7 ms·

I'm from Europe too, but I've following what's been happening, so here's a very detached account of what happened. First, it's not a single reason but several

by Fradow 4y ago

I'm from Europe too, but I've following what's been happening, so here's a very detached account of what happened. First, it's not a single reason but several going hand in hand. The main one, as far as I understand, is the sky-rocketing price of housing, coupled with little social safety net for which the US is well-known, produced a lot of homelessness that has not been addressed and ballooned. With that also came crime and drug abuse (that's not new: I've been there 10 years ago and was shocked by the amount of homeless people in the streets, and I live in Paris, which has its fair share of homeless people, so that's saying something) The second main one is that racism, which has always been a thing, especially in the police force, produced some very high profile events (George Floyd) and high backlash against the police, perceived as racist and not being on the side of "the people". There has been a big "defund the police", which resulted in less policing, police force demoralization, a lot of officers quitting. Coupled with the previous issue, a lot of small crimes happened, mainly perpetuated by poor people. It's important to note that due to the US history, being poor correlate strongly with skin color. I don't really know if it's the fact that the people appearing the court were black and it was deemed racist or if the court were overloaded (probably an unhealthy mix of both), but at some point, shoplifting under a certain amount (was it $950? Somewhere in the $1000 ballpark) was changed from a felony to a misdemeanor. In practice, that means you could do that without fear of retribution, which predictably had awful results, and might be the disturbing videos you are talking about. There you go, hopefully I didn't misrepresent the situation and didn't forget any other important factor, though I'm sure someone will correct me if I did.

