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After violent robberies, some photographers opt to stay away from San Francisco

• infinitedata 4y ago
  San Francisco has disgustedly and unfortunately became a third-world country.
  • kranke155 4y ago
    And who’s to blame for that? It’s population of wealthy entitled tech employees who are disconnected from local politics? Or something else?
    • mc32 4y ago
      Disconnected of not, the wealthy snobs aren’t doing violent crime. The criminals are mostly from outside the city. The criminals commute to their crime targets because the risk reward balance is on their side.
      • ModernMech 4y ago
        To be fair, the rich wealthy snobs are doing plenty of criming as well. It’s unfair to label only those who commit crimes against the wealthy snobs as “criminals”. We should at least realize that the wealthy snobs are criminals as well in their own right.
        • mc32 4y ago
          Unfortunately, wealthy snobs can sustain crime --they can buy bigger houses with guards, cameras, fences and beckon the DA when needed. It's your poor and middle class who do not have the means to deal with the crime who suffer the crime brought on by opportunistic criminals. Mundane examples are people have had their third and fourth catalytic converters stolen. It may not be a lot of money to you, but for your average worker, it's a day or two of inconvenience and a few hundred each time --money that now has to be reallocated.
          • hunter-gatherer 4y ago
            I've been victim to two home burglaries when my wife and I were starting out and living in Prince George's county, Maryland. At the time I was working at DIA as a measly GS-9, which means that I was basically 2 or 3 paychecks away from being completely broke. The few possesions we had were taken. The most unfortunate was my wife's grandmather's wedding band. It probably wouldn't have fetched more than 20 or 30 bucks, but given that it was a family heirloom from WWII-wrought Finland, the sentimental value was high. Being white and working for the government in a predominantly minority area, I'm sure I was stereotyped as being able to handle some abuse (in fact my neighboor informed me so). Fortunately we didn't own anything of serious financial value, but having your personal space violated by petty theives is not a pleasant experience.
            • mc32 4y ago
              Totally. I remember working with friends of thieves during HS who'd say, yeah, "my friends hit the rich areas because rich people call their insurance instead of coming at you with a baseball bat".
      • asveikau 4y ago
        Violent crime is lower than 10 years ago, and much lower than 30 years ago.
        • mc32 4y ago
          "Domestic Violence is lower than X years ago", [let's not worry about it].
          • deleted 4y ago
            [deleted]
          • asveikau 4y ago
            Eh, so you name drop a nasty topic and I'll look bad defending it. Cheap trick. Do you think that people in healthy relationships should fear that outcome? Do you think people should become celibate because some percentages of relationships end up that way? The point is you are encouraging living in fear of low likelihood events. The world is not perfect, crime and poverty exist, as do disease, many types of suffering, it's bad, but we don't need to be afraid and motivated by irrational fear.
            • mc32 4y ago
              No, you're proposing that if things are statistically demonstrably better and also low probability events, then we can look elsewhere for problems and de-emphasize resources to fight these things not warranting attention. There are lots of things that were statistically demonstrably worse in the past and also statistically miniscule in occurrence, but I think you would get righteously clobbered if you proposed defending their current rate of occurrence as acceptable. Lots of things.
              • asveikau 4y ago
                I agree with your first paragraph unironically. If we don't measure it as an important problem, it probably does not deserve disproportionate resources. There are outliers to that. I think medical research for something like a rare disease is a good one. High cost, and by some metrics, low payout, but worthy. I don't think this recent right wing paranoia about crime is a good example. Especially since the "tough on crime" policies that people want to enact in reaction to it do not work and have a tendency to incarcerate innocent and undeserving people as collateral damage.
    • nickpp 4y ago
      > And who’s to blame Left-wing policies enacted by left-wing city governments.
      • piva00 4y ago
        Not sure if I'd call a government that isn't expanding housing in a very constrained housing market a left-wing government. It might have traces of progressivism in some social areas, even to a fault as I'm reading from these SF's reports on crime, but calling a government that sides with the current rich/millionaire houseowners left-wing is quite disingenuous. Maybe that's my foreign view as I don't see any political stance in the USA as left-leaning, some Democrats are, at most, left-adjacent in some social policies.
        • nickpp 4y ago
          Failing to understand Supply and Demand law of basic economics is a defining characteristics for left-wing politicians. Protecting their turfs and their own is quite common across both sides of the spectrum.
          • nonethewiser 4y ago
            They may understand it. It's just inconvenient so its downplayed.
          • starkd 4y ago
            They understand it, but they actively work to undermine it by engineering the human race.
