the OP clearly described (which you've lumped into your comment in bad-faith, anyway).
i am not sure why you've filled your head with so much fear, or why you've lumped a certain population into a category of subhuman, inferior, and not deserving of compassion, help, respect, kindness, integrity, and understanding -- if you are finding it difficult to make eye contact with people in general, and regularly, let alone sick individuals, this might distinctly be a personal issue, and perhaps one governed more by trauma, fear and sociopathy than basic decency and human kindness.
i mean christ, imagine leveraging children in order to promote a rather uncaring and indifferent treatment about people, who were once also children. obviously there's a discussion here about appropriate behavior and whether or not someone, say a junkie, is behaving appropriately in a given context, but to somehow suddenly subscribe to this notion that once a person behaves inappropriately, they are no longer deserving of basic decency (eye-contact) is appallingly inhuman to me, and privleged.
since you're leveraging children, am i safe in assuming that i imagine you are okay with children being around alchohol, or even participating in the attending of sporting events (american football for example)?
like, am i safe in assuming you have seen children come into contact or be exposed to effects of alcohol or alcholism, where people behave (in)appropriately -- let's be real, the behavior of a lot of drunk fans at sporting events_in_front_of_children_is laughably appropriate at best
or do you stop the buck short once the lifestyle is a couple of standard deviations away from what you find.. "acceptable"?
perhaps if you started viewing people as well, human beings, perhaps... just perhaps, you'll start asking yourself: "how would i as an individual wish to be treated, if i were sick? would i like to be screamed at, ignored, condescended, looked down upon, shamed, ostracized, ridiculed, ..., or would i like to be treated with at least basic dignity?"
i wonder what would happen if we as a society shifted our attitude as a whole a few standard deviations back to a more compassionate middle ground, instead of constantly enabling, perpetuating, and encouraging fear-based/fear-driven relationships and interpersonal interactions.
also as a total aside, i am really curious: just how much personal time have you spent being around addicts/junkies/or anyone living a deviant lifestyle?
Perhaps that's the disconnect. Your odds of being physically assaulted by an addict or mentally ill person in SF might be low, but your odds of being verbally accosted or having your personal space invaded are much higher, which contributes to the feeling of being unsafe. (And is itself a problem.)
Broken auto glass is pretty much the default in SF if you leave anything at all visible in a parked car. Pretty much anyone I’ve ever spoken to has had it happen to them, and it happened to me 3 times. This is because there is simply no law enforcement response.
On the other hand stabbings and murder are taken very seriously by law enforcement.
The most unthought response I see every time. “But what you expect cop gonna do”? There are millions things they could do if given insensitive. Imagine a startup that get paid for every busted criminal? Put a honey pot, install cameras, track license plates. It can be resolved in matters of weeks.
People breaking into cars in your area are driving to their thefts? In cities they just walk down the street looking for targets of opportunity.
You think that a few honey pots and cameras will slow them down? Imaginative but unrealistic thinking. Someone stole some wood from my yard, and I have them on camera. What am I supposed to do with their image? How do you suggest I find them? Is it worth my billing rate to walk around the neighborhood with their image asking people where they might be for $30 worth of wood? Say we have a database of petty criminals, if I find them do you think they have the assets to pay for the glass and items from an auto break-in?
The economic incentives are not aligned for a moonshot on stopping petty property crime.
> People breaking into cars in your area are driving to their thefts? In cities they just walk down the street looking for targets of opportunity.
I've lived in multiple cities and can say that this is wrong.
I find that generally most people imagine these thefts are being done by homeless people on the streets but it's usually actually organized gangs driving in from Oakland.
Same thing when I lived in DC, organized criminals driving in from SE DC to rob the rich neighborhoods.
Well let's flip this on its head. When I pass a car and see something of interest I don't smash the window and grab it. Why not? Sure, it seems wrong, but I also have a fear of being arrested and imprisoned. Is that an irrational fear? I'm confused you have video of someone robbing you and you're asking "what am I supposed to do?". Look, here's a website! https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/get-service/police-report...
