9 ms·

There is still way too much crime in California and in the Bay Area in particular. Perhaps violent crime from juveniles is down; but my observation as a decade-

There is still way too much crime in California and in the Bay Area in particular. Perhaps violent crime from juveniles is down; but my observation as a decade-long SF resident is that crime overall is certainly not getting better, and it certainly seems to be getting worse. Muggings, break-ins, theft, etc. are absolutely rampant. The authorities couldn't give two shits about preventing, investigating, or prosecuting it. Some anecdotes: I've personally been mugged at gunpoint in Oakland. I luckily managed to hold on to my cellphone and called 911 right away. The police showed up right away, but only cared to take a statement and left without going after the perpetrators, or even giving us a ride to somewhere safe. The only other time I called 911 because a woman collapsed on the street in front of me. She was bleeding from the head and making a scary-looking pool of blood. It took 45min for an ambulance to show up, in downtown San Francisco, around noon on a weekend day (no traffic). The authorities are entirely useless and unreliable. It's almost as if the article is equating less crime being prosecuted as less crime existing. There's a big issue with that. I feel like we need much tougher police that actually prevents and prosecutes all types of crime, including rampant petty theft, car break-ins, muggings, shootings (which are common), harassment by deranged drug-addicts all over the streets, etc. etc.

ams6110 8y ago
Preventing that kind of street crime requires Guilani-style "stop and frisk" police work that I would guess most people in San Francisco would not tolerate for a day.
- tomjakubowski 8y ago
  When NYPD did a "work slowdown" and stopped "proactive policing" because they were mad about Eric Garner protests, major crimes went down: https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-proactive-policing-crime-20170925-story.html https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-proacti...
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - dmix 8y ago
    I’m curious if how much of that has to do with the police constantly disrupting low level drug dealing. Nothing more dangerous than a bunch of desperate low level drug dealers and junkies. It’s almost better to let them operate and focus the resources on major operations and violent crime.
nradov 8y ago
Some of this may be impact from Proposition 47 in 2014. Law enforcement officers have told me that they're no longer motivated to follow up on minor crimes because the criminals are no longer prosecuted. (I don't know whether their perceptions are accurate or not, it's just anecdotal reports.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_California_Proposition_47#Impact_on_crime_rates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_California_Proposition_47...
- int_19h 8y ago
  This says that they were reclassified as misdemeanors rather than felonies, which is not at all the same as decriminalized.
  - nradov 8y ago
    In many cases prosecutors just don't bother with misdemeanors, or offer a plea bargain with minimal sentence.
Reedx 8y ago
In SF at least, violent crime - including gun violence - is way down. With the lowest rates in 50 years. https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/Killings-violent-crime-in-San-Francisco-drop-to-13485344.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/Killings-violent-c... It's crazy how bad car break-ins are though. If you park outside overnight, it's not exactly surprising to wake up to a smashed window. Even if you don't have anything in the car to steal.
- api 8y ago
  It's the same in LA. Violent crime is way down but your car is gonna have a bad time.
bjourne 8y ago
> It's almost as if the article is equating less crime being prosecuted as less crime existing. There's a big issue with that. No, doing that would be silly. Criminologists look at both prosecuted crime, crime reported in victim surveys, number of arrests and incarcerations and a whole host of other metrics before drawing conclusions. The good news (which no one ever believes :)) is that they all point in the same direction. See this fact sheet f.e https://www.ncjrs.gov/ovc_archives/ncvrw/2017/images/en_artwork/Fact_Sheets/2017NCVRW_CrimeTrends_508.pdf https://www.ncjrs.gov/ovc_archives/ncvrw/2017/images/en_artw...
- tokyodude 8y ago