inferiorhuman 4y ago
I don't really know if it's the fact that the people appearing the court were black and it was deemed racist or if the court were overloaded (probably an unhealthy mix of both), but at some point, shoplifting under a certain amount (was it $950? Somewhere in the $1000 ballpark) was changed from a felony to a misdemeanor. In practice, that means you could do that without fear of retribution, which predictably had awful results, and might be the disturbing videos you are talking about. In most states the felony threshold gets adjusted periodically if for no other reason than to keep up with inflation. Texas bumped theirs to $2,500 and Alabama to $1,500 back in 2015.
- TMWNN 4y ago
  Those states prosecute the crimes, whether misdemeanors or not. The felony limit could be $1 or $1000. If the DA's office refuses to prosecute, it doesn't matter.
- josephcsible 4y ago
  It's okay for states that actually bother to prosecute misdemeanors to have really high felony thresholds. The problem with California is that they have a high felony threshold but basically don't prosecute misdemeanors, so in practice shoplifting up to $950 is legal there now.
revelio 4y ago
[flagged]
- thatswrong0 4y ago
  > you should be aware that this claim isn't actually true That's an extremely bold statement to make. The study the WSJ article was based on was retracted: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2014148117 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2014148117 Directly from the authors themselves: > Despite this correction, our work has continued to be cited as providing support for the idea that there are no racial biases in fatal shootings, or policing in general. To be clear, our work does not speak to these issues and should not be used to support such statements. We take full responsibility for not being careful enough with the inferences made in our original report, as this directly led to the misunderstanding of our research. And there are articles that go into how exactly they got it wrong: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/07/15/police-shooting-study-retracted/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/07/15/police-sho.... On top of this, police shootings are just one aspect of policing. You can find various research that supports, for example, that you're way more likely to be pulled over while driving if you are black than if you are white. And that relative proportion drops at night because it's harder for them to see. They're then more likely to be searched after the stop, and more likely to be handcuffed. And police brutality is much more than just shooting - I don't think we keep track of how often police officers use _any_ kind of force, but that's another thing that would also need to be evaluated. There are just... so, so many things you'd need to consider and refute in order to make that statement.
  - revelio 4y ago
    That retraction was itself political in nature: https://www.wsj.com/articles/i-cited-their-study-so-they-disavowed-it-11594250254 https://www.wsj.com/articles/i-cited-their-study-so-they-dis... My June 3 Journal op-ed quoted the PNAS article’s conclusion verbatim. It set off a firestorm at Michigan State. The university’s Graduate Employees Union pressured the MSU press office to apologize for the “harm it caused” by mentioning my article in a newsletter. The union targeted physicist Steve Hsu, who had approved funding for Mr. Cesario’s research. MSU sacked Mr. Hsu from his administrative position. PNAS editorialized that Messrs. Cesario and Johnson had “poorly framed” their article—the one that got through the journal’s three levels of editorial and peer review. Read the correction they issued: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2004734117 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2004734117 "As we estimated Pr(race|shot, X), this sentence should read: ‘As the proportion of White officers in a fatal officer-involved shooting increased, a person fatally shot was not more likely to be of a racial minority.’ This is consistent with our framing of the results in the abstract and main text." In other words, the thing being fought over was the wording of a single sentence that didn't change their actual conclusions, which are consistent with the other evidence. But then later: "Despite this correction, our work has continued to be cited as providing support for the idea that there are no racial biases in fatal shootings, or policing in general." Yes, because their correction in their own words "is consistent with our framing of the results". This whole incident is just proof of what I'm saying - the American left systematically attacks anyone who tries to point out the actual data here, which is why people don't hear about it. This particular paper led to a Twitter mob and someone got fired, but it wasn't due to bad methods, it was because student activists were upset about the "harm" it caused: https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-twitter-mob-takes-down-an-administrator-at-michigan-state-11593106102 https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-twitter-mob-takes-down-an-adm... >> you're way more likely to be pulled over while driving if you are black than if you are white. Aren't you now doing the things you're claiming these Michigan researchers did? Where's your control for actual crime rates?
rainy59 4y ago
I thought we were gonna avoid politics I've lived in SF PDX SEA and I've lived in Europe In the past decade, US cities enjoyed a renaissance / gentrification in otherwise formerly decaying downtown urban areas, mostly led by tech companies tired of car culture and suburbia Now that money flows are slowing, these areas are reverting back unfortunately IMO most US tech startups would kill to be in a cheap sunny European city say along the Adriatic coast but are hampered by funding regs etc
chrissnell 4y ago
Homelessness in the US is not a housing issue. Simply walk through a typical homeless encampment or walk through the Financial District of San Francisco and it will be clear as day: it is a drugs and mental illness issue, and ultimately, a family issue. Good families will take care of their mentally ill members and get them the care that they need. If you don't have a family, it's easy to end up out in the street on drugs. Nobody wants to talk about families, though.
- DoreenMichele 4y ago
  There has been a substantial increase in households of 1 to 3 people and not a concommitent increase in housing appropriate for such a household size. Everything I have studied suggests that, yes, homelessness is directly related to a lack of affordable housing.
  - Dig1t 4y ago
    So you're saying that if there were homes available to purchase in San Francisco for 200k, that the drug addicts and mentally ill people wandering the street would all be gone? Until very recently, there were condos and houses available in that exact price range in downtown Austin. Yet ask anyone who lives there, there are and were tons of homeless everywhere you went in the city. There are other cities that are way more affordable than SF, with the same homelessness problem. The thing they share in common with SF are the "compassionate" policing policies.
    - DoreenMichele 4y ago
      No, I'm saying it's a complicated confluence of factors, it's not just a San Francisco problem and we need to address our affordable housing deficit nationwide if we really want a few key areas inundated with homeless "crazies" to be able to successfully wrangle their problems at the local level and stop being held responsible for the failures of decades-long and nationwide policies.
- atlasunshrugged 4y ago
  It's an all of the above issue, but housing prices surely have a role. Why do cities in the midwest and South have lower rates of homelessness? I don't think of Detroit as a paragon of "good families" but they have relatively lower rates of homelessness. Not to say I disagree with you overall, I think the U.S. often lacks strong family and community networks, but even with family there is a stronger push for independence here than I've seen in Europe where I lived for a few years. It's often quite positive -- people go and build startups, they move to new cities for work, older people stay active and remain in their houses... but it flips in the same way that you also have those same independent elderly people who end up in nursing homes far from family and family with kids away from parents who could be built in babysitters/childcare. https://www.slowboring.com/p/homelessness-housing https://www.slowboring.com/p/homelessness-housing
pookha 4y ago
You're over thinking SF. SF is landlocked so there's always going to be steep housing costs...The real problem, as far as I can tell, is that homeless drug addicts are given free money by CAAP and have ample access to hard drugs. Anybody who's seen what hard-drugs do to a person or a family can attest that this is NOT good. You have probably seen something similar in Germany (I have) but the difference is in Germany they actively enforce the criminal code. You can't walk into an Aldi in Koln with a trash bag and make off with a hundred dollars in random goods...In SF this is happening. Which requires another conversation on America's far-left and their response to crime and their views of an unjust system. That being said there's a toxic environment in SF and it's not changing anytime soon.
- amrocha 4y ago
  lol Way to absolve tech of any blame and blame those dirty poor homeless addicts. Clearly there's absolutely no reason for these people to exist! They just do!
  - prottog 4y ago
    > Way to absolve tech of any blame The dirty poor homeless addicts aside, what exactly did tech do? Tech didn't come up with the truly brain-dead housing policy that makes it so difficult to build new housing, so that supply can catch up with demand. Tech isn't handing out drugs on the street. I'm not a tech worker in SF so I'm not taking anything personally. But I struggle to establish a causal relationship between tech and what's happening in SF. Usually, it's a good thing for a community when there's a local high-income cash cow.
    - amrocha 4y ago
      You're right that it's nothing inherent to tech, it's about the money coming in and displacing the existing communities. It just so happens that that money came from tech. People are talking as if this is the city's problem, but it's our industry that caused the problem. We have to acknowledge that so we don't keep causing problems. And as the cash cow, our industry has the ability to influence policy to prevent these issues from happening.