> People breaking into cars in your area are driving to their thefts? In cities they just walk down the street looking for targets of opportunity.
I assumed the same but based on reporting I've seen on SF local news, at least some of them are doing it out of cars. Pull up next to a likely target, dude jumps out of the passenger seat and takes a quick look, smash & grab if there's anything good, drive off.
They suggested that the break-ins occur because there is no police response. Police response would not stop break-ins in any city.
Say I came to your car in the middle of the night and left a strange note on it and then walked away. Do you think there is any way that you could find me with no clues about who I am?
It depends on where you live, but the massive wealth inequality in the US coupled with the ripped social safety net means that not only are people pretty incentivized to steal what they need / want from those who have, but those who have can replace it quite quickly (often with just the inconvenience of some insurance wrangling).
So for the vast majority of property crime, the victim ultimately ends up being the insurance premium, and everybody involved kind of knows this, even if they don't say it outright.
The worst affected cities have the widest safety nets. These kinds of crimes are fairly low in towns in Mississippi ravaged by worse poverty and with their own (painkillers) drug problems.
The nature of the drugs (fentanyl), the manifestation (homelessness) and the enforcement (or lack there of) are central to the problem faced here.
It is not a US problem. It is not a west problem. It is not a city problem. It is an urban-US-west-coast-city problem.
It's primarily driven by wealth inequality, not poverty. Who is someone going to steal from in Mississippi? Their also-poor neighbor who's got nothing worth stealing? The median income is around $25k in that state.
Violent crime is through the roof in Mississippi however. Jackson is dangerous these days, a far cry from how it was in my youth when I was living nearby in Vicksburg (which...was in the higher crime late 80s).
The worst affected cities have the widest safety nets. These kinds of crimes are fairly low in towns in Mississippi ravaged by worse poverty and with their own (painkillers) drug problems.
The nature of the drugs (fentanyl), the manifestation (homelessness) and the enforcement (or lack there of) are central to the problem faced here.
It is not a US problem. It is not a west problem. It is not a city problem. It is an urban-west-coast-city problem.
I don't know if you've seen any videos of Kensington Ave in Philadelphia, but it's shocking. Chicago & St Louis also have major issues with murder. This is an urban east coast & urban mid-west problem as well.
Yea crazy. There definitely weren't 261 stabbing homicides in England last year. And my car wasn't broken into every other month in Rome. Nope. Just a USA thing. Everywhere else is a heaven.
which state, with lots of asterisks about why this comparison is difficult and likely not telling the complete story, that:
>For England and Wales, we added together three crime categories: "violence against the person, with injury," "most serious sexual crime," and "robbery." This produced a rate of 775 violent crimes per 100,000 people.
>For the United States, we used the FBI’s four standard categories for violent crime that Bier cited. We came up with a rate of 383 violent crimes per 100,000 people.
I see this a lot on the internet and comments like this are not as relevant as you might think.
Saying place X is better off than place Y is often an incongruent comparison followed by similar fallacies. Y'all, each place is unique and faces a long and considerable history as to how they got there and the type of people that have and currently do live there. I can't even begin to recall the number of times I heard this type of comparison during the Obama administration. America is not similar to Sweden, Finland, Germany, Japan or Canada.
Maybe I should expand more because it seems like the intent was lost.
The cultural diversity in America compared to the countries above far exceeds what most people give credit for. First and second generation immigrants with different cultural ideologies amplify the differences that you would experience in somewhere like that set of countries. These cultural differences create multitudes of challenges that are not experienced anywhere else to this scale. Again, America is different.
As long as what you learn complies with the regime idealogy. Europe is a nicer place to live for now, but that’s more in spite of Europeans’ politics than because of it. There’s no significant difference in thought between the typical American liberal progressive and his European counterpart. Now that Europeans have sufficiently Americanized they’ll soon discover that the problems america faces now are in fact universal to all diverse liberal democracies.
Note: (neo)liberal != left. Just because the Democrats are called "the left" (or even "the far left" on Fox News), doesn't mean they are. Look at the policies they support; are they pro-worker, pro-single payer, anti-war, anti-imperialist? No. So not "the left".