  as a counter point according to this podcast there is a perverse incentive to under report so there may be a good reason not to believe. https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/128-the-crime-machine-part-ii#episode-player https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/128-the-crime-machine-...
- Judgmentality 8y ago
  I admittedly have not looked at the data in detail and maybe it's the cynic in me, but how much of that decrease in crime can be attributed to manipulating the data? For instance, in San Francisco, car breakins have been reclassified as a misdemeanor. And obviously this is anecdotal, but residents are so blasé towards the complete fucking shitshow that is SFPD (I actually rewrote that into something much gentler) that they don't even bother calling the police or reporting crimes. If it's gotten so bad that people don't even report crimes, and police make it difficult to report crimes (there are many stories about this - yes it's anecdotal), how can we expect the statistics to mean anything? The only thing I know for certain is I've been assaulted by homeless people more than once, including one who pushed me into traffic. After the first few times calling the police and having nobody show up for 30+ minutes I just stopped bothering. I've also seen someone rob a store while a cop was stationed at the entrance of the store for the sole purpose of stopping theft - the cop literally shrugged and said "what am I gonna do, chase after him?" Obviously I'm biased based on my experiences and I'm referring to the microcosm that is SF, but I absolutely unequivocally do not trust anything that comes from the SFPD. And I see no reason to trust other police departments either. For something a little less anecdotal, here's an interesting podcast that basically says once cops started tracking crime they just stopped reporting it. Goodhart's Law in action. https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/127-the-crime-machine-part-i https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/127-the-crime-machine-...
almost_usual 8y ago
>I feel like we need much tougher police that actually prevents and prosecutes all types of crime, including rampant petty theft, car break-ins, muggings, shootings (which are common), harassment by deranged drug-addicts all over the streets, etc. etc. Pushing the police to be 'tougher' while the community is critical of their every move isn't going to happen. It also takes about 7 years until an SFPD officer makes the salary of an entry level Software Engineer in San Francisco. You get what you pay for.
- rubicon33 8y ago
  So tired of all this fucking comparison to software salaries. I should just start doing a shitty job too, and complain that it's because I don't get payed as much as doctors. The bigger problem is that these police officers can't afford to live in the city which they work. Think for a second, about how that might affect your desire to "clean up" crime. Who's neighborhood is it? Certainly isn't yours. It's not that software engineers are payed too much, it's that it costs too much to live here.
  - anigbrowl 8y ago
    Software engineers have driven the rent up for everyone else but can't provide new housing stock, so they get fleeced by the class of commercial property owners who invest in the startups the software engineers work for. Unfortunately the software engineers have little incentive to disrupt a property market that is mostly working OK for them. The software engineers are being paid to make tools which concentrate more and more wealth, but that's OK because those people all have shitty jobs so their lives don't matter, and once they have fallen below a certain level of economic productivity they can die, because market economics is the source of all human goodness and anyone who does not prosper in the market deserves to suffer.
  - roel_v 8y ago
    "It's not that software engineers are payed too much, it's that it costs too much to live here. " One follows from the other, doesn't it...
EliRivers 8y ago
Directing policing based on how people feel rather than evidence is a recipe for getting it wrong (and, I suspect, is often how it does go wrong). That said, the same is true of pretty much everything.
- scotty79 8y ago
  That depends what harms society more. Perception of unsafety or actual crimes.
mc32 8y ago
Things are so misaligned Haight-Ashbury had then a worse case of runaways/vagrants/addicts/panhandlers. There were laws already on the books to deal with this (loitering, drug use in the open, vagrancy, etc.,) but thd police still could not do much as prosecutors were loath to apply existing laws. They were so fed up progressive supe Ross Murakami introduced new laws specifically aimed at the loiterers and even with that it was hard. But after years I think the sitch in the Height is better than it used to be. It’s infuriating though that laws exist but aren’t used so additional laws have to be introduced (sit-lie laws).