by Fradow 4y ago

inferiorhuman 4y ago

I don't really know if it's the fact that the people appearing the court were black and it was deemed racist or if the court were overloaded (probably an unhealthy mix of both), but at some point, shoplifting under a certain amount (was it $950? Somewhere in the $1000 ballpark) was changed from a felony to a misdemeanor. In practice, that means you could do that without fear of retribution, which predictably had awful results, and might be the disturbing videos you are talking about. In most states the felony threshold gets adjusted periodically if for no other reason than to keep up with inflation. Texas bumped theirs to $2,500 and Alabama to $1,500 back in 2015.

TMWNN 4y ago
Those states prosecute the crimes, whether misdemeanors or not. The felony limit could be $1 or $1000. If the DA's office refuses to prosecute, it doesn't matter.
josephcsible 4y ago
It's okay for states that actually bother to prosecute misdemeanors to have really high felony thresholds. The problem with California is that they have a high felony threshold but basically don't prosecute misdemeanors, so in practice shoplifting up to $950 is legal there now.

revelio 4y ago

[flagged]

thatswrong0 4y ago
> you should be aware that this claim isn't actually true That's an extremely bold statement to make. The study the WSJ article was based on was retracted: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2014148117 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2014148117 Directly from the authors themselves: > Despite this correction, our work has continued to be cited as providing support for the idea that there are no racial biases in fatal shootings, or policing in general. To be clear, our work does not speak to these issues and should not be used to support such statements. We take full responsibility for not being careful enough with the inferences made in our original report, as this directly led to the misunderstanding of our research. And there are articles that go into how exactly they got it wrong: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/07/15/police-shooting-study-retracted/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/07/15/police-sho.... On top of this, police shootings are just one aspect of policing. You can find various research that supports, for example, that you're way more likely to be pulled over while driving if you are black than if you are white. And that relative proportion drops at night because it's harder for them to see. They're then more likely to be searched after the stop, and more likely to be handcuffed. And police brutality is much more than just shooting - I don't think we keep track of how often police officers use _any_ kind of force, but that's another thing that would also need to be evaluated. There are just... so, so many things you'd need to consider and refute in order to make that statement.
- revelio 4y ago
  That retraction was itself political in nature: https://www.wsj.com/articles/i-cited-their-study-so-they-disavowed-it-11594250254 https://www.wsj.com/articles/i-cited-their-study-so-they-dis... My June 3 Journal op-ed quoted the PNAS article’s conclusion verbatim. It set off a firestorm at Michigan State. The university’s Graduate Employees Union pressured the MSU press office to apologize for the “harm it caused” by mentioning my article in a newsletter. The union targeted physicist Steve Hsu, who had approved funding for Mr. Cesario’s research. MSU sacked Mr. Hsu from his administrative position. PNAS editorialized that Messrs. Cesario and Johnson had “poorly framed” their article—the one that got through the journal’s three levels of editorial and peer review. Read the correction they issued: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2004734117 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2004734117 "As we estimated Pr(race|shot, X), this sentence should read: ‘As the proportion of White officers in a fatal officer-involved shooting increased, a person fatally shot was not more likely to be of a racial minority.’ This is consistent with our framing of the results in the abstract and main text." In other words, the thing being fought over was the wording of a single sentence that didn't change their actual conclusions, which are consistent with the other evidence. But then later: "Despite this correction, our work has continued to be cited as providing support for the idea that there are no racial biases in fatal shootings, or policing in general." Yes, because their correction in their own words "is consistent with our framing of the results". This whole incident is just proof of what I'm saying - the American left systematically attacks anyone who tries to point out the actual data here, which is why people don't hear about it. This particular paper led to a Twitter mob and someone got fired, but it wasn't due to bad methods, it was because student activists were upset about the "harm" it caused: https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-twitter-mob-takes-down-an-administrator-at-michigan-state-11593106102 https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-twitter-mob-takes-down-an-adm... >> you're way more likely to be pulled over while driving if you are black than if you are white. Aren't you now doing the things you're claiming these Michigan researchers did? Where's your control for actual crime rates?

