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Here are some statistics that might help the discussion: "With a crime rate of 54 per one thousand residents, San Francisco has one of the highest crime rates

Here are some statistics that might help the discussion: "With a crime rate of 54 per one thousand residents, San Francisco has one of the highest crime rates in America compared to all communities of all sizes - from the smallest towns to the very largest cities. One's chance of becoming a victim of either violent or property crime here is one in 18." https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/ca/san-francisco/crime#description https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/ca/san-francisco/crime#des... And here is New York for comparison "The crime rate in New York is considerably higher than the national average across all communities in America from the largest to the smallest, although at 25 crimes per one thousand residents, it is not among the communities with the very highest crime rate. The chance of becoming a victim of either violent or property crime in New York is 1 in 40. Based on FBI crime data, New York is not one of the safest communities in America." https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/ny/new-york/crime#description https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/ny/new-york/crime#descript... Edit: I know this neighborhoodscout's methodology is not perfect. I wanted to use this as a starting to add more data to the discussion. Would love to see more stats on this

PM_me_your_math 4y ago
Speaking from experience, if you go walking the Bronx Concourse at 2am, you are getting robbed at gun point.
- sokoloff 4y ago
  There are a lot of places in the world where "nothing good happens after 2 AM..."
- baremetal 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - neoromantique 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - xp84 4y ago
      I’m not going to pretend anything is a simple obvious cause/effect — but in the case of SF, you’d be hard pressed to find a city that bends over backwards more with social policies. So I’m curious why unlike the Europe comparison, SF and LA are some of the worst places here in terms of people still mired in poverty and also doing crime. I think plenty of people really are helped by those policies and move on in their lives, but also that plenty of others take advantage of the “liberal guilt” atmosphere, which makes administering punishment very uncomfortable, to do lots of crimes. I see it as an unintended consequence. And officially, I guess I don’t mind it. I left SF, and if the current residents are happy with the current results, they’re free to continue.
      - neoromantique 4y ago
        >you’d be hard pressed to find a city that bends over backwards more with social policies That really doesn't mesh together with the extremely restrictive building code that makes housing crisis so much worse.
        xp84 4y ago
        Are you saying people breaking into cars and stabbing people are doing so because they can afford say, $1800 in rent but can’t find a place under $2900? Because if the city could drive rents down that far across the board by encouraging new home construction, I would consider that a wildly successful outcome. But even then I don’t think it would change almost anything about the crime and homelessness problems. I think the criminals are mostly either desperate addicts who have no chance at turning it around unless they had serious help with their illnesses, or, just callous criminals who could change but prefer doing crime to working. And it doesn’t even take that many — especially of that second group — to make everybody miserable. Edit: just want to clarify: I am absolutely in favor of a “build, build, build, build, build” housing policy. Despite everything I said, it would still make lots of things better including improving density, making transit make sense.
        neoromantique 4y ago
  - dang 4y ago
    Please don't use HN for ideological flamewar. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - baremetal 4y ago
      My apologies. I am working on my self-control.
      - dang 4y ago
        Thanks. Me too.
- ajmurmann 4y ago
  A big difference between SF (and Portland for that matter) and other US cities seems to be that there is no clear line between "the good parts" of town and "the bad parts". You know the Bronx Concourse is bad, but in SF it's less clear which part isn't bad. Even 14 years ago I had friends visit from LA who walked 1 or 2 blocks in the wrong direction from Union Square and felt unsafe enough that they walked into a store and called a taxi to not have to walk "back to safety".
  - tmpz22 4y ago
    This is just 100% wrong. Much of SFs homeless population and crime is concentrated around the Tenderloin and SOMA areas with downtown also being relevant. You can use something like the Citizen app to get a rough geographic understanding. This is an important topic but so many clueless individuals (not OP, in general) decide to comment anyways.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - nostrademons 4y ago
    Is that really true? If you're in the Tenderloin, Civic Center area, parts of the Mission or SoMA, then sure, you know you're in a dodgy area. But I'm pretty sure that if you're in Forest Hills, West Portal, Lake Merced, or the Presidio, you'll feel pretty safe, and crime maps seem to bear that out. I'll take my preschoolers alone to visit friends in the city on public transportation - I drive to Forest Hills, park in the neighborhood, muni to the Castro. Never had a problem. I think that what gets tourists to SF is that areas you'd expect would be safe are actually bad. Normally you'd expect that major shopping districts like Union Square, or the city government like Civic Center, would be safe. In SF they're right next to the Tenderloin, which is a cesspit of filth and addicts. And gentrified vs. dodgy areas in SF are very close together, like walking two blocks toward Valencia and Guerrero in the Mission is dramatically different from walking two blocks in the opposite direction to Van Ness and Folsom, or being on the north side of Potrero is dramatically different from wandering the south side.
- dehrmann 4y ago
  That's not a fair comparison. This murder was FiDi-adjacent. Pre-pandemic, I wouldn't have been worried in that neighborhood. No idea these days.
dxbydt 4y ago
You clicked on the "Descriptions" tab. Instead, if you click on the "Data" tab, it says: Murder Rape Robbery Assault UNREPORTED UNREPORTED UNREPORTED UNREPORTED If none of these stats are being made public, how are they able to compute 1 in 18 odds ?
- starkd 4y ago
  From those that are reported, I assume. Unreported cases make the actual number much higher.
smachiz 4y ago
