8 ms·

San Francisco mayor pledges more police, safety measures

70 points by Pigalowda 5y ago

rahimnathwani 5y ago
Discussed yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29560230 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29560230
complianceowl 5y ago
Hypocrites. Leftist one percenters love to live in and impose their misguided, holier-than-though, race-baiting, inflammatory ideological fantasies on society; the socialist, progressive fantasy that they assured everyone would lead to utopia has led to San Fransisco becoming a third-world city. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmOIQv0yu-U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmOIQv0yu-U
- indy 5y ago
  The question is, in the face of this failure will any of these progressives change their worldview? My pessimistic answer is no, they are insulated enough from the consequences of their actions that they will continue with more policies that garner approval from their social group.
  - blahblahblahbro 5y ago
    Yes our world view should be "RESPECT MAH AUTHORITAH" You offer no solutions, you just bitch and moan that people don't conform to your white-wing politics. Boot liking Rimmer.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- RedBeetDeadpool 5y ago
  They are so deluded they don't even realize the only reason they do it is to virtue signal how much better they are than everyone else, which is just another contest to come out on top in the pecking order.
- blahblahblahbro 5y ago
  [flagged]
- nemothekid 5y ago
  Since when are libertarians leftists? Police privatization is a libertarian thing
inglor_cz 5y ago
Once upon I time a read a saying whose exact form I no longer remember, but the gist was in "Whoever is meek to the cruel ones, is cruel to the meek." Living in unsafe places is one of the worst horrors of poverty. I think there is a subset of progressives that does not want to accept the idea that some people really are psychopathic predators. Or perhaps only limits that idea to the rich, bankers etc., while finding all kind of excuses for anyone else. There is no denying that a lot of successful psychopaths accrue at the top of the societal ladder, but the violent ones often inhibit the bottom, terrorizing the rest. When I was a single mother's kid in the early 1990s in a country with a rudimentary welfare system, I was poor-ish enough to be in the bottom fifth of the society, and I knew plenty of similar people. It is my experience that mere lack of money won't turn an otherwise kind person into a violent criminal. They may be driven to steal or cheat, but deliberately injuring or killing other people, for that you need to be quite a bad apple yourself.
- david38 5y ago
  It’s long known that poverty in itself doesn’t cause crime. I also was on the bottom rungs when I was very young. Poverty next to wealth does. Suddenly that poor but adequate lifestyle isn’t enough when the guy down the street is driving a Porsche. We are in a pretty extreme wealth gap and we celebrate wealth too much. On top of that, people confuse being soft on crime with helping the poor. Poor people don’t break into cars to eat. Criminals break into cars.
  - dont__panic 5y ago
    Furthermore, being soft on crime often hurts the poor, because they're the most at risk to criminal behavior. If you're poor, you can't afford a security guard, or a fancy home security system, or a Ring camera when you're away from your home. The rich can handle having their wallet or phone stolen -- it's just an inconvenience. But if you're poor, the fees and time associated with recovering from that are a monumental burden that could break your ability to put food on the table. Enforcing laws gives comfort to everyone because they know we're all on a level playing field. But once you start ignoring laws and letting people off, suddenly lawbreakers can get ahead while law abiders fall behind. Let's try to punish criminals instead of rewarding them.
amitkgupta84 5y ago
Based on who San Franciscans has been electing, it seems too many live in world of progressive delusion far removed from reality. Reality got too real, now elected officials react. If only the citizens of SF could bring themselves to support and elect politicians who would’ve nipped this tragedy, years in the making, in the bud. Breed talks about the need to change course now — SF needed to change course long ago.
- lockdownson 5y ago
  [flagged]
- zepto 5y ago
  Who are these ‘politicians who would’ve nipped this tragedy, years in the making, in the bud.’? This isn’t meant to be a trick question. I simply haven’t seen any obvious choices.
  - amitkgupta84 5y ago
