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It's not about criminalizing poverty. It's about trespassing and having campers at your house 24/7/365 who are criminals. It's an awful drain to your quality of

It's not about criminalizing poverty. It's about trespassing and having campers at your house 24/7/365 who are criminals. It's an awful drain to your quality of life. Stop demonizing people for not thinking it's "progressive" to let people crap on the streets and shoot up in public. I voted for Bernie, but I live in SF and I see how much money we waste by not addressing the problem directly and in more common sense ways. Just allowing criminals to take over the city and make everyone else feel unsafe is just not fair.

freshcatch_ 8y ago
Might want to update your user name, Diogenes slept rough
newnewpdro 8y ago
San Francisco is neglecting to enforce existing laws regularly broken in the open by folks largely overlapping with the homeless population. I've mentioned this before on this forum. At one point when I worked in the mission we watched daily a homeless encampment operate a bicycle chop shop in broad daylight from our second-floor lunch room. The police did absolutely nothing until it had been operating for well over a month. They would drive by occasionally, doing nothing more than slowing down, while a pile of stolen bicycles and bicycle parts sat next to the tents covered by nothing more than a tarp. We saw a constant flow of people coming with newly stolen bicycles and leaving with rebuilt permutations presumably to be sold on craigslist. They didn't even try to hide it. Apparently the police stopped bothering to arrest people for petty crimes because nothing would come of it. The criminals would be immediately released back on the streets. That has nothing to do with tolerating homelessness and some people living on the streets. We don't need to make homelessness illegal to arrest people operating a bicycle chop shop in broad daylight. Sometimes I wonder if the city is deliberately neglecting to police crimes being committed in broad daylight independent of homelessness to further an agenda interested in criminalizing homelessness. If they can let things get so bad that everyone conflates homelessness with rampant uncrontrolled crime and destruction of the city, then it becomes much easier to garner support for such laws in a panic. The police should do their jobs in at least enforcing the existing laws and we should be punishing criminals. You could clean up the homeless problem in San Francisco pretty easily by simply enforcing laws and incarcerating criminals who happen to also be homeless. It's exceptionally easy when they're operating out in the oppen without even a roof and walls to hide behind.
- diogenescynic 8y ago
  Oh I see the chop shops too. There’s one guy downtown with one of those huge flat shopping carts from Costco that has an electric angle grinder. He has literally cut the locks off dozens of bikes on Market street and the cops do absolutely nothing. It’s surreal. No other city this rich is living in conditions like this. Something is broken in our society that is allowing this level of apathy. No one bats an eye at most of this stuff anymore, but it’s absolutely not something I am willing to tolerate as “normal” and that we can’t do better... The police don’t enforce the law because there’s no point and the chief of police tell them no to unless they are a risk to others or themselves. Then there’s no penalty to not pay the fines and even if they don’t show up to court they never get jail time, DAs rarely prosecute (unless violence occurs), juries rarely convict, and even when they do the judges here make it so the consequences are meaningless. I really don’t think it’s the cops who are the problem. Their hands are tied by the incompetent politicians we send to City Hall. Although I really don’t understand why cops don’t walk a beat or do any kind of foot patrols in the worst areas... there’s no excuse for that. I agree, we need to enforce the law. I’d even go so far as paying another jail in a cheaper area to hold all of the criminals so that they aren’t here where it’s prhobitively expensive. Good luck finding a city that would want to deal with our criminals though.

freshcatch_ 8y ago

Might want to update your user name, Diogenes slept rough

newnewpdro 8y ago

San Francisco is neglecting to enforce existing laws regularly broken in the open by folks largely overlapping with the homeless population. I've mentioned this before on this forum. At one point when I worked in the mission we watched daily a homeless encampment operate a bicycle chop shop in broad daylight from our second-floor lunch room. The police did absolutely nothing until it had been operating for well over a month. They would drive by occasionally, doing nothing more than slowing down, while a pile of stolen bicycles and bicycle parts sat next to the tents covered by nothing more than a tarp. We saw a constant flow of people coming with newly stolen bicycles and leaving with rebuilt permutations presumably to be sold on craigslist. They didn't even try to hide it. Apparently the police stopped bothering to arrest people for petty crimes because nothing would come of it. The criminals would be immediately released back on the streets. That has nothing to do with tolerating homelessness and some people living on the streets. We don't need to make homelessness illegal to arrest people operating a bicycle chop shop in broad daylight. Sometimes I wonder if the city is deliberately neglecting to police crimes being committed in broad daylight independent of homelessness to further an agenda interested in criminalizing homelessness. If they can let things get so bad that everyone conflates homelessness with rampant uncrontrolled crime and destruction of the city, then it becomes much easier to garner support for such laws in a panic. The police should do their jobs in at least enforcing the existing laws and we should be punishing criminals. You could clean up the homeless problem in San Francisco pretty easily by simply enforcing laws and incarcerating criminals who happen to also be homeless. It's exceptionally easy when they're operating out in the oppen without even a roof and walls to hide behind.

diogenescynic 8y ago
Oh I see the chop shops too. There’s one guy downtown with one of those huge flat shopping carts from Costco that has an electric angle grinder. He has literally cut the locks off dozens of bikes on Market street and the cops do absolutely nothing. It’s surreal. No other city this rich is living in conditions like this. Something is broken in our society that is allowing this level of apathy. No one bats an eye at most of this stuff anymore, but it’s absolutely not something I am willing to tolerate as “normal” and that we can’t do better... The police don’t enforce the law because there’s no point and the chief of police tell them no to unless they are a risk to others or themselves. Then there’s no penalty to not pay the fines and even if they don’t show up to court they never get jail time, DAs rarely prosecute (unless violence occurs), juries rarely convict, and even when they do the judges here make it so the consequences are meaningless. I really don’t think it’s the cops who are the problem. Their hands are tied by the incompetent politicians we send to City Hall. Although I really don’t understand why cops don’t walk a beat or do any kind of foot patrols in the worst areas... there’s no excuse for that. I agree, we need to enforce the law. I’d even go so far as paying another jail in a cheaper area to hold all of the criminals so that they aren’t here where it’s prhobitively expensive. Good luck finding a city that would want to deal with our criminals though.