These stats for NYC are heavily skewed, I don't see an easy link to the source data for neighborhoodscout, but I think their methodology is _very_ flawed for popular cities. They list the population of Manhattan as 1.6M, but there's probably closer to 3-4M people there during the average day.
- cheeseblubber 4y ago
  According to Google: https://www.google.com/search?q=manhattan+population https://www.google.com/search?q=manhattan+population It is 1.6M
  - smachiz 4y ago
    That's people that live in Manhattan. That is not the day time (or night time) population of a large business and finance hub, commuter and tourist city. I can't reply to your comment below, but that wasn't the point I was making. The stats are probably bad for both, and I don't think I trust anything that neighborhood scout is putting out for anywhere, was my point. But to your suggestion, it _is_ measured by folks. It's called the Commuter Adjusted Day Time Population. https://www.6sqft.com/see-nycs-population-pulse-over-24-hours/ https://www.6sqft.com/see-nycs-population-pulse-over-24-hour... https://wagner.nyu.edu/files/rudincenter/dynamic_pop_manhattan.pdf https://wagner.nyu.edu/files/rudincenter/dynamic_pop_manhatt... https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/working-papers/2010/demo/top20-commuter-adjusted-population.pdf https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/working-pa... https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/working-papers/2010/demo/top20-commuter-adjusted-population.pdf https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/working-pa...
    - cheeseblubber 4y ago
      Sure but San francisco also have commuters and tourists. It is difficult to get those numbers vs residents. If you were to critique this statistic than you'd have to do the same for SF
      - 4y ago
sporkland 4y ago
Anecdata: My friend who lives around Alamo square has had her car windows smashed 3 times, all her tires stolen off her car once, and had someone come into her garage knock her down and steal her phone.
- starkd 4y ago
  So, in effect, property crime is really the same as violent crime.
  - leoqa 4y ago
    All property crime crosses the acceptable social contract and has the opportunity to become violent crime. I don’t see the issue with comparing them: if my property isn’t safe and I’ll be battered if I defend it, that’s the same signal.
    - artsytrashcan 4y ago
      It's an issue because it misrepresents the rate at which property crimes actually precede or are coincident with violent crime. It also belies the reality that attempting to protect valuables is likelier than alternative action to turn a property crime into a violent crime.
  - twelve40 4y ago
    not really, at least personally I'd rather my car gets smashed than someone assaults me directly. so I'd say there's a bit of a difference.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - starkd 4y ago
      So, you're saying its just a question of degree. In principle, its really the same thing.
asveikau 4y ago
It's misleading to lump violent crime and property crime together. SF is skewed very heavily towards property crime. This stabbing incident is a rare event, and broken auto glass is common. They're not the same.
- Ekaros 4y ago
  Both from outside USA seem insane. Broken auto glasses are extremely rare here. Stabbings sometimes, but nearly always not in public but in homes between junkies drinking ethanol. Not on streets like this case.
  - augment001 4y ago
    Broken auto glass is pretty much the default in SF if you leave anything at all visible in a parked car. Pretty much anyone I’ve ever spoken to has had it happen to them, and it happened to me 3 times. This is because there is simply no law enforcement response. On the other hand stabbings and murder are taken very seriously by law enforcement.
    - BurningFrog 4y ago
      Here in Oakland, the saying is that OPD doesn't come out unless there is a body.
    - operatingthetan 4y ago
      >This is because there is simply no law enforcement response. You're expecting the police to show up in a 60 second window? Do you realize how little time it takes to smash a window and leave?
      - throwaway049 4y ago
        What part of their post indicated that expectation?
        4y ago
PoliticsIsTirin 4y ago
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quartz 4y ago
The second paragraph for both your links tries to compare the cities in terms of apples-to-apples by population: NYC: "However, compared to other communities of similar population size, New York has a crime rate that is noticeably lower than the average. This means that for comparably sized cities all across America, New York is actually safer than most according to NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis of FBI crime data." SF: "Importantly, when you compare San Francisco to other communities of similar population, then San Francisco crime rate (violent and property crimes combined) is quite a bit higher than average. Regardless of how San Francisco does relative to all communities in America of all sizes, when NeighborhoodScout compared it to communities of similar population size, its crime rate per thousand residents stands out as higher than most." Edit: having lived in both (currently in NYC) I also want to point out the two cities are incredibly different in almost every way. It's really tough to compare data across the whole "city" between the two because of the differences in geography, population density & distribution, types of crime, history & expectations, and overall city governance.
- screye 4y ago
  Crime in East Coast NYC/Boston/DC and West-coast-cities (SF/Seattle/Portland) is very different. The remarkable thing about SF and Seattle, is that crime is highest in high desirability/high-foot-fall areas. Many folks I know all go to downtown SF/Oakland/Seattle for work, drinks, dinner, concerts and public events. At the same time, it seems impossible to park your car on the street in any of these neighborhoods. I thought it was an exaggeration, but "every" person I know, who has parked their car for a week in one of these neighborhoods, has had their cars broken in. It's shocking. On the other hand, the high-footfall / popular parts of east coast cities are fairly safe. (Pickpockets are an exception). For better or for worse, a person would never accidentally find themselves in a bad neighborhood in NYC, Boston or DC. (Bad neighborhoods aren't always correlated with race or poverty. Sometimes it's just a self fulfilling prophecy) This means that violent crime on the east-coast has very little spill-over outside the communities ravaged by it. IE. The average stranger is safe. In that sense, west coast's 'open drug market in the most important parts of the city' policy is a uniquely west coast problem. It really doesn't affect other cities in the US or elsewhere in the same way. The unique incompetence of west coast politics is squarely to blame for the dilapidation of their cities. This is not endemic to cities at large, and cities around the world should actively distance themselves from the sort of accusations that get flung at 'all cities', when it is meant to be targeting west-coast cities in particular.