        • starkd 4y ago
          [flagged]
          • piva00 4y ago
            This is the second time this week that a comment I made regarding anything to do with a passing mention of left-wing politics gets a reply like this. I didn't state at any point anything about communism, I didn't say anywhere I'm a supporter of "Communism™". Stop chasing ghosts and stop being a fucking bore, you are shoving your words in my mouth and I thoroughly dislike that, it's intellectually disrespectful. This is a fucking dumb comment with no substance and not addressing anything of what I mentioned in my comment. It's so fucking dumb and tiring to get your kind of knee-jerk red-scare reaction from people like you. To be extremely clear: I don't support Communism, please point exactly where you believe your comment has anything to do with what I've written there or just shut up, what a fucking bore to keep getting to read this bullshit.
    • nonethewiser 4y ago
      There are lots of factors. But at this point liberal policies are buttressing the problem.
      • ModernMech 4y ago
        Agreed. Progressives identified a problem and tried to fix it. Their choice of DA was recalled by others (including liberals) and was replaced with a “tough on crime” DA who they promised would fix the problem. So far, this DA hasn’t made a dent, things have gotten worse, and all we hear is “it takes time to fix things! Give them a chance!” Yeah no shit, but that courtesy that was not extended to the progressive DA before the recall campaign started.
    • m0llusk 4y ago
      There are many factors. The biggest is the failed drug war. Conservatives thought that by getting tough on crime and drugs that those problems could be eliminated. The result was the most full prisons on the planet. The prisons are so full that even the huge California GDP can barely pay for them. So something had to ease up. Now there is a breakdown in the justice system regarding what crimes are worth convicting and incarcerating people for and it is not unusual for even violent criminals to be quickly released. But the conservative tough on crime folks are completely unable to come to terms with the consequences of their actions on society. So we end up with a stalemate where liberals are trying to trim down the prison population and focus on violent crime while most conservatives still want to fix the problem by getting tough and imprisoning more people for longer.
      • nickpp 4y ago
        Should we see a mass pardon now that drugs are becoming more and more legal in the US?
        • ModernMech 4y ago
          That’s exactly what’s happening. Governors around the country and even the President have been issuing pardons for weed “crimes”.
      • xrd 4y ago
        For some context: California imprisons about 550 people per 100k. Florida imprisons about 750 per 100k. Interestingly, Florida refuses [1] to even allow a vote on whether you can force prisoners to work (unlike 20 other states [2]): "Died in Criminal Justice & Public Safety Subcommittee" 1. https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2022/39 https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2022/39 2. https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2022/08/22/yes-slavery-is-on-the-ballot-in-these-states https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/sta...
      • whiddershins 4y ago
        This is so hilariously backwards. The conservative tough on crime policies may have been inhumane or even immoral, but they did reduce crime. The soft on crime policies have allowed increased crime. Here are US murder rates: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/murder-homicide-rate https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/murd...
    • nonethewiser 4y ago
      I know this one. Republicans. San Francisco just needs more liberal representation.
    • rodolphoarruda 4y ago
      > who’s to blame for that? Illegal drug suppliers, as they keep the vulnerable population (born poor and/or not educated) within the vicious circle of being too high on drugs to perform any decent type of work. This in turn reduces their income and increases their social risk at the same time. The root causes to this problem are far from the reach of local government, and this explains why the problem looks/feels unsolvable.
      • 4ggr0 4y ago
        Then legalize drugs, voila.
      • soco 4y ago
        Well, once the problem identified, the local government would be in the right position to enact policies and implement programs to educate and help those in need. But that would be called "socialism" thus a big no-no.
    • olao99 4y ago
      it's almost like extreme inequality is bad or something
    • simonsarris 4y ago
      The people who commit crime and the people who make excuses for criminals are to blame. No one else. There are plenty of places all over the earth full of wealthy entitled people who do not have such violence problems. Eg Geneva is approximately as boring as SF, but certainly doesn't have the crime.
      • soco 4y ago
        You forgot the authorities which are elected/nominated there exactly for this aim: to make the place a good place to live. And they so obviously fail at their job.
    • more_corn 4y ago
      How about blaming the criminals? The inadequate policing and utter lack of investigative follow-through? The half-asses leadership? The people attacked in these reports are photographers helping people at their weddings. Are those people disconnected, entitled people who need to be violently robbed to teach them a lesson or something? How about blaming the people who do wrong? That’s a novel thought. Or maybe even stretch and blame the people whose entire job is catching and punishing the small number of people who are ruining things for normal people.
  • asveikau 4y ago
    Don't believe everything you read. Crime was worse in the 90s.