    Good question. I didn't mean this to refer to a specific politician, I meant that SF isn't the kind of place where such a politician could thrive. I think in a healthy place, you would see a healthy balance of right and left politicians who genuinely have to contend with one another. I would expect conservative politicians to win elections when things like crime and quality of life start to go the wrong direction. I don't think the delusional climate in SF is conducive to this healthy balance. My recollection of the election when Breed won was there was one Republican, and I don't think he got many votes. Ideally there would be multiple Republican and Democratic candidates, with strong and worthwhile candidates from each party, each getting a decent share of votes. I recall the two other popular Democratic candidates competing with Breed banded together (don't remember what that meant exactly, I think they were recommending voters to vote for both of them in their ranked choices) and their platform for dealing with homelessness was to give them all cleaning supplies and have them clean the streets of SF, thereby killing two birds with one stone (giving the homeless productive, gainful occupation and dealing with all the litter, needles, human waste, etc. on the streets). I can't think of a more out-of-touch idea than that, but this was the #2 choice for San Franciscans. I think anyone sensible would have simply asked for what Breed is now proposing to do. Voicing that opinion in SF years ago would've made you a pariah. It's a common sense opinion if you're living in and observing reality, but that's simply not what SF culture has been about.
Kharvok 5y ago
piety contests have consequences
throwaway59553 5y ago
Now that SF didn't materialize as the Progressive Utopia they'd hoped for, they can always move to a different state, and vote the same way as they always did! This time it will work.
pelasaco 5y ago
I think it's understandable that politicians take wrong decisions, but how to hold them and their experts accountable for their acts/decisions?
- capdeck 5y ago
  I don't think people can make politicians accountable as long as primary incentives for those politicians are campaign contributions from corporations and wealthy donors. A politician only has motivation to do bare minimum not to lose elected office. As we have seen with CA governor - even utterly failed governance, mandate firings and senseless school closures do not sway the public enough. If _that_ can't do it, what else can? It seems that the only real way to vote in US is with your "legs" - i.e. move to another state (an option that countries like Austria do not even have :-( )
  - bko 5y ago
    > as long as primary incentives for those politicians are campaign contributions from corporations and wealthy donors I would imagine corporations funding politicians would want their businesses not be vandalized. I get some NIMBY policies are pushed by wealthy donors w/ real estate but that should be balanced out by developers. Something deeper is wrong. It's almost as these politicians are purposely destroying the vast amount of wealth built up over the years and letting in chaos.
    - xiphias2 5y ago
      Why wouldn't Amazon, Google and EBay want products to be stolen from their competitors and resold on their web site?
lockdownson 5y ago
Why don't they just force the criminals to wear masks? Why not just lockdown the criminals? Seriously, Breed and her army of fascist nazis all need to hang!
lockdownson 5y ago
3X more people died from drug overdose last year than all the fake "covid deaths" in the city of SF. Fuck every single SF politician and fuck those who voted for them. They all belong behind bars. FUCKING NAZIS!
lockdownson 5y ago
Breed refuses to wear a mask indoors and has been caught many multiple times. Now there is a state wide mask mandate again. Fuck this illegitimate piece of raging shit. I hope she catches aids and cancer and FUCKING DIES!
lockdownson 5y ago
Breed's boyfriend was arrested by the FBI for STEALING MONEY form the SF Clean Streets Program. She herself was fined for ethics violation. Breed belongs in San Quentin!
chriscjcj 5y ago
_NOW_ she's mad as hell and won't take it anymore? Why the sudden epiphany? Notably absent from the press conference: Chesa Boudin. Go ahead and arrest anyone you want. Boudin will have them back in society post haste.
renewiltord 5y ago