blahblah1234567 4y ago
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tempsy 4y ago
SF does not have many violent crimes. It’s mostly car break ins. Regardless I’m waiting to hear if his wallet or phone was stolen. If it’s still on him I’m more suspicious this was just some random mugging gone wrong.
- rirze 4y ago
  He was reportedly seen trying to wave down a car for help after being stabbed (on camera footage). I suspect if he could do that, then he could've easily called 911 instead, but couldn't. It's very likely he was mugged, stabbed in the process, and died due to excessive blood loss.
qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
All this is seems so alien, compared to european cities, even the acceptance standards to which citizens have been negotiated down too. https://www.numbeo.com/crime/in/Munich https://www.numbeo.com/crime/in/Munich
- nemo44x 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - joseph_grobbles 4y ago
    [dead]
  - tcptomato 4y ago
    Where exactly are these mythical European "no-go zones"?
    - callalex 4y ago
      On Fox News.
      - codyb 4y ago
        Hmm, I'm pretty liberal but there's definitely some pretty large "slum" or "ghetto" areas outside certain major cities in Europe. Generally they're predominately unassimilated refugees as far as I can tell. There doesn't seem to be much attempt at integration really. I am unsure about whether the police will go to them or whether or not they are more or less violent than American cities. There are certain things the US does well, I think assimilation of immigrants is a really strong point for our culture here. Maybe it's because our culture has never really been much more than a gigantic mixing pot and is a lot younger. And maybe it's cause the population is so much larger and discordant than any single European nation.
        nemo44x 4y ago
ninjagoo 4y ago
So Wikipedia has a list of US Cities, sortable by crime rate, and has separate statistics for violent crime and property crime [1]. This list is based on FBI's data from 2019. By that list, sorted by the total violent crime rate from highest to lowest, SF is 37th on the list of 100 cities, NYC is 59th, Austin is 73rd. In absolute numbers, SF is 715/100k, NYC is 539/100k, Austin is 415/100k. Also, by that list, the top cities for violent crime with population over 1M are: Chicago #17, Houston #18, Philly #25, Tuscon #29, Dallas #31, LA #32, Phoenix #33. Now if only we could get a graph of this data mapped over time, it would be interesting to see trends. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_crime_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  NYC in particular suffers from rampant under-reporting on crime stats. Most burglaries and petty property crimes in NYC that I have heard of went completely unreported - either they didn't bother to go into the station, or they went in to make a report and the police basically turned them away. They openly don't care about "small" property crimes, and demonstrate disdain for you if you are coming in to make a police report for anything short of an attempted murder. The alternative that happens in a some communities is vigilante justice.
  - yonaguska 4y ago
    > alternative that happens in a some communities is vigilante justice And NYC is now famous for prosecuting you for engaging in self defense as well. https://nypost.com/2022/07/10/nyc-bodega-owners-urge-da-bragg-to-drop-murder-charges-against-clerk-jose-alba/ https://nypost.com/2022/07/10/nyc-bodega-owners-urge-da-brag... https://nypost.com/2023/04/01/nyc-garage-worker-charged-with-attempted-murder-for-shooting-thief/ https://nypost.com/2023/04/01/nyc-garage-worker-charged-with...
    - CydeWeys 4y ago
      In the first story, the charges were dropped. In the second story, who knows what in the hell is even going on. It happened too recently for there to be any clarity on what actually happened there. That could easily have been an over-zealous person causing problems (like George Zimmerman) rather than self-defense. Time and the trial will tell.
seanmcdirmid 4y ago
When someone says C = A + B, you begin to wonder how much A (violent crime) and B (property crime) are. Yes, SF has a lot of B, but it hasn't had a lot of A, so this stabbing is really shocking to me.
- syzarian 4y ago
  Murders in the U.S. are very high compared to other rich nations. San Francisco has a very high murder rate compared to cities in Japan, England, France, Sweden, etc.
  - seanmcdirmid 4y ago
    Yes, but I'm not sure what this has to do with the current discussion.
    - syzarian 4y ago
      You said SF hasn’t had a lot of A. I know you meant in relation to other U.S. cities but the fact that people think SF doesn’t have a lot of A is indicative of how shell shocked we are, so to speak, as a people when it comes to accepting violent crime.
      - seanmcdirmid 4y ago
        I mean sure, ya, if you want to go down that route, SF doesn't even have a lot of B in relation to Caracas, Pretoria, Port Moresby, ... "But the fact that people think SF has too much of B is indicative of how sheltered we are, so to speak, as a people when it comes to the rest of the world."
Overtonwindow 4y ago
[flagged]
- ModernMech 4y ago
  > Cities with a majority progressive government, when taken as a whole, have significantly more crime than non-progressive. The article you link to does not argue or support this position, at all. Was this the wrong link? I'll pull out what I've gotten from it. It's called "The Liberals Who Won’t Acknowledge the Crime Problem", and the author tries to argue that various liberals (which he conflates with progressives) are ignoring a crime problem. The author starts out by framing the piece against various crimes that occurred in various cities. And then says this: Anecdata, of course, are not the same as data. And in cities such as Philadelphia and San Francisco, progressive district attorneys have insisted that their critics have gotten the facts wrong. As The New York Times recently reported, the now-recalled San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin routinely “confront[ed] voters with data that shows overall crime has not increased meaningfully while he has been in office.” Larry Krasner, Philadelphia’s cantankerous district attorney, has developed a habit of browbeating critics in town-hall meetings with appeals to “the science.” His in-house criminologist, Krasner has insisted, can give people the real numbers if they really want them. Ordinary residents are being told that what