    • whiddershins 4y ago
      I’m not sure if that’s as true as we want to believe. The only stat that is reliable is murder. And murder is way up, not 90s level, but way up. Meanwhile the non-policing of property crimes is a completely new phenomenon, so I don’t know if we’ve even seen this much shoplifting, public defecation, window smashing, etc.
      • whiddershins 4y ago
        Actually I was wrong the murder rate is as bad as the late 90s: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/murder-homicide-rate https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/murd...
        • asveikau 4y ago
          But look at 1993. You're citing a graph and asking to ignore the huge peak.
          • whiddershins 4y ago
            Crime was worse in the early 90s. Crime has gone way up recently, so bad that it is similar to 1997. 1998 and 1999 had lower crime than now. This is at minimum a bad trend, and 1997-level crime is not great.
            • asveikau 4y ago
              You're calling the pandemic spike a long term trend. I haven't checked in a while, but last I knew it was already showing signs of reversing. This says 2021 was lower than 2020: https://www.statista.com/statistics/191219/reported-violent-crime-rate-in-the-usa-since-1990/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/191219/reported-violent-...
  • soemdu23 4y ago
    • lm28469 4y ago
      Throwaway account and disposable opinions, name a better HN combo
      • soemdu23 4y ago
        Disposable opinion? As far as no one has countered it just ignoring it.
        • lm28469 4y ago
          Because it doesn't even make any sense, countries and races aren't interchangeable, you're the only one bringing race into the discussion btw
          • soemdu23 4y ago
            "The Third World was normally seen to include many countries with colonial pasts in Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Oceania, and Asia." Mostly non white people. As someone from third world i take offense to it. You are entitled to your opinion. But the question still remains why associate violent crimes with just third world countries.
    • chucksta 4y ago
      Hm third world countries are the same race. Casual Racism.
      • soemdu23 4y ago
        Are you implying that people who are violent in first world countries are the ones from third world countries? White man is the savior?
        • 4y ago
• CartyBoston 4y ago
  They can hang out at home and let Fox News tell them how scary the world is.
  • JKCalhoun 4y ago
    You can extend that to all of cable news. If you watch too much of it you'll come to believe it is a scary world, much better to stay at home and shop online. Me, I get on a bicycle and spend the day riding a local trail. What a beautiful world.
    • imperialdrive 4y ago
      Amen to that!
  • starkd 4y ago
    or you can watch msnbc/cnn and pretend that their is no crime problem - or make excuses that minimize it. So, it cuts both ways.
• badcppdev 4y ago
  I'm sorry this sounds like a very simplistic and callous question but I'm not from the US. I know there are a lot of guns. Do thieves and robbers get shot on a regular basis and it just doesn't make headline news? Or when a gun is being used in self defence against a robbery is it more likely that the potential thief sees the gun, runs away, and isn't shot (because most people don't actually want to shoot someone).
  • jopython 4y ago
    Its not easy to get a concealed carry permit in CA.
  • CharlesW 4y ago
    > Do thieves and robbers get shot on a regular basis and it just doesn't make headline news? It depends on your definition of "regularly". "From 2000 to 2021, fewer than 3% of 433 active attacks in the U.S. ended with a civilian firing back, according to the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center at Texas State University. The researchers define the attacks as one or more people targeting multiple people." https://www.fox13news.com/news/how-often-does-a-good-guy-with-a-gun-stop-a-shooting https://www.fox13news.com/news/how-often-does-a-good-guy-wit... Obviously, the solution is more good guys with guns.
    • tokai 4y ago
      That data is not applicable to gp's question. It's about shooting back at an active shooter, not drawing on a robber.
    • badcppdev 4y ago
      I'm just going to sound more callous and clarify that I didn't mean mass shootings just the kind of robberies shown in the article.
      • CharlesW 4y ago
        FWIW I don't think you sound callous at all. To clarify my response, the data I shared on mass shootings ("mass" being >3 people) is just meant to illustrate that the "good guy with a gun" scenario is very rare. As another data point, a Harvard University analysis of a National Crime Victimization Survey concludes that people defended themselves with a gun in almost 0.9% of crimes from 2007–2011: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0091743515001188 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00917...
• ethotool 4y ago
  America spends hundreds of billions on foreign policy while blatantly ignoring domestic issue like these that are detrimental to our way of life. It’s sad to see America turn into a cesspool of crime.
  • justapassenger 4y ago
    While true that it’s ignored, America was a “cesspool of crime” many times in the past. It’s still much better than 1980s.
    • JKCalhoun 4y ago
      I think statistics bear that out. Does it seem though that specific locales are disproportionately slipping back into crime "cesspools"? Could it be something like the "broken window" theory of crime or might it be areas of heightened homelessness where this is a problem? I have no idea.