rainy59 4y ago

I thought we were gonna avoid politics I've lived in SF PDX SEA and I've lived in Europe In the past decade, US cities enjoyed a renaissance / gentrification in otherwise formerly decaying downtown urban areas, mostly led by tech companies tired of car culture and suburbia Now that money flows are slowing, these areas are reverting back unfortunately IMO most US tech startups would kill to be in a cheap sunny European city say along the Adriatic coast but are hampered by funding regs etc

chrissnell 4y ago

Homelessness in the US is not a housing issue. Simply walk through a typical homeless encampment or walk through the Financial District of San Francisco and it will be clear as day: it is a drugs and mental illness issue, and ultimately, a family issue. Good families will take care of their mentally ill members and get them the care that they need. If you don't have a family, it's easy to end up out in the street on drugs. Nobody wants to talk about families, though.

DoreenMichele 4y ago
There has been a substantial increase in households of 1 to 3 people and not a concommitent increase in housing appropriate for such a household size. Everything I have studied suggests that, yes, homelessness is directly related to a lack of affordable housing.
- Dig1t 4y ago
  So you're saying that if there were homes available to purchase in San Francisco for 200k, that the drug addicts and mentally ill people wandering the street would all be gone? Until very recently, there were condos and houses available in that exact price range in downtown Austin. Yet ask anyone who lives there, there are and were tons of homeless everywhere you went in the city. There are other cities that are way more affordable than SF, with the same homelessness problem. The thing they share in common with SF are the "compassionate" policing policies.
  - DoreenMichele 4y ago
    No, I'm saying it's a complicated confluence of factors, it's not just a San Francisco problem and we need to address our affordable housing deficit nationwide if we really want a few key areas inundated with homeless "crazies" to be able to successfully wrangle their problems at the local level and stop being held responsible for the failures of decades-long and nationwide policies.
atlasunshrugged 4y ago
It's an all of the above issue, but housing prices surely have a role. Why do cities in the midwest and South have lower rates of homelessness? I don't think of Detroit as a paragon of "good families" but they have relatively lower rates of homelessness. Not to say I disagree with you overall, I think the U.S. often lacks strong family and community networks, but even with family there is a stronger push for independence here than I've seen in Europe where I lived for a few years. It's often quite positive -- people go and build startups, they move to new cities for work, older people stay active and remain in their houses... but it flips in the same way that you also have those same independent elderly people who end up in nursing homes far from family and family with kids away from parents who could be built in babysitters/childcare. https://www.slowboring.com/p/homelessness-housing https://www.slowboring.com/p/homelessness-housing

pookha 4y ago

You're over thinking SF. SF is landlocked so there's always going to be steep housing costs...The real problem, as far as I can tell, is that homeless drug addicts are given free money by CAAP and have ample access to hard drugs. Anybody who's seen what hard-drugs do to a person or a family can attest that this is NOT good. You have probably seen something similar in Germany (I have) but the difference is in Germany they actively enforce the criminal code. You can't walk into an Aldi in Koln with a trash bag and make off with a hundred dollars in random goods...In SF this is happening. Which requires another conversation on America's far-left and their response to crime and their views of an unjust system. That being said there's a toxic environment in SF and it's not changing anytime soon.

amrocha 4y ago
lol Way to absolve tech of any blame and blame those dirty poor homeless addicts. Clearly there's absolutely no reason for these people to exist! They just do!
- prottog 4y ago
  > Way to absolve tech of any blame The dirty poor homeless addicts aside, what exactly did tech do? Tech didn't come up with the truly brain-dead housing policy that makes it so difficult to build new housing, so that supply can catch up with demand. Tech isn't handing out drugs on the street. I'm not a tech worker in SF so I'm not taking anything personally. But I struggle to establish a causal relationship between tech and what's happening in SF. Usually, it's a good thing for a community when there's a local high-income cash cow.
  - amrocha 4y ago
    You're right that it's nothing inherent to tech, it's about the money coming in and displacing the existing communities. It just so happens that that money came from tech. People are talking as if this is the city's problem, but it's our industry that caused the problem. We have to acknowledge that so we don't keep causing problems. And as the cash cow, our industry has the ability to influence policy to prevent these issues from happening.