- rhizome 8y ago
  In what way(s) is/are loitering, vagrancy, and/or drug use harmful to you such that you would call the police about them? "Haight."
  - hellllllllooo 8y ago
    Right. Just because you something makes you feel uncomfortable doesn't mean someone should be arrested for it. Criminalizing homelessness and poverty is not a humane solution and we already have laws for actual crimes.
    - wahern 8y ago
      Neither is a permissive attitude that leaves the homeless, primarily the mentally ill and hard core drug addicts in the SF case, to literally rot on the streets. Fairness and justice do not require relinquishing all expectations of socially normative behavior. There are plenty of freedom utopias around the world where libertarians can live tax free and nonconformists can escape the bondage of community morals, but few of them are places people _choose_ to live.
      - hellllllllooo 8y ago
        > Neither is a permissive attitude that leaves the homeless, primarily the mentally ill and hard core drug addicts in the SF case, to literally rot on the streets. No, I'd invest in helping them with the wealth in SF rather than criminalizing people for trying to survive. 60% of the city agreed by voting for Prop C.
kyleblarson 8y ago
The number of cars with smashed windows that I see on my morning runs in SF is insane. In some cases it will be an entire block of cars. And I run in the 'nice' neighborhoods.
hellllllllooo 8y ago
Counter anecdote since that's what you're doing: I have lived in downtown Oakland for 5 years and have had zero issues with any kind of crime. Statistics are more valuable than the weight either of us put on our good/bad personal experiences. Mixing up homelessness and adiction with serious violent crime in a single statement and saying both need to be dealt with by increasing policing is an very imprecise and inefficient way of addressing different issues.
ww520 8y ago
A whole bunch crimes have been re-classified to skew the statistics to make things more rosy.
maxxxxx 8y ago
"It's almost as if the article is equating less crime being prosecuted as less crime existing." That's how they ran Baltimore for a while. Great improvement in metrics make a good show even if the real situation is not good. Or go the other way: arrest more and more people for more and more trivial offenses. Number of arrests going up that way looks good but in reality it's useless.
- irishcoffee 8y ago
  Looking at Baltimore as a good example of how to do anything right is a bad idea. During the riots it took the then-mayor much longer than it should have to reach out to the Governor for help. Baltimore politics are an absolute disaster. I suppose this is quite possibly the case for every US city, I've never considered that before. Say what you will about Ed Norris, but he was an incredibly effective commissioner until he was removed from office.
  - adventured 8y ago
    > Baltimore politics are an absolute disaster. I suppose this is quite possibly the case for every US city, I've never considered that before. Baltimore is in a class with about half a dozen other US cities for being an exceptional disaster. The entire city should be federalized and cleaned up top to bottom. Compare it to functional or semi-functional, prosperous cities like Seattle, San Diego, Austin, New York, Boston or even Boise Idaho. Seattle had 19 murders in 2016. Baltimore had 318, or 51 per 100k (with a slightly smaller population than Seattle). That's almost a warzone. It compares to cartel ravaged countries in Latin America. There's no excuse for it and nobody will do anything about it. There's only one possible solution given the extreme incompetence: the federal authorities must step in, take over the city and stop the slaughter no matter the financial expense.
    - irishcoffee 8y ago
      I wholeheartedly agree.
    - moosey 8y ago
anigbrowl 8y ago
Having been here much longer, crime seems very light to me now compared to how it was in the 90s. There is a lot of property crime because it's much more financially precarious now and rents are astronomical while housing stock has been decreasing. I feel like we need much tougher police [...] Maybe you would enjoy living in Singapore or some other more paternalistic and repressive society.