Regardless of what they themselves or anybody else calls them, what matters is what policies they concretely support.
Want to have your mind blown? The systems Americans call single payer are not all the same. And it's not a silver bullet either. The rest of your talking points is a little out of date -- the country most openly diplaying its imperialist mindset and also the one currently engaged in an offensive war is Russia.
The modern atomized “far left” are the new Bible thumpers, except far more useful to the elite as their religious texts are fluid and ever-changing.
They serve as arbiters of morality to keep the “normal” liberals in line and make certain the window of discussion never again approaches heretical talk of “nationalization” or “the 1%”.
There’s still old school leftists around that strongly support the policies you described, but they’ve been essentially banished from the political sphere at even the metro level. Even the DSA has been nearly entirely co-opted by this quasi-religious garbage.
> As long as what you learn complies with the regime idealogy
This seems completely unconnected to the discussion, but ok.
> Now that Europeans have sufficiently Americanized they’ll soon discover that the problems america faces now are in fact universal to all liberal democracies.
My point is that you’re correct, there are in fact things to be learned, but many of those lessons violate the basic principles of modern progressive liberal society, and the moment one might even begin to consider those possibilities out loud, he’ll be immediately shut down as racist, misogynist, Christian, right wing extremist, etc.
Contrary to what some Americans think, Europe is not culturally homogeneous. The countries themselves tend to be, with some exceptions, but they do differ from each other, sometimes in significant ways.
Crime and health statistics are mostly depending on economic situation of a country (money per person). US is an outlier in both (especially health spending vs average life expectency)
Just want to note that US life expectancy is all over the place; much like with nearly every other national comparison statistic, the US average is largely a useless thing to compare to other countries.
For example: here in the Pacific Northwest, we’re neck and neck with chart-topping Japan for life expectancy - while most of the Deep South has a life expectancy roughly in-line with the average Iraqi.
> The insanity is primarily contained in Democrat controlled cities.
Murder rates are higher in Republican-led states. And we have a dual-sovereignty model (federal/state), cities aren’t sovereign entities, and state governments can and do interfere without limit in their government.
> Many people are leaving California due to this insanity.
People are leaving California largely because (1) they’ve made out well from the economic success of the state and can live luxuriously elsewhere on their savings, or (2) they haven’t participated in the economic success, and are squeezed out by the effect that success has on in-state prices.
(1) is a non-problem, (2) is a real problem, but one that the state is finally taking significant action on (targeting housing, particularly), having generally left it to local governments who have failed to act (before about the last decade, that wasn’t as much an active state policy choice as the fact that the combination of Constitutional supermajority requirements for the state budget plus minority party obstructionism had made the state effectively ungovernable for decades, once that was swept away there were a lot of issues to address.)
> Murder rates are higher in Republican-led states
With the highest murder rates being in the Democrat controlled cities in the otherwise Republican State. Again, most of the country is wide open spaces with mostly friendly people.
The period of the Pandemic & lockdown also had a high increase in violence.
> People are leaving California largely because (1) they’ve made out well from the economic success of the state and can live luxuriously elsewhere on their savings, or (2) they haven’t participated in the economic success, and are squeezed out by the effect that success has on in-state prices.
So if you make money in California, the great weather, social networks, & the business opportunities are not enough to offset the downsides?
If you don't make enough money in California, the cost of living is higher than other states.
California is a large state. Why is the cost of living, including the rural areas, so high there?
How does the Purchasing Parity in California compare to other states?
"Rare" isn't a relevant descriptor when speaking of correlative crime. Non-violent and violent crime rates are correlated. More of one class means more of the other. Though, environments that are different than anywhere else, like NYC, will tend to show a differing correlative relationship.
> Non-violent and violent crime rates are correlated.
Show some evidence of this. I just gave you a counter example. Property crime is huge in SF and it never gets anywhere near the "most violent cities in America" lists, it's well below its weight in that regard.
Maybe SF was skewed towards property crime, but attracting all types of criminals at this point. It's not hard to imagine SF being a great place to locate to for violant criminals as well.