they perceive to be true is not, in fact, true. The problem here is that humans understand and interact with the world based on perception and feeling. Politics is about policy, but it is also about human nature—which, however one wishes to characterize it, is a constant to contend with. You can try to transcend human nature by appealing to people’s better angels or through education and enlightenment—but only up to a point. Okay, so there we have it. What does the word "acknowledge" mean in the title? It means they're not giving into the right wing narrative and instead are sticking by data, facts, and statistics. The author actually writes in so many words "feelings are more important than facts". Of course the author tries to claim that the stats can be cherry picked, but they just step in it. They cite a NY Times article which tells: There is no compelling evidence that Mr. Boudin’s policies have made crime significantly worse in San Francisco. Overall crime in San Francisco has changed little since Mr. Boudin took office in early 2020. And the author quibbles that a YOY increase of burglaries from 7,217 to 7,575 qualifies as a crime wave. In trying to prove their point, the author got this extra information from the NYT which further serves to diminish their point, but they had to print it anyway as a professional matter: “the pandemic and other broad societal factors seem to have influenced the patterns of property crime, rather than any causal link to policies within the purview of a district attorney.” The author doesn't even attempt to rebut that. Yet, they don't skip a beat before continuing to call out liberals. The author tries to call liberals out for "motivated reasoning", but that seems actually to be what the author is doing: trying to find anything to support their position, facts and statistics be damned.
verteu 4y ago
Per FBI Crime Report statistics[1] the murder rate in SF is LOW for a major city. It's 60th of 83 major cities (Top 3 most dangerous are St Louis, Baltimore, Detroit). I defined murder rate as "Murder and nonnegligent manslaughter" / "Population" and "major city" as "Population > 250k." PS: Someone should update Wikipedia; its numbers appear outdated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_crime_rate#Crime_rates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b... [1] https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/tables/table-8/table-8.xls/view https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-... [2]
- syzarian 4y ago
  To illustrate how bad things are in the U.S. it should be noted that SF’s low murder rate is quite a bit higher than London’s murder rate. London had 124 homicides last year with a population of 8.7 million people. SF had 40 murders per 100,000 people and London had less than 40 murders per 2,000,000 people. We are a violent people.
  - all2 4y ago
    I'd offer the alternative of we don't adequately punish our violent people. We disbanded asylums and pushed the needy onto the streets (I acknowledge the trope of horror/insane-asylum is a real thing and counter with there were good ones and bad ones, proper oversight is necessary), glorified violence, ignored re-offenders, and so on. There is no justice -- not in the real sense of the word -- and so there is effectively no law.
    - syzarian 4y ago
      We have a very high incarceration rate and our penalties for convicted felons tend to be quite high in comparison to European countries. When you talk about not adequately punishing violent people are you talking about violent crimes in which police do not make an arrest?
      - all2 4y ago
hindsightbias 4y ago
[flagged]
austinl 4y ago
I've lived in SF for almost 10 years, and it saddens me to live in such low trust community because of all the crime. It changes people. I've had my car stolen once and broken into several times. I've had two bikes stolen, once out of an office building, and another time through an iron gate that blocks my doorway. My neighbor had his motorcycle stolen out of his garage. I've caught someone stealing packages from a building I lived in. Last time I moved, someone tried to break into my U-Haul. I've seen people walking out of several stores with bags stuffed full of stolen goods (going to Westfield mall feels surreal—even inside the mall, shops need to hire their own private security to protect themselves). These are just a few incidents that come to mind—I could list many more. My point in listing all of these cases is to say—it's not enough to look at crime metrics. Not to say that we shouldn't look at metrics and try to improve them, but the current metrics are flawed to some degree. People in SF-proper (e.g. mid-market, SoMA, Mission, Haight) are living with a constant low-to-moderate anxiety that they will be robbed at any time. In all cases that I've been close to, there have been no arrests or prosecution. You won't find that I had to chase away someone trying to break into my U-Haul in any crime statistic report. No one from SF is comfortable leaving anything in their car, leaving their garage open, parking their bike outside. All I want is a candidate to run on the platform of simply enforcing the law—it's baffling to me how controversial that is. Perhaps we'll get the right catalyst for that to happen someday.
- AverageDude 4y ago
  >All I want is a candidate to run the platform of simply enforcing the law—it's baffling to me how controversial that is. Perhaps we'll get the right catalyst for that to happen someday. And this is what gives a chance for extremist to flourish. For some reasons, US politics has no centre, it’s always far away from the axis. I think it’s time to have a “Balance Party” in the US :)
  - kevviiinn 4y ago
    There's no balance because its all right wing and getting more extreme every year
  - def_true_false 4y ago
baby 4y ago
I’m in process of leaving SF. As someone who has lived all over the world, what a mismanaged town. That being said, I think SF ended up this way not only due to that, but also due to national issues. Lack of safety nets, lack of healthcare, lack of worker rights, etc.
- IG_Semmelweiss 4y ago
  Shouldn't a city stand on its own ? What makes Austin shine, and SF not ? Don't national issues affect everyone more or less equally ? And even if they didn't, why is it that the outcomes are so wildly different between SFO and comparable large cities that have huge net inflows of people ?
  - baby 4y ago
    How can a city stand on its own when it doesn’t control its border? For example, how can you have effective gun control laws without passing them at the national level. What are the comparable cities? In terms of weather, size, social aids, etc.
mvkel 4y ago
It's unfair to combine "violent" with "property" crime, considering property crime accounts for the vast majority of crime in SF, where lives are not in danger.