I’m very pro defund the police because I am very pro privatize the police. Local areas should be able to pay for their own police. A single police force cannot meet all requirements. The fact that we have defacto private police is exemplified by: - It is well known that wealthy neighborhoods get more patrols and faster responses. - It is well known that if your restaurant or store gives free stuff or otherwise encourages police you will be better protected - It is well known that opposing the police leads to poorer protection All of these are not just well known but often backed up by the police themselves. Any store that says they want more accountability for police will get told “when you’re in trouble, don’t expect to get the best response” and so on. There is a clear thing going on here. The police are clearly effectively privatized but the privatization is subsidized. Instead, let’s just remove the pretense. I think we should just have police be privatized and regulated and whatever group of people can pay for them should be able to pay for them. Open up the market and stop funding the police out of state money. That way, if you want to spend no money on the local police, you can defund them. If you want to spend lots of money you can fund them. If you want to band together with your neighborhood, go right ahead.
- Proven 5y ago
  Yes. But the problem is they don't give you your tax money back, so the service is gone but the involuntary subscription remains. Now what do you pay private security with, and why should the politicians get away with yet another form of theft in the first place? If they want to wind it down, they should return then money by lowering taxes.
danielvf 5y ago
One of the great strengths of America is that there are thousands of different municipalities, police departments, and justice systems. A given city can try out a new policy. It works, or even if it doesn't cause a breakdown in society, then it can spread, and all cities benefit. But if works badly, then that city takes the hit, and hopefully everyone else benefits by avoiding that. (The real world is of course messier than that simple model.) It's hard to parse the actual policy change from only mayor's remarks that are quoted in the article. It sounds like it's not heading to law and order policing, but rather trying to hybrid of increased surveillance and faster response times to some kinds of problems. I'm not sure it will work, but either if works or does not, another datapoint will have been explored.
legitster 5y ago
Crime is clearly only part of the problem. San Francisco is becoming a deeply unpleasant place to visit across the board. Large parts of the city stink of human refuse. The downtown core is a corporate wasteland. The other half of the city is a NIMBY wasteland. The public transit is embarrassing. Everyone is grumpy and pretentious. You don't feel safe walking across town alone. It's a city that seems to hate itself. It is constantly offering you a protective bubble - private cars, bars on rooftops, an apartment with a doorman. It seems the only people who earnestly enjoy SF are those who can afford to maintain their own world somewhere in it.
- pelasaco 5y ago
  I can just point out, that is the reality in the Latin/South America. We expected that South/Latin America would become like North America, but looks like it comes the other way around. What a mess can do a small buch of bad politicians!
- oceanghost 5y ago
  “ANDRÉ: . . . And when I was at Findhorn I met this extraordinary English tree expert who had devoted himself to saving trees, and he’d just got back from Washington lobbying to save the Redwoods. And he was eighty-four years old, and he always travels with a backpack because he never knows where he’s going to be tomorrow. And when I met him at Findhorn he said to me, “Where are you from?” And I said, “New York.” And he said, “Ah, New York, yes, that’s a very interesting place. Do you know a lot of New Yorkers who keep talking about the fact that they want to leave, but never do?” And I said, “Oh, yes.” And he said, “Why do you think they don’t leave?” And I gave him different banal theories. And he said, “Oh, I don’t think it’s that way at all.” He said, “I think that New York is the new model for the new concentration camp, where the camp has been built by the inmates themselves, and the inmates are the guards, and they have this pride in this thing that they’ve built—they’ve built their own prison—and so they exist in a state of schizophrenia where they are both guards and prisoners. And as a result they no longer have—having been lobotomized—the capacity to leave the prison they’ve made or even to see it as a prison.” And then he went into his pocket, and he took out a seed for a tree, and he said, “This is a pine tree.” And he put it in my hand. And he said, “Escape before it’s too late.” ― Wallace Shawn, My Dinner With André
blahblahblahbro 5y ago
[flagged]
smaryjerry 5y ago
What I’ve heard is the problem is not police lacking but that the AG no longer prosecutes criminals. It’s kind of catch and release and no punishment at all means crime just keeps going up. Police rarely stop crime in the act, they sometimes catch criminals after the fact, but that doesn’t even work if criminals never get prosecuted.
emmelaich 5y ago
That The Tenderloin is considered poor is amazing. Is it poor? How could it be, considering it's in middle of one of the richest cities in the world?