danso 8y ago
> It's almost as if the article is equating less crime being prosecuted as less crime existing. There's a big issue with that. No, the article is about how arrests of juveniles have vastly declined, but state and county officials haven't adjusted juvenile facility availability (e.g. shutting underused facilities down), resulting in some counties paying as much as $500K/yr per juvenile detained, up from less than $200K. As someone who has also been robbed at gunpoint, I empathize a bit with your experience. But it is so tangential to the actual topic of the article -- you suffering from a violent crime has very little to do with whether California is overspending on unneeded juvenile detention infrastructure.
- kenneth 8y ago
  Note I didn't say state any opinion about how we should deal with juvenile violent offenders. What I take issue with articles making it seem like things are all rosy these days in California when I live in one of the wealthiest cities in the world which has an unbelievably rampant crime problem and woefully ineffective governance regarding this issue (and most other issues, really). Also, I also take issue with the article alluding to the idea that a shift away from prosecuting crime is a good thing. I can see the problem with those policies in my city on a daily basis. But at this point, I've given up on SF and I'm moving out. I've stuck it out here for too long and things aren't getting better, they're getting worse. I don't see the light at the end of the tunnel. So, so long…
  - tjr225 8y ago
    If you think crime is rampant in SF just wait til you get to the Midwest. Property crime might be a pain in the ass but I'll take it any day over the constant violence of where I came from.
joe_the_user 8y ago
There is still way too much crime in California and in the Bay Area in particular. Perhaps violent crime from juveniles is down; but my observation as a decade-long SF resident is that crime overall is certainly not getting better, and it certainly seems to be getting worse. Theoretically any crime is too much and some amount of crime is inevitable given human beings. I mean, I was mugged twice, once beaten unconscious, saw someone murdered across the street from apartment, scared away someone who pulled out a gun and tried to mug me, and witnessed numerous other crimes in 90s San Francisco. It's almost as if the article is equating less crime being prosecuted as less crime existing. I'd believe statistic and neither your nor my anecdotes and statistics say violent crime is down everywhere. Statistics are taken from reports as well as prosecutions btw. And police have never had more power than today but police very seldom directly stop crime, just prosecute it afterwards.
- wallace_f 8y ago
  I'm sorry that happened. I remember in Boston, a couple guys walked out of a bar, one pointed at me, and after some quick talking, realized I had to either fight or flight, and they pursued me. They both looked pretty muscular, and I dont know why they targeted me. I called the police, let them know I was running, and the operator told me "OK maybe we will send someone" and hung up.
  - joe_the_user 8y ago
    Another story even earlier, when I live in Oakland in the 80s. One day, walking over a deserted overpass, I passed by another pedestrian who I somehow sensed vague hostility from. As we passed, quick as a wink, he punched me but just as quickly I instinctively blocked his punch (my history of playground fights came in handy). He simply continued walking as did I. Which is to say my anecdotal experiences agree with the statistics - violence has been on the decline in the US for a while. Remember, this is a country with a considerable "frontier history" where violence on all sides was common.
    - bracobama 8y ago
docker_up 8y ago
I tried calling 911 in the peninsula because I saw a drunk driver on 101. I tried calling 6 times but it never got through and finally I gave up. In SF, a group of youths stuffed their backpacks with things from Walgreens and ran off, but started walking about a block away because they knew the store owners wouldn't do anything about it, and because even if they got caught nothing would happen. I believe it's called Prop 47 that decriminalized theft under $1000 and these are now the unintended consequences. It's seriously a joke here right now. The only reason protecting you against crime is just dumb luck. If you are a victim of crime, you will get no help from the cops or the government unless it's a "high profile" crime but you're probably already dead then.