PM_me_your_math 4y ago

Speaking from experience, if you go walking the Bronx Concourse at 2am, you are getting robbed at gun point.

sokoloff 4y ago
There are a lot of places in the world where "nothing good happens after 2 AM..."
baremetal 4y ago
[flagged]
- neoromantique 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - xp84 4y ago
    I’m not going to pretend anything is a simple obvious cause/effect — but in the case of SF, you’d be hard pressed to find a city that bends over backwards more with social policies. So I’m curious why unlike the Europe comparison, SF and LA are some of the worst places here in terms of people still mired in poverty and also doing crime. I think plenty of people really are helped by those policies and move on in their lives, but also that plenty of others take advantage of the “liberal guilt” atmosphere, which makes administering punishment very uncomfortable, to do lots of crimes. I see it as an unintended consequence. And officially, I guess I don’t mind it. I left SF, and if the current residents are happy with the current results, they’re free to continue.
    - neoromantique 4y ago
      >you’d be hard pressed to find a city that bends over backwards more with social policies That really doesn't mesh together with the extremely restrictive building code that makes housing crisis so much worse.
      - xp84 4y ago
        Are you saying people breaking into cars and stabbing people are doing so because they can afford say, $1800 in rent but can’t find a place under $2900? Because if the city could drive rents down that far across the board by encouraging new home construction, I would consider that a wildly successful outcome. But even then I don’t think it would change almost anything about the crime and homelessness problems. I think the criminals are mostly either desperate addicts who have no chance at turning it around unless they had serious help with their illnesses, or, just callous criminals who could change but prefer doing crime to working. And it doesn’t even take that many — especially of that second group — to make everybody miserable. Edit: just want to clarify: I am absolutely in favor of a “build, build, build, build, build” housing policy. Despite everything I said, it would still make lots of things better including improving density, making transit make sense.
        neoromantique 4y ago
- dang 4y ago
  Please don't use HN for ideological flamewar. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - baremetal 4y ago
    My apologies. I am working on my self-control.
    - dang 4y ago
      Thanks. Me too.
ajmurmann 4y ago
A big difference between SF (and Portland for that matter) and other US cities seems to be that there is no clear line between "the good parts" of town and "the bad parts". You know the Bronx Concourse is bad, but in SF it's less clear which part isn't bad. Even 14 years ago I had friends visit from LA who walked 1 or 2 blocks in the wrong direction from Union Square and felt unsafe enough that they walked into a store and called a taxi to not have to walk "back to safety".
- tmpz22 4y ago
  This is just 100% wrong. Much of SFs homeless population and crime is concentrated around the Tenderloin and SOMA areas with downtown also being relevant. You can use something like the Citizen app to get a rough geographic understanding. This is an important topic but so many clueless individuals (not OP, in general) decide to comment anyways.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- nostrademons 4y ago
  Is that really true? If you're in the Tenderloin, Civic Center area, parts of the Mission or SoMA, then sure, you know you're in a dodgy area. But I'm pretty sure that if you're in Forest Hills, West Portal, Lake Merced, or the Presidio, you'll feel pretty safe, and crime maps seem to bear that out. I'll take my preschoolers alone to visit friends in the city on public transportation - I drive to Forest Hills, park in the neighborhood, muni to the Castro. Never had a problem. I think that what gets tourists to SF is that areas you'd expect would be safe are actually bad. Normally you'd expect that major shopping districts like Union Square, or the city government like Civic Center, would be safe. In SF they're right next to the Tenderloin, which is a cesspit of filth and addicts. And gentrified vs. dodgy areas in SF are very close together, like walking two blocks toward Valencia and Guerrero in the Mission is dramatically different from walking two blocks in the opposite direction to Van Ness and Folsom, or being on the north side of Potrero is dramatically different from wandering the south side.
dehrmann 4y ago
That's not a fair comparison. This murder was FiDi-adjacent. Pre-pandemic, I wouldn't have been worried in that neighborhood. No idea these days.

dxbydt 4y ago

You clicked on the "Descriptions" tab. Instead, if you click on the "Data" tab, it says: Murder Rape Robbery Assault UNREPORTED UNREPORTED UNREPORTED UNREPORTED If none of these stats are being made public, how are they able to compute 1 in 18 odds ?

starkd 4y ago
From those that are reported, I assume. Unreported cases make the actual number much higher.

smachiz 4y ago

These stats for NYC are heavily skewed, I don't see an easy link to the source data for neighborhoodscout, but I think their methodology is _very_ flawed for popular cities. They list the population of Manhattan as 1.6M, but there's probably closer to 3-4M people there during the average day.