70 points by Pigalowda 5y ago

Discussed yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29560230 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29560230

Hypocrites. Leftist one percenters love to live in and impose their misguided, holier-than-though, race-baiting, inflammatory ideological fantasies on society; the socialist, progressive fantasy that they assured everyone would lead to utopia has led to San Fransisco becoming a third-world city. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmOIQv0yu-U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmOIQv0yu-U

indy 5y ago
The question is, in the face of this failure will any of these progressives change their worldview? My pessimistic answer is no, they are insulated enough from the consequences of their actions that they will continue with more policies that garner approval from their social group.
- blahblahblahbro 5y ago
  Yes our world view should be "RESPECT MAH AUTHORITAH" You offer no solutions, you just bitch and moan that people don't conform to your white-wing politics. Boot liking Rimmer.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
RedBeetDeadpool 5y ago
They are so deluded they don't even realize the only reason they do it is to virtue signal how much better they are than everyone else, which is just another contest to come out on top in the pecking order.
blahblahblahbro 5y ago
[flagged]
nemothekid 5y ago
Since when are libertarians leftists? Police privatization is a libertarian thing

inglor_cz 5y ago

Once upon I time a read a saying whose exact form I no longer remember, but the gist was in "Whoever is meek to the cruel ones, is cruel to the meek." Living in unsafe places is one of the worst horrors of poverty. I think there is a subset of progressives that does not want to accept the idea that some people really are psychopathic predators. Or perhaps only limits that idea to the rich, bankers etc., while finding all kind of excuses for anyone else. There is no denying that a lot of successful psychopaths accrue at the top of the societal ladder, but the violent ones often inhibit the bottom, terrorizing the rest. When I was a single mother's kid in the early 1990s in a country with a rudimentary welfare system, I was poor-ish enough to be in the bottom fifth of the society, and I knew plenty of similar people. It is my experience that mere lack of money won't turn an otherwise kind person into a violent criminal. They may be driven to steal or cheat, but deliberately injuring or killing other people, for that you need to be quite a bad apple yourself.

david38 5y ago
It’s long known that poverty in itself doesn’t cause crime. I also was on the bottom rungs when I was very young. Poverty next to wealth does. Suddenly that poor but adequate lifestyle isn’t enough when the guy down the street is driving a Porsche. We are in a pretty extreme wealth gap and we celebrate wealth too much. On top of that, people confuse being soft on crime with helping the poor. Poor people don’t break into cars to eat. Criminals break into cars.
- dont__panic 5y ago
  Furthermore, being soft on crime often hurts the poor, because they're the most at risk to criminal behavior. If you're poor, you can't afford a security guard, or a fancy home security system, or a Ring camera when you're away from your home. The rich can handle having their wallet or phone stolen -- it's just an inconvenience. But if you're poor, the fees and time associated with recovering from that are a monumental burden that could break your ability to put food on the table. Enforcing laws gives comfort to everyone because they know we're all on a level playing field. But once you start ignoring laws and letting people off, suddenly lawbreakers can get ahead while law abiders fall behind. Let's try to punish criminals instead of rewarding them.

amitkgupta84 5y ago

Based on who San Franciscans has been electing, it seems too many live in world of progressive delusion far removed from reality. Reality got too real, now elected officials react. If only the citizens of SF could bring themselves to support and elect politicians who would’ve nipped this tragedy, years in the making, in the bud. Breed talks about the need to change course now — SF needed to change course long ago.