ams6110 8y ago

Preventing that kind of street crime requires Guilani-style "stop and frisk" police work that I would guess most people in San Francisco would not tolerate for a day.

tomjakubowski 8y ago
When NYPD did a "work slowdown" and stopped "proactive policing" because they were mad about Eric Garner protests, major crimes went down: https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-proactive-policing-crime-20170925-story.html https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-proacti...
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- dmix 8y ago
  I’m curious if how much of that has to do with the police constantly disrupting low level drug dealing. Nothing more dangerous than a bunch of desperate low level drug dealers and junkies. It’s almost better to let them operate and focus the resources on major operations and violent crime.

nradov 8y ago

Some of this may be impact from Proposition 47 in 2014. Law enforcement officers have told me that they're no longer motivated to follow up on minor crimes because the criminals are no longer prosecuted. (I don't know whether their perceptions are accurate or not, it's just anecdotal reports.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_California_Proposition_47#Impact_on_crime_rates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_California_Proposition_47...

int_19h 8y ago
This says that they were reclassified as misdemeanors rather than felonies, which is not at all the same as decriminalized.
- nradov 8y ago
  In many cases prosecutors just don't bother with misdemeanors, or offer a plea bargain with minimal sentence.

Reedx 8y ago

In SF at least, violent crime - including gun violence - is way down. With the lowest rates in 50 years. https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/Killings-violent-crime-in-San-Francisco-drop-to-13485344.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/Killings-violent-c... It's crazy how bad car break-ins are though. If you park outside overnight, it's not exactly surprising to wake up to a smashed window. Even if you don't have anything in the car to steal.

api 8y ago
It's the same in LA. Violent crime is way down but your car is gonna have a bad time.

bjourne 8y ago

> It's almost as if the article is equating less crime being prosecuted as less crime existing. There's a big issue with that. No, doing that would be silly. Criminologists look at both prosecuted crime, crime reported in victim surveys, number of arrests and incarcerations and a whole host of other metrics before drawing conclusions. The good news (which no one ever believes :)) is that they all point in the same direction. See this fact sheet f.e https://www.ncjrs.gov/ovc_archives/ncvrw/2017/images/en_artwork/Fact_Sheets/2017NCVRW_CrimeTrends_508.pdf https://www.ncjrs.gov/ovc_archives/ncvrw/2017/images/en_artw...

tokyodude 8y ago
as a counter point according to this podcast there is a perverse incentive to under report so there may be a good reason not to believe. https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/128-the-crime-machine-part-ii#episode-player https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/128-the-crime-machine-...
Judgmentality 8y ago
I admittedly have not looked at the data in detail and maybe it's the cynic in me, but how much of that decrease in crime can be attributed to manipulating the data? For instance, in San Francisco, car breakins have been reclassified as a misdemeanor. And obviously this is anecdotal, but residents are so blasé towards the complete fucking shitshow that is SFPD (I actually rewrote that into something much gentler) that they don't even bother calling the police or reporting crimes. If it's gotten so bad that people don't even report crimes, and police make it difficult to report crimes (there are many stories about this - yes it's anecdotal), how can we expect the statistics to mean anything? The only thing I know for certain is I've been assaulted by homeless people more than once, including one who pushed me into traffic. After the first few times calling the police and having nobody show up for 30+ minutes I just stopped bothering. I've also seen someone rob a store while a cop was stationed at the entrance of the store for the sole purpose of stopping theft - the cop literally shrugged and said "what am I gonna do, chase after him?" Obviously I'm biased based on my experiences and I'm referring to the microcosm that is SF, but I absolutely unequivocally do not trust anything that comes from the SFPD. And I see no reason to trust other police departments either. For something a little less anecdotal, here's an interesting podcast that basically says once cops started tracking crime they just stopped reporting it. Goodhart's Law in action. https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/127-the-crime-machine-part-i https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/127-the-crime-machine-...

almost_usual 8y ago

>I feel like we need much tougher police that actually prevents and prosecutes all types of crime, including rampant petty theft, car break-ins, muggings, shootings (which are common), harassment by deranged drug-addicts all over the streets, etc. etc. Pushing the police to be 'tougher' while the community is critical of their every move isn't going to happen. It also takes about 7 years until an SFPD officer makes the salary of an entry level Software Engineer in San Francisco. You get what you pay for.

rubicon33 8y ago
So tired of all this fucking comparison to software salaries. I should just start doing a shitty job too, and complain that it's because I don't get payed as much as doctors. The bigger problem is that these police officers can't afford to live in the city which they work. Think for a second, about how that might affect your desire to "clean up" crime. Who's neighborhood is it? Certainly isn't yours. It's not that software engineers are payed too much, it's that it costs too much to live here.
- anigbrowl 8y ago
  Software engineers have driven the rent up for everyone else but can't provide new housing stock, so they get fleeced by the class of commercial property owners who invest in the startups the software engineers work for. Unfortunately the software engineers have little incentive to disrupt a property market that is mostly working OK for them. The software engineers are being paid to make tools which concentrate more and more wealth, but that's OK because those people all have shitty jobs so their lives don't matter, and once they have fallen below a certain level of economic productivity they can die, because market economics is the source of all human goodness and anyone who does not prosper in the market deserves to suffer.
- roel_v 8y ago
  "It's not that software engineers are payed too much, it's that it costs too much to live here. " One follows from the other, doesn't it...