cheeseblubber 4y ago
According to Google: https://www.google.com/search?q=manhattan+population https://www.google.com/search?q=manhattan+population It is 1.6M
- smachiz 4y ago
  That's people that live in Manhattan. That is not the day time (or night time) population of a large business and finance hub, commuter and tourist city. I can't reply to your comment below, but that wasn't the point I was making. The stats are probably bad for both, and I don't think I trust anything that neighborhood scout is putting out for anywhere, was my point. But to your suggestion, it _is_ measured by folks. It's called the Commuter Adjusted Day Time Population. https://www.6sqft.com/see-nycs-population-pulse-over-24-hours/ https://www.6sqft.com/see-nycs-population-pulse-over-24-hour... https://wagner.nyu.edu/files/rudincenter/dynamic_pop_manhattan.pdf https://wagner.nyu.edu/files/rudincenter/dynamic_pop_manhatt... https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/working-papers/2010/demo/top20-commuter-adjusted-population.pdf https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/working-pa... https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/working-papers/2010/demo/top20-commuter-adjusted-population.pdf https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/working-pa...
  - cheeseblubber 4y ago
    Sure but San francisco also have commuters and tourists. It is difficult to get those numbers vs residents. If you were to critique this statistic than you'd have to do the same for SF
    - 4y ago

sporkland 4y ago

Anecdata: My friend who lives around Alamo square has had her car windows smashed 3 times, all her tires stolen off her car once, and had someone come into her garage knock her down and steal her phone.

starkd 4y ago
So, in effect, property crime is really the same as violent crime.
- leoqa 4y ago
  All property crime crosses the acceptable social contract and has the opportunity to become violent crime. I don’t see the issue with comparing them: if my property isn’t safe and I’ll be battered if I defend it, that’s the same signal.
  - artsytrashcan 4y ago
    It's an issue because it misrepresents the rate at which property crimes actually precede or are coincident with violent crime. It also belies the reality that attempting to protect valuables is likelier than alternative action to turn a property crime into a violent crime.
- twelve40 4y ago
  not really, at least personally I'd rather my car gets smashed than someone assaults me directly. so I'd say there's a bit of a difference.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - starkd 4y ago
    So, you're saying its just a question of degree. In principle, its really the same thing.

asveikau 4y ago

It's misleading to lump violent crime and property crime together. SF is skewed very heavily towards property crime. This stabbing incident is a rare event, and broken auto glass is common. They're not the same.

Ekaros 4y ago
Both from outside USA seem insane. Broken auto glasses are extremely rare here. Stabbings sometimes, but nearly always not in public but in homes between junkies drinking ethanol. Not on streets like this case.
- augment001 4y ago
  Broken auto glass is pretty much the default in SF if you leave anything at all visible in a parked car. Pretty much anyone I’ve ever spoken to has had it happen to them, and it happened to me 3 times. This is because there is simply no law enforcement response. On the other hand stabbings and murder are taken very seriously by law enforcement.
  - BurningFrog 4y ago
    Here in Oakland, the saying is that OPD doesn't come out unless there is a body.
  - operatingthetan 4y ago
    >This is because there is simply no law enforcement response. You're expecting the police to show up in a 60 second window? Do you realize how little time it takes to smash a window and leave?
    - throwaway049 4y ago
      What part of their post indicated that expectation?
      - 4y ago

PoliticsIsTirin 4y ago

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quartz 4y ago

The second paragraph for both your links tries to compare the cities in terms of apples-to-apples by population: NYC: "However, compared to other communities of similar population size, New York has a crime rate that is noticeably lower than the average. This means that for comparably sized cities all across America, New York is actually safer than most according to NeighborhoodScout's exclusive analysis of FBI crime data." SF: "Importantly, when you compare San Francisco to other communities of similar population, then San Francisco crime rate (violent and property crimes combined) is quite a bit higher than average. Regardless of how San Francisco does relative to all communities in America of all sizes, when NeighborhoodScout compared it to communities of similar population size, its crime rate per thousand residents stands out as higher than most." Edit: having lived in both (currently in NYC) I also want to point out the two cities are incredibly different in almost every way. It's really tough to compare data across the whole "city" between the two because of the differences in geography, population density & distribution, types of crime, history & expectations, and overall city governance.

screye 4y ago
Crime in East Coast NYC/Boston/DC and West-coast-cities (SF/Seattle/Portland) is very different. The remarkable thing about SF and Seattle, is that crime is highest in high desirability/high-foot-fall areas. Many folks I know all go to downtown SF/Oakland/Seattle for work, drinks, dinner, concerts and public events. At the same time, it seems impossible to park your car on the street in any of these neighborhoods. I thought it was an exaggeration, but "every" person I know, who has parked their car for a week in one of these neighborhoods, has had their cars broken in. It's shocking. On the other hand, the high-footfall / popular parts of east coast cities are fairly safe. (Pickpockets are an exception). For better or for worse, a person would never accidentally find themselves in a bad neighborhood in NYC, Boston or DC. (Bad neighborhoods aren't always correlated with race or poverty. Sometimes it's just a self fulfilling prophecy) This means that violent crime on the east-coast has very little spill-over outside the communities ravaged by it. IE. The average stranger is safe. In that sense, west coast's 'open drug market in the most important parts of the city' policy is a uniquely west coast problem. It really doesn't affect other cities in the US or elsewhere in the same way. The unique incompetence of west coast politics is squarely to blame for the dilapidation of their cities. This is not endemic to cities at large, and cities around the world should actively distance themselves from the sort of accusations that get flung at 'all cities', when it is meant to be targeting west-coast cities in particular.

blahblah1234567 4y ago

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tempsy 4y ago

SF does not have many violent crimes. It’s mostly car break ins. Regardless I’m waiting to hear if his wallet or phone was stolen. If it’s still on him I’m more suspicious this was just some random mugging gone wrong.