lockdownson 5y ago
[flagged]
zepto 5y ago
Who are these ‘politicians who would’ve nipped this tragedy, years in the making, in the bud.’? This isn’t meant to be a trick question. I simply haven’t seen any obvious choices.
- amitkgupta84 5y ago
  Good question. I didn't mean this to refer to a specific politician, I meant that SF isn't the kind of place where such a politician could thrive. I think in a healthy place, you would see a healthy balance of right and left politicians who genuinely have to contend with one another. I would expect conservative politicians to win elections when things like crime and quality of life start to go the wrong direction. I don't think the delusional climate in SF is conducive to this healthy balance. My recollection of the election when Breed won was there was one Republican, and I don't think he got many votes. Ideally there would be multiple Republican and Democratic candidates, with strong and worthwhile candidates from each party, each getting a decent share of votes. I recall the two other popular Democratic candidates competing with Breed banded together (don't remember what that meant exactly, I think they were recommending voters to vote for both of them in their ranked choices) and their platform for dealing with homelessness was to give them all cleaning supplies and have them clean the streets of SF, thereby killing two birds with one stone (giving the homeless productive, gainful occupation and dealing with all the litter, needles, human waste, etc. on the streets). I can't think of a more out-of-touch idea than that, but this was the #2 choice for San Franciscans. I think anyone sensible would have simply asked for what Breed is now proposing to do. Voicing that opinion in SF years ago would've made you a pariah. It's a common sense opinion if you're living in and observing reality, but that's simply not what SF culture has been about.

Kharvok 5y ago

piety contests have consequences

throwaway59553 5y ago

Now that SF didn't materialize as the Progressive Utopia they'd hoped for, they can always move to a different state, and vote the same way as they always did! This time it will work.

pelasaco 5y ago

I think it's understandable that politicians take wrong decisions, but how to hold them and their experts accountable for their acts/decisions?

capdeck 5y ago
I don't think people can make politicians accountable as long as primary incentives for those politicians are campaign contributions from corporations and wealthy donors. A politician only has motivation to do bare minimum not to lose elected office. As we have seen with CA governor - even utterly failed governance, mandate firings and senseless school closures do not sway the public enough. If _that_ can't do it, what else can? It seems that the only real way to vote in US is with your "legs" - i.e. move to another state (an option that countries like Austria do not even have :-( )
- bko 5y ago
  > as long as primary incentives for those politicians are campaign contributions from corporations and wealthy donors I would imagine corporations funding politicians would want their businesses not be vandalized. I get some NIMBY policies are pushed by wealthy donors w/ real estate but that should be balanced out by developers. Something deeper is wrong. It's almost as these politicians are purposely destroying the vast amount of wealth built up over the years and letting in chaos.
  - xiphias2 5y ago
    Why wouldn't Amazon, Google and EBay want products to be stolen from their competitors and resold on their web site?

lockdownson 5y ago

Why don't they just force the criminals to wear masks? Why not just lockdown the criminals? Seriously, Breed and her army of fascist nazis all need to hang!

lockdownson 5y ago

3X more people died from drug overdose last year than all the fake "covid deaths" in the city of SF. Fuck every single SF politician and fuck those who voted for them. They all belong behind bars. FUCKING NAZIS!

lockdownson 5y ago

Breed refuses to wear a mask indoors and has been caught many multiple times. Now there is a state wide mask mandate again. Fuck this illegitimate piece of raging shit. I hope she catches aids and cancer and FUCKING DIES!

lockdownson 5y ago

Breed's boyfriend was arrested by the FBI for STEALING MONEY form the SF Clean Streets Program. She herself was fined for ethics violation. Breed belongs in San Quentin!

chriscjcj 5y ago

_NOW_ she's mad as hell and won't take it anymore? Why the sudden epiphany? Notably absent from the press conference: Chesa Boudin. Go ahead and arrest anyone you want. Boudin will have them back in society post haste.

renewiltord 5y ago

I’m very pro defund the police because I am very pro privatize the police. Local areas should be able to pay for their own police. A single police force cannot meet all requirements. The fact that we have defacto private police is exemplified by: - It is well known that wealthy neighborhoods get more patrols and faster responses. - It is well known that if your restaurant or store gives free stuff or otherwise encourages police you will be better protected - It is well known that opposing the police leads to poorer protection All of these are not just well known but often backed up by the police themselves. Any store that says they want more accountability for police will get told “when you’re in trouble, don’t expect to get the best response” and so on. There is a clear thing going on here. The police are clearly effectively privatized but the privatization is subsidized. Instead, let’s just remove the pretense. I think we should just have police be privatized and regulated and whatever group of people can pay for them should be able to pay for them. Open up the market and stop funding the police out of state money. That way, if you want to spend no money on the local police, you can defund them. If you want to spend lots of money you can fund them. If you want to band together with your neighborhood, go right ahead.