EliRivers 8y ago

Directing policing based on how people feel rather than evidence is a recipe for getting it wrong (and, I suspect, is often how it does go wrong). That said, the same is true of pretty much everything.

scotty79 8y ago
That depends what harms society more. Perception of unsafety or actual crimes.

mc32 8y ago

Things are so misaligned Haight-Ashbury had then a worse case of runaways/vagrants/addicts/panhandlers. There were laws already on the books to deal with this (loitering, drug use in the open, vagrancy, etc.,) but thd police still could not do much as prosecutors were loath to apply existing laws. They were so fed up progressive supe Ross Murakami introduced new laws specifically aimed at the loiterers and even with that it was hard. But after years I think the sitch in the Height is better than it used to be. It’s infuriating though that laws exist but aren’t used so additional laws have to be introduced (sit-lie laws).

rhizome 8y ago
In what way(s) is/are loitering, vagrancy, and/or drug use harmful to you such that you would call the police about them? "Haight."
- hellllllllooo 8y ago
  Right. Just because you something makes you feel uncomfortable doesn't mean someone should be arrested for it. Criminalizing homelessness and poverty is not a humane solution and we already have laws for actual crimes.
  - wahern 8y ago
    Neither is a permissive attitude that leaves the homeless, primarily the mentally ill and hard core drug addicts in the SF case, to literally rot on the streets. Fairness and justice do not require relinquishing all expectations of socially normative behavior. There are plenty of freedom utopias around the world where libertarians can live tax free and nonconformists can escape the bondage of community morals, but few of them are places people _choose_ to live.
    - hellllllllooo 8y ago
      > Neither is a permissive attitude that leaves the homeless, primarily the mentally ill and hard core drug addicts in the SF case, to literally rot on the streets. No, I'd invest in helping them with the wealth in SF rather than criminalizing people for trying to survive. 60% of the city agreed by voting for Prop C.

kyleblarson 8y ago

The number of cars with smashed windows that I see on my morning runs in SF is insane. In some cases it will be an entire block of cars. And I run in the 'nice' neighborhoods.

hellllllllooo 8y ago

Counter anecdote since that's what you're doing: I have lived in downtown Oakland for 5 years and have had zero issues with any kind of crime. Statistics are more valuable than the weight either of us put on our good/bad personal experiences. Mixing up homelessness and adiction with serious violent crime in a single statement and saying both need to be dealt with by increasing policing is an very imprecise and inefficient way of addressing different issues.

ww520 8y ago

A whole bunch crimes have been re-classified to skew the statistics to make things more rosy.

maxxxxx 8y ago

"It's almost as if the article is equating less crime being prosecuted as less crime existing." That's how they ran Baltimore for a while. Great improvement in metrics make a good show even if the real situation is not good. Or go the other way: arrest more and more people for more and more trivial offenses. Number of arrests going up that way looks good but in reality it's useless.