rirze 4y ago
He was reportedly seen trying to wave down a car for help after being stabbed (on camera footage). I suspect if he could do that, then he could've easily called 911 instead, but couldn't. It's very likely he was mugged, stabbed in the process, and died due to excessive blood loss.

qikInNdOutReply 4y ago

All this is seems so alien, compared to european cities, even the acceptance standards to which citizens have been negotiated down too. https://www.numbeo.com/crime/in/Munich https://www.numbeo.com/crime/in/Munich

nemo44x 4y ago
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- joseph_grobbles 4y ago
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- tcptomato 4y ago
  Where exactly are these mythical European "no-go zones"?
  - callalex 4y ago
    On Fox News.
    - codyb 4y ago
      Hmm, I'm pretty liberal but there's definitely some pretty large "slum" or "ghetto" areas outside certain major cities in Europe. Generally they're predominately unassimilated refugees as far as I can tell. There doesn't seem to be much attempt at integration really. I am unsure about whether the police will go to them or whether or not they are more or less violent than American cities. There are certain things the US does well, I think assimilation of immigrants is a really strong point for our culture here. Maybe it's because our culture has never really been much more than a gigantic mixing pot and is a lot younger. And maybe it's cause the population is so much larger and discordant than any single European nation.
      - nemo44x 4y ago

ninjagoo 4y ago

So Wikipedia has a list of US Cities, sortable by crime rate, and has separate statistics for violent crime and property crime [1]. This list is based on FBI's data from 2019. By that list, sorted by the total violent crime rate from highest to lowest, SF is 37th on the list of 100 cities, NYC is 59th, Austin is 73rd. In absolute numbers, SF is 715/100k, NYC is 539/100k, Austin is 415/100k. Also, by that list, the top cities for violent crime with population over 1M are: Chicago #17, Houston #18, Philly #25, Tuscon #29, Dallas #31, LA #32, Phoenix #33. Now if only we could get a graph of this data mapped over time, it would be interesting to see trends. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_crime_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...

pclmulqdq 4y ago
NYC in particular suffers from rampant under-reporting on crime stats. Most burglaries and petty property crimes in NYC that I have heard of went completely unreported - either they didn't bother to go into the station, or they went in to make a report and the police basically turned them away. They openly don't care about "small" property crimes, and demonstrate disdain for you if you are coming in to make a police report for anything short of an attempted murder. The alternative that happens in a some communities is vigilante justice.
- yonaguska 4y ago
  > alternative that happens in a some communities is vigilante justice And NYC is now famous for prosecuting you for engaging in self defense as well. https://nypost.com/2022/07/10/nyc-bodega-owners-urge-da-bragg-to-drop-murder-charges-against-clerk-jose-alba/ https://nypost.com/2022/07/10/nyc-bodega-owners-urge-da-brag... https://nypost.com/2023/04/01/nyc-garage-worker-charged-with-attempted-murder-for-shooting-thief/ https://nypost.com/2023/04/01/nyc-garage-worker-charged-with...
  - CydeWeys 4y ago
    In the first story, the charges were dropped. In the second story, who knows what in the hell is even going on. It happened too recently for there to be any clarity on what actually happened there. That could easily have been an over-zealous person causing problems (like George Zimmerman) rather than self-defense. Time and the trial will tell.

seanmcdirmid 4y ago

When someone says C = A + B, you begin to wonder how much A (violent crime) and B (property crime) are. Yes, SF has a lot of B, but it hasn't had a lot of A, so this stabbing is really shocking to me.

syzarian 4y ago
Murders in the U.S. are very high compared to other rich nations. San Francisco has a very high murder rate compared to cities in Japan, England, France, Sweden, etc.
- seanmcdirmid 4y ago
  Yes, but I'm not sure what this has to do with the current discussion.
  - syzarian 4y ago
    You said SF hasn’t had a lot of A. I know you meant in relation to other U.S. cities but the fact that people think SF doesn’t have a lot of A is indicative of how shell shocked we are, so to speak, as a people when it comes to accepting violent crime.
    - seanmcdirmid 4y ago
      I mean sure, ya, if you want to go down that route, SF doesn't even have a lot of B in relation to Caracas, Pretoria, Port Moresby, ... "But the fact that people think SF has too much of B is indicative of how sheltered we are, so to speak, as a people when it comes to the rest of the world."