Proven 5y ago
Yes. But the problem is they don't give you your tax money back, so the service is gone but the involuntary subscription remains. Now what do you pay private security with, and why should the politicians get away with yet another form of theft in the first place? If they want to wind it down, they should return then money by lowering taxes.

danielvf 5y ago

One of the great strengths of America is that there are thousands of different municipalities, police departments, and justice systems. A given city can try out a new policy. It works, or even if it doesn't cause a breakdown in society, then it can spread, and all cities benefit. But if works badly, then that city takes the hit, and hopefully everyone else benefits by avoiding that. (The real world is of course messier than that simple model.) It's hard to parse the actual policy change from only mayor's remarks that are quoted in the article. It sounds like it's not heading to law and order policing, but rather trying to hybrid of increased surveillance and faster response times to some kinds of problems. I'm not sure it will work, but either if works or does not, another datapoint will have been explored.

legitster 5y ago

Crime is clearly only part of the problem. San Francisco is becoming a deeply unpleasant place to visit across the board. Large parts of the city stink of human refuse. The downtown core is a corporate wasteland. The other half of the city is a NIMBY wasteland. The public transit is embarrassing. Everyone is grumpy and pretentious. You don't feel safe walking across town alone. It's a city that seems to hate itself. It is constantly offering you a protective bubble - private cars, bars on rooftops, an apartment with a doorman. It seems the only people who earnestly enjoy SF are those who can afford to maintain their own world somewhere in it.

pelasaco 5y ago
I can just point out, that is the reality in the Latin/South America. We expected that South/Latin America would become like North America, but looks like it comes the other way around. What a mess can do a small buch of bad politicians!
oceanghost 5y ago
“ANDRÉ: . . . And when I was at Findhorn I met this extraordinary English tree expert who had devoted himself to saving trees, and he’d just got back from Washington lobbying to save the Redwoods. And he was eighty-four years old, and he always travels with a backpack because he never knows where he’s going to be tomorrow. And when I met him at Findhorn he said to me, “Where are you from?” And I said, “New York.” And he said, “Ah, New York, yes, that’s a very interesting place. Do you know a lot of New Yorkers who keep talking about the fact that they want to leave, but never do?” And I said, “Oh, yes.” And he said, “Why do you think they don’t leave?” And I gave him different banal theories. And he said, “Oh, I don’t think it’s that way at all.” He said, “I think that New York is the new model for the new concentration camp, where the camp has been built by the inmates themselves, and the inmates are the guards, and they have this pride in this thing that they’ve built—they’ve built their own prison—and so they exist in a state of schizophrenia where they are both guards and prisoners. And as a result they no longer have—having been lobotomized—the capacity to leave the prison they’ve made or even to see it as a prison.” And then he went into his pocket, and he took out a seed for a tree, and he said, “This is a pine tree.” And he put it in my hand. And he said, “Escape before it’s too late.” ― Wallace Shawn, My Dinner With André

blahblahblahbro 5y ago

[flagged]

smaryjerry 5y ago

What I’ve heard is the problem is not police lacking but that the AG no longer prosecutes criminals. It’s kind of catch and release and no punishment at all means crime just keeps going up. Police rarely stop crime in the act, they sometimes catch criminals after the fact, but that doesn’t even work if criminals never get prosecuted.

emmelaich 5y ago

That The Tenderloin is considered poor is amazing. Is it poor? How could it be, considering it's in middle of one of the richest cities in the world?