irishcoffee 8y ago
Looking at Baltimore as a good example of how to do anything right is a bad idea. During the riots it took the then-mayor much longer than it should have to reach out to the Governor for help. Baltimore politics are an absolute disaster. I suppose this is quite possibly the case for every US city, I've never considered that before. Say what you will about Ed Norris, but he was an incredibly effective commissioner until he was removed from office.
- adventured 8y ago
  > Baltimore politics are an absolute disaster. I suppose this is quite possibly the case for every US city, I've never considered that before. Baltimore is in a class with about half a dozen other US cities for being an exceptional disaster. The entire city should be federalized and cleaned up top to bottom. Compare it to functional or semi-functional, prosperous cities like Seattle, San Diego, Austin, New York, Boston or even Boise Idaho. Seattle had 19 murders in 2016. Baltimore had 318, or 51 per 100k (with a slightly smaller population than Seattle). That's almost a warzone. It compares to cartel ravaged countries in Latin America. There's no excuse for it and nobody will do anything about it. There's only one possible solution given the extreme incompetence: the federal authorities must step in, take over the city and stop the slaughter no matter the financial expense.
  - irishcoffee 8y ago
    I wholeheartedly agree.
  - moosey 8y ago

anigbrowl 8y ago

Having been here much longer, crime seems very light to me now compared to how it was in the 90s. There is a lot of property crime because it's much more financially precarious now and rents are astronomical while housing stock has been decreasing. I feel like we need much tougher police [...] Maybe you would enjoy living in Singapore or some other more paternalistic and repressive society.

danso 8y ago

> It's almost as if the article is equating less crime being prosecuted as less crime existing. There's a big issue with that. No, the article is about how arrests of juveniles have vastly declined, but state and county officials haven't adjusted juvenile facility availability (e.g. shutting underused facilities down), resulting in some counties paying as much as $500K/yr per juvenile detained, up from less than $200K. As someone who has also been robbed at gunpoint, I empathize a bit with your experience. But it is so tangential to the actual topic of the article -- you suffering from a violent crime has very little to do with whether California is overspending on unneeded juvenile detention infrastructure.

kenneth 8y ago
Note I didn't say state any opinion about how we should deal with juvenile violent offenders. What I take issue with articles making it seem like things are all rosy these days in California when I live in one of the wealthiest cities in the world which has an unbelievably rampant crime problem and woefully ineffective governance regarding this issue (and most other issues, really). Also, I also take issue with the article alluding to the idea that a shift away from prosecuting crime is a good thing. I can see the problem with those policies in my city on a daily basis. But at this point, I've given up on SF and I'm moving out. I've stuck it out here for too long and things aren't getting better, they're getting worse. I don't see the light at the end of the tunnel. So, so long…
- tjr225 8y ago
  If you think crime is rampant in SF just wait til you get to the Midwest. Property crime might be a pain in the ass but I'll take it any day over the constant violence of where I came from.

joe_the_user 8y ago

wallace_f 8y ago
I'm sorry that happened. I remember in Boston, a couple guys walked out of a bar, one pointed at me, and after some quick talking, realized I had to either fight or flight, and they pursued me. They both looked pretty muscular, and I dont know why they targeted me. I called the police, let them know I was running, and the operator told me "OK maybe we will send someone" and hung up.
- joe_the_user 8y ago
  Another story even earlier, when I live in Oakland in the 80s. One day, walking over a deserted overpass, I passed by another pedestrian who I somehow sensed vague hostility from. As we passed, quick as a wink, he punched me but just as quickly I instinctively blocked his punch (my history of playground fights came in handy). He simply continued walking as did I. Which is to say my anecdotal experiences agree with the statistics - violence has been on the decline in the US for a while. Remember, this is a country with a considerable "frontier history" where violence on all sides was common.
  - bracobama 8y ago

docker_up 8y ago

I tried calling 911 in the peninsula because I saw a drunk driver on 101. I tried calling 6 times but it never got through and finally I gave up. In SF, a group of youths stuffed their backpacks with things from Walgreens and ran off, but started walking about a block away because they knew the store owners wouldn't do anything about it, and because even if they got caught nothing would happen. I believe it's called Prop 47 that decriminalized theft under $1000 and these are now the unintended consequences. It's seriously a joke here right now. The only reason protecting you against crime is just dumb luck. If you are a victim of crime, you will get no help from the cops or the government unless it's a "high profile" crime but you're probably already dead then.