    • starkd 4y ago
      True. But this just shows that we do know how to bring crime under control. Just a question of political will at this point. The recipe is there, if we look to history.
  • friedman23 4y ago
    America is a federal union. The policy and spending of the federal government can't and shouldn't be applied to these hyper local issues. San Franciscans are probably the highest taxed individuals on the planet and the San Francisco government was flush with cash. Blame local government policy and politics for these issues. This is what happens when you elect literal communist terrorists (see Weather underground) into government. There are parts of this country that can be considered paradise in comparison to San Francisco.
  • not_the_fda 4y ago
    Foreign policy is a national issue handled by the federal government. Small crime like this is handled by the local government. San Francisco and other progressive cities are getting the crime they voted for with defund the police politicians and lax district attorneys. Not all cities are experiencing these issues. Its a local issue from mid-guided policy.
• friedman23 4y ago
  Can we talk about the fact that people are paying 10% of their income to live in this dirty crime ridden city? I don't think people comprehend how much money they are spending. If you manage to keep your salary (which some people are able to do), moving out of California to a no tax state means you instantly get a 22% raise. Meaning for every 5 years you will earn the equivalent of 1 extra year of salary, factor in compound interest from investments and it's significantly more in reality. Going back to the 22% raise number. Why 22% if California income tax is 10%? The 10% income tax takes away after-tax money. So to earn that 10% back you need to make the equivalent of 122% your income in California. It's just absurd. Either move to a part of California that makes the income tax worth it or get out of the state. San Francisco's weather is not worth 4 years of your life (assuming you work there for 20 years, it's 8 working years if you factor in returns from investments on the money you are saving.)
  • onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
    Your tax math is wrong. Assume you make $100k, and your effective federal income tax rate is 25%. You make $75k after federal taxes and no state taxes in somewhere like Florida or Texas. In CA - if you assume 10% state income tax - you make $65k. You have 15% more disposable income in FL or TX. You need to earn 15% more in CA to have the same disposable income. The average worker in SF is getting paid 10%+ more than the average worker in FL or TX. If you factor in SALT, CA's low property tax, prop 13, and the mortgage interest deduction - you're way better off owning a home in CA financially. And if you rent - the average person isn't meaningfully that much worse off that they're going to leave their friends & family & community for a <5% tax arbitrage. If you want to, no one is stopping you.
    • tested23 4y ago
      Calculate how much more you need to earn in CA to make $75k. Im assuming higher federal taxes than you are. Half of Sf is transplants, they arent living close to family > The average worker in SF is getting paid 10%+ more than the average worker in FL or TX 10pct more is not enough to cover the difference. Also if you are good you can make sf salary anywhere in places where the cost of food is a third of the price
• tlogan 4y ago
  Hey - but you can get cheap Leica cameras on the streets and eBay [1]. 1 - https://petapixel.com/2022/11/28/leica-store-in-san-francisco-robbed-at-gunpoint-of-178k-in-gear/ https://petapixel.com/2022/11/28/leica-store-in-san-francisc...
• xtiansimon 4y ago
  Advertising on the video of the theft? LOL
• nakovet 4y ago
  I visited SF recently and they smashed by trunk, found nothing and left me with the repair service from the rental company, it was a Friday morning at a park.
  • Fatnino 4y ago
    Don't park a rental in sf. They specifically target rentals.
    • more_corn 4y ago
      This is a silly statement. It’s victim blaming and not actionable. Don’t park a rental in the city? Ok where am I supposed to park? Or should I not drive here to start with. But then I’m walking in San Francisco and I hear that’s not safe either. Or perhaps not come here at all? Don’t be a photographer in San Francisco. Don’t go to a public park. Don’t drive home from a photo shoot in San Fran because thieves will follow you and steal from you. Stop blaming the victim for doing normal life things. There’s plenty of blame and plenty of heads to put it on before you need to stoop to that level.
      • thegreenswede 4y ago
        When I had to visit for work few months back they specifically said I was not allowed to park in SF. So it seems that if the car is damaged while there the rental company is going to make you pay, even if you're the victim of the crime.
      • Fatnino 4y ago
        You're right. The first sentence reads as advising what to do. I should have skipped it and gone just for the statement of fact in the second sentence. Also, the first sentence is not inclusive enough, as they target rentals even when not parked. Cars have had windows smashed and bags stolen while occupied and sitting at a red light.
• pvaldes 4y ago
  In resume, If you're going to San Francisco, be sure to hide some weapons in your hair?.
• scrapcode 4y ago
  Unfortunately this is the result of weakening laws and stripping funding from the agencies that enforce those laws. When thievery is akin to a speeding ticket, the act is going to increase exponentially.