4 ms·

Thanks for that. I admit to buying the narrative. Part of that is because my nearest city of any substance is Portland, and it's not especially violent. SF d

Thanks for that. I admit to buying the narrