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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

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.
    - pclmulqdq 4y ago
      Outside of NYC, the guy in the first story would never have been arrested, and the charges were dropped due to immense public pressure on the DA's office. The police stated that they intended to charge him with murder.
      - brewdad 4y ago
        The police don’t bring charges. They can intend whatever they want.
    - pauldenton 4y ago
      Charges were dropped. But why do they keep getting raised against people defending themselves, and never raised against chronic nuisances?
      - baggy_trough 4y ago
        The point is to inculcate a state of learned helplessness into productive citizens.
    - yonaguska 4y ago
      You're right, we don't have the details yet, but from what we do have, I think you'd be hard pressed to find a jury willing to convict someone that shot an assailant with the assailants gun after being shot twice. Once you've been shot, you are on a clock for getting medical assistance. I could see how retaliatory shooting is valid self defense as it ensures that the person who just threatened your life is unable to continue threatening your life, even if you have possession of the gun(because you've just been shot) and it ensures that you have a scene where paramedics can actually attend to you. If you want to ensure your best odds of survival, making sure your assailant is dead also ensures that you aren't competing for medical resources...but I'm not sure taking it that far would qualify as self defense. Using deadly force though, seems entirely justified.
- themitigating 4y ago
  "NYC in particular suffers from rampant under-reporting on crime stats. " How do you know this? Why aren't other cities affected by this under reporting?
  - apendleton 4y ago
    Metrics-driven policing often gets the blame here: shifts in policing policy that hold individual precincts, officers, etc., directly responsible for crime statistics under their watch were initially successful in more efficiently allocating police resources, but have now created a set of perverse incentives that encourage officers to either not file reports or to down-classify reports into less-grave categories (reporting armed robbery as theft, etc.). These kinds of programs originated in NYC, as the "CompStat" program under Jack Maple and Bill Bratton, largely during the administration of Rudy Giuliani as mayor, but similar programs have since been adopted by (particularly urban) police departments across the country, to arguably similar both positive and negative effects. This kind of stats manipulation ("juking the stats") featured heavily in the TV show The Wire, for example, which is set in Baltimore. So, to more directly answer your second question: other cities absolutely also suffer here, but New York has been at it the longest, and so is perhaps best known for this issue. For more background, Reply All did a two-parter a few years ago exploring the history here, which is quite good. This is the first part: https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/o2hx34 https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/o2hx34
    - themitigating 4y ago
      I wasn't doubting that criminal stats can be manipulated or are unreliable. I was asking for evidence that was the case for nyc and that it was such an extent as to change the danger of the city compared to others
- whimsicalism 4y ago
  No urban police department is going to care about your small time theft. The primary difference I notice is that in SF, people seem to expect that the police will care about this? I am not sure why the expectations seem so different - perhaps it is the large number of people coming from more suburban parts of the country where the police do investigate these crimes?
  - apple4ever 4y ago
    They should. And maybe, probably because they should be investigating these crimes.
droptablemain 4y ago
A lot has changed since 2019.
nashashmi 4y ago
where is Camden and Compton on that list?
- smcin 4y ago
  The Wikipedia list is the 2019 FBI UCR, but redacted for only the 100 most populous cities in America. So that would be cutoff at population ~225,000. If you want to see stats for all cities, view the FBI UCR directly [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.-...]. e.g. NJ cities incl. Camden are at https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/tables/table-8/table-8-state-cuts/newjersey.xls https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-...
  - smsm42 4y ago
    Interestingly, if I go to https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s the data stops at 2019. Now, if I look at 2018 snapshot, they have 2017 data: https://web.archive.org/web/20180303075305/https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s https://web.archive.org/web/20180303075305/https://ucr.fbi.g... 2019 snapshot has 2018 data: https://web.archive.org/web/20190508183318/https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s https://web.archive.org/web/20190508183318/https://ucr.fbi.g... But there's no data after 2019 in any of the snapshots, up to 2023. I wonder what happened in 2020 that makes it impossible to collect any data since then...
smsm42 4y ago
Property crime in SF is likely grossly under-reported. E.g. constant car break-ins is useless to report - the crimes are done openly and brazenly, and the police is doing nothing about it, which is understandable given they are in colossal staffing shortage - organized purposely by the city government for political and ideological reasons. In fact, a lot of things like shoplifting is not even counted as a "crime" anymore. And certainly quality of life issues - like tent cities on the street, open air drug markets, garbage everywhere - is not technically a "crime" either... As for the violent crime, I expect post-2019 data to be much worse than 2019, 2019 was before the whole "defund the police" movement.
- ribosometronome 4y ago
  >As for the violent crime, I expect post-2019 data to be much worse than 2019, 2019 was before the whole "defund the police" movement. I'm not sure I follow. Are you saying that victims of violent crime are less likely to report it post-BLM/George Floyd? I know some people have been less likely to call certain things in, like someone having a mental health crisis, out of fear that police may escalate, but violent crime?
  - smsm42 4y ago
    No, I'm saying there is likely significantly more violent crime in 2023 than there were in 2019, so basing on 2019 is no longer relevant. The reporting likely suffered too, at least for a relatively minor crime - you're less likely to report, say, a mugging if you know police is not going to do anything about it - but that's not the primary point. The primary point post-BLM the actual levels of crime rose significantly, so pre-BLM data is likely under-estimating the current level of crime significantly.
    - cortesoft 4y ago
      You are assuming defunding the police leads to more violent crime... any evidence to back that up?
      - 4y ago
speakfreely 4y ago
The problem with examining violent crime per city is that the majority of violent crime occurs in specific areas, typically poor areas that are known to be dangerous by most locals who avoid them unless they live there. What the majority of people are concerned about is the chances of violent crime that is likely to affect them. Yes, there might be 80 gang murders a year in Atlanta but a $100k+ income working professional in downtown has a very different threat model than a gang member in some of the worst neighborhoods of the city. I think the reason SF gets so much negative attention is because the threat to "average people" (realistically, above average income people) is anecdotally quite high in SF, even in "nice" areas of the city where affluent people frequent.
- notch898a 4y ago
  The issue is you often find yourself there even when attempting to avoid. For instance, once I got a flat tire right as I went through a few mile stretch of bad town. The locals saw I got a flat tire and was distracted, took the opportunity to put a gun to my head. The chance of that happening while you have a working vehicle is 0% and few people plan to have a vehicle failure exactly at the wrong spot.
- whimsicalism 4y ago
  > because the threat to "average people" (realistically, above average income people) is anecdotally quite high in SF, even in "nice" areas of the city where affluent people frequent. But is it actually quite high? Anecdotally, I notice many more people going through psychotic episodes here, but generally less organized violent crime. The drug dealing/prostitution is mostly restricted to a few parts of the Mission and the TL.
- cortesoft 4y ago
  > What the majority of people are concerned about is the chances of violent crime that is likely to affect them. I don't know, I also care about violent crime that happens to anyone. I care about all life, not just my own.
  - nostrademons 4y ago
squeaky-clean 4y ago
These rates have gotten a lot higher during/post covid. 2019 data is pretty out of date considering that.
josephcsible 4y ago
It's misleading to look at 2019 crime data for San Francisco when the biggest reason for crime going up there recently was Chesa Boudin, who was only DA from 2020 to 2022.
fortran77 4y ago
SF's population is below 1MM

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.
  - pclmulqdq 4y ago
    Outside of NYC, the guy in the first story would never have been arrested, and the charges were dropped due to immense public pressure on the DA's office. The police stated that they intended to charge him with murder.
    - brewdad 4y ago
      The police don’t bring charges. They can intend whatever they want.
  - pauldenton 4y ago
    Charges were dropped. But why do they keep getting raised against people defending themselves, and never raised against chronic nuisances?
    - baggy_trough 4y ago
      The point is to inculcate a state of learned helplessness into productive citizens.
  - yonaguska 4y ago
    You're right, we don't have the details yet, but from what we do have, I think you'd be hard pressed to find a jury willing to convict someone that shot an assailant with the assailants gun after being shot twice. Once you've been shot, you are on a clock for getting medical assistance. I could see how retaliatory shooting is valid self defense as it ensures that the person who just threatened your life is unable to continue threatening your life, even if you have possession of the gun(because you've just been shot) and it ensures that you have a scene where paramedics can actually attend to you. If you want to ensure your best odds of survival, making sure your assailant is dead also ensures that you aren't competing for medical resources...but I'm not sure taking it that far would qualify as self defense. Using deadly force though, seems entirely justified.
themitigating 4y ago
"NYC in particular suffers from rampant under-reporting on crime stats. " How do you know this? Why aren't other cities affected by this under reporting?
- apendleton 4y ago
  Metrics-driven policing often gets the blame here: shifts in policing policy that hold individual precincts, officers, etc., directly responsible for crime statistics under their watch were initially successful in more efficiently allocating police resources, but have now created a set of perverse incentives that encourage officers to either not file reports or to down-classify reports into less-grave categories (reporting armed robbery as theft, etc.). These kinds of programs originated in NYC, as the "CompStat" program under Jack Maple and Bill Bratton, largely during the administration of Rudy Giuliani as mayor, but similar programs have since been adopted by (particularly urban) police departments across the country, to arguably similar both positive and negative effects. This kind of stats manipulation ("juking the stats") featured heavily in the TV show The Wire, for example, which is set in Baltimore. So, to more directly answer your second question: other cities absolutely also suffer here, but New York has been at it the longest, and so is perhaps best known for this issue. For more background, Reply All did a two-parter a few years ago exploring the history here, which is quite good. This is the first part: https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/o2hx34 https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/o2hx34
  - themitigating 4y ago
    I wasn't doubting that criminal stats can be manipulated or are unreliable. I was asking for evidence that was the case for nyc and that it was such an extent as to change the danger of the city compared to others
whimsicalism 4y ago
No urban police department is going to care about your small time theft. The primary difference I notice is that in SF, people seem to expect that the police will care about this? I am not sure why the expectations seem so different - perhaps it is the large number of people coming from more suburban parts of the country where the police do investigate these crimes?
- apple4ever 4y ago
  They should. And maybe, probably because they should be investigating these crimes.

droptablemain 4y ago

A lot has changed since 2019.

nashashmi 4y ago

where is Camden and Compton on that list?

smcin 4y ago
The Wikipedia list is the 2019 FBI UCR, but redacted for only the 100 most populous cities in America. So that would be cutoff at population ~225,000. If you want to see stats for all cities, view the FBI UCR directly [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.-...]. e.g. NJ cities incl. Camden are at https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/tables/table-8/table-8-state-cuts/newjersey.xls https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-...
- smsm42 4y ago
  Interestingly, if I go to https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s the data stops at 2019. Now, if I look at 2018 snapshot, they have 2017 data: https://web.archive.org/web/20180303075305/https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s https://web.archive.org/web/20180303075305/https://ucr.fbi.g... 2019 snapshot has 2018 data: https://web.archive.org/web/20190508183318/https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s https://web.archive.org/web/20190508183318/https://ucr.fbi.g... But there's no data after 2019 in any of the snapshots, up to 2023. I wonder what happened in 2020 that makes it impossible to collect any data since then...

smsm42 4y ago

Property crime in SF is likely grossly under-reported. E.g. constant car break-ins is useless to report - the crimes are done openly and brazenly, and the police is doing nothing about it, which is understandable given they are in colossal staffing shortage - organized purposely by the city government for political and ideological reasons. In fact, a lot of things like shoplifting is not even counted as a "crime" anymore. And certainly quality of life issues - like tent cities on the street, open air drug markets, garbage everywhere - is not technically a "crime" either... As for the violent crime, I expect post-2019 data to be much worse than 2019, 2019 was before the whole "defund the police" movement.

ribosometronome 4y ago
>As for the violent crime, I expect post-2019 data to be much worse than 2019, 2019 was before the whole "defund the police" movement. I'm not sure I follow. Are you saying that victims of violent crime are less likely to report it post-BLM/George Floyd? I know some people have been less likely to call certain things in, like someone having a mental health crisis, out of fear that police may escalate, but violent crime?
- smsm42 4y ago
  No, I'm saying there is likely significantly more violent crime in 2023 than there were in 2019, so basing on 2019 is no longer relevant. The reporting likely suffered too, at least for a relatively minor crime - you're less likely to report, say, a mugging if you know police is not going to do anything about it - but that's not the primary point. The primary point post-BLM the actual levels of crime rose significantly, so pre-BLM data is likely under-estimating the current level of crime significantly.
  - cortesoft 4y ago
    You are assuming defunding the police leads to more violent crime... any evidence to back that up?
    - 4y ago

speakfreely 4y ago

The problem with examining violent crime per city is that the majority of violent crime occurs in specific areas, typically poor areas that are known to be dangerous by most locals who avoid them unless they live there. What the majority of people are concerned about is the chances of violent crime that is likely to affect them. Yes, there might be 80 gang murders a year in Atlanta but a $100k+ income working professional in downtown has a very different threat model than a gang member in some of the worst neighborhoods of the city. I think the reason SF gets so much negative attention is because the threat to "average people" (realistically, above average income people) is anecdotally quite high in SF, even in "nice" areas of the city where affluent people frequent.

notch898a 4y ago
The issue is you often find yourself there even when attempting to avoid. For instance, once I got a flat tire right as I went through a few mile stretch of bad town. The locals saw I got a flat tire and was distracted, took the opportunity to put a gun to my head. The chance of that happening while you have a working vehicle is 0% and few people plan to have a vehicle failure exactly at the wrong spot.
whimsicalism 4y ago
> because the threat to "average people" (realistically, above average income people) is anecdotally quite high in SF, even in "nice" areas of the city where affluent people frequent. But is it actually quite high? Anecdotally, I notice many more people going through psychotic episodes here, but generally less organized violent crime. The drug dealing/prostitution is mostly restricted to a few parts of the Mission and the TL.
cortesoft 4y ago
> What the majority of people are concerned about is the chances of violent crime that is likely to affect them. I don't know, I also care about violent crime that happens to anyone. I care about all life, not just my own.
- nostrademons 4y ago

squeaky-clean 4y ago

These rates have gotten a lot higher during/post covid. 2019 data is pretty out of date considering that.

josephcsible 4y ago

It's misleading to look at 2019 crime data for San Francisco when the biggest reason for crime going up there recently was Chesa Boudin, who was only DA from 2020 to 2022.

fortran77 4y ago

SF's population is below 1MM