Overtonwindow 4y ago

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ModernMech 4y ago
> Cities with a majority progressive government, when taken as a whole, have significantly more crime than non-progressive. The article you link to does not argue or support this position, at all. Was this the wrong link? I'll pull out what I've gotten from it. It's called "The Liberals Who Won’t Acknowledge the Crime Problem", and the author tries to argue that various liberals (which he conflates with progressives) are ignoring a crime problem. The author starts out by framing the piece against various crimes that occurred in various cities. And then says this: Anecdata, of course, are not the same as data. And in cities such as Philadelphia and San Francisco, progressive district attorneys have insisted that their critics have gotten the facts wrong. As The New York Times recently reported, the now-recalled San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin routinely “confront[ed] voters with data that shows overall crime has not increased meaningfully while he has been in office.” Larry Krasner, Philadelphia’s cantankerous district attorney, has developed a habit of browbeating critics in town-hall meetings with appeals to “the science.” His in-house criminologist, Krasner has insisted, can give people the real numbers if they really want them. Ordinary residents are being told that what they perceive to be true is not, in fact, true. The problem here is that humans understand and interact with the world based on perception and feeling. Politics is about policy, but it is also about human nature—which, however one wishes to characterize it, is a constant to contend with. You can try to transcend human nature by appealing to people’s better angels or through education and enlightenment—but only up to a point. Okay, so there we have it. What does the word "acknowledge" mean in the title? It means they're not giving into the right wing narrative and instead are sticking by data, facts, and statistics. The author actually writes in so many words "feelings are more important than facts". Of course the author tries to claim that the stats can be cherry picked, but they just step in it. They cite a NY Times article which tells: There is no compelling evidence that Mr. Boudin’s policies have made crime significantly worse in San Francisco. Overall crime in San Francisco has changed little since Mr. Boudin took office in early 2020. And the author quibbles that a YOY increase of burglaries from 7,217 to 7,575 qualifies as a crime wave. In trying to prove their point, the author got this extra information from the NYT which further serves to diminish their point, but they had to print it anyway as a professional matter: “the pandemic and other broad societal factors seem to have influenced the patterns of property crime, rather than any causal link to policies within the purview of a district attorney.” The author doesn't even attempt to rebut that. Yet, they don't skip a beat before continuing to call out liberals. The author tries to call liberals out for "motivated reasoning", but that seems actually to be what the author is doing: trying to find anything to support their position, facts and statistics be damned.

verteu 4y ago

Per FBI Crime Report statistics[1] the murder rate in SF is LOW for a major city. It's 60th of 83 major cities (Top 3 most dangerous are St Louis, Baltimore, Detroit). I defined murder rate as "Murder and nonnegligent manslaughter" / "Population" and "major city" as "Population > 250k." PS: Someone should update Wikipedia; its numbers appear outdated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_crime_rate#Crime_rates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b... [1] https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/tables/table-8/table-8.xls/view https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-... [2]

syzarian 4y ago
To illustrate how bad things are in the U.S. it should be noted that SF’s low murder rate is quite a bit higher than London’s murder rate. London had 124 homicides last year with a population of 8.7 million people. SF had 40 murders per 100,000 people and London had less than 40 murders per 2,000,000 people. We are a violent people.
- all2 4y ago
  I'd offer the alternative of we don't adequately punish our violent people. We disbanded asylums and pushed the needy onto the streets (I acknowledge the trope of horror/insane-asylum is a real thing and counter with there were good ones and bad ones, proper oversight is necessary), glorified violence, ignored re-offenders, and so on. There is no justice -- not in the real sense of the word -- and so there is effectively no law.
  - syzarian 4y ago
    We have a very high incarceration rate and our penalties for convicted felons tend to be quite high in comparison to European countries. When you talk about not adequately punishing violent people are you talking about violent crimes in which police do not make an arrest?
    - all2 4y ago

hindsightbias 4y ago

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austinl 4y ago

I've lived in SF for almost 10 years, and it saddens me to live in such low trust community because of all the crime. It changes people. I've had my car stolen once and broken into several times. I've had two bikes stolen, once out of an office building, and another time through an iron gate that blocks my doorway. My neighbor had his motorcycle stolen out of his garage. I've caught someone stealing packages from a building I lived in. Last time I moved, someone tried to break into my U-Haul. I've seen people walking out of several stores with bags stuffed full of stolen goods (going to Westfield mall feels surreal—even inside the mall, shops need to hire their own private security to protect themselves). These are just a few incidents that come to mind—I could list many more. My point in listing all of these cases is to say—it's not enough to look at crime metrics. Not to say that we shouldn't look at metrics and try to improve them, but the current metrics are flawed to some degree. People in SF-proper (e.g. mid-market, SoMA, Mission, Haight) are living with a constant low-to-moderate anxiety that they will be robbed at any time. In all cases that I've been close to, there have been no arrests or prosecution. You won't find that I had to chase away someone trying to break into my U-Haul in any crime statistic report. No one from SF is comfortable leaving anything in their car, leaving their garage open, parking their bike outside. All I want is a candidate to run on the platform of simply enforcing the law—it's baffling to me how controversial that is. Perhaps we'll get the right catalyst for that to happen someday.

AverageDude 4y ago
>All I want is a candidate to run the platform of simply enforcing the law—it's baffling to me how controversial that is. Perhaps we'll get the right catalyst for that to happen someday. And this is what gives a chance for extremist to flourish. For some reasons, US politics has no centre, it’s always far away from the axis. I think it’s time to have a “Balance Party” in the US :)
- kevviiinn 4y ago
  There's no balance because its all right wing and getting more extreme every year
- def_true_false 4y ago

baby 4y ago

I’m in process of leaving SF. As someone who has lived all over the world, what a mismanaged town. That being said, I think SF ended up this way not only due to that, but also due to national issues. Lack of safety nets, lack of healthcare, lack of worker rights, etc.

IG_Semmelweiss 4y ago
Shouldn't a city stand on its own ? What makes Austin shine, and SF not ? Don't national issues affect everyone more or less equally ? And even if they didn't, why is it that the outcomes are so wildly different between SFO and comparable large cities that have huge net inflows of people ?
- baby 4y ago
  How can a city stand on its own when it doesn’t control its border? For example, how can you have effective gun control laws without passing them at the national level. What are the comparable cities? In terms of weather, size, social aids, etc.

mvkel 4y ago

It's unfair to combine "violent" with "property" crime, considering property crime accounts for the vast majority of crime in SF, where lives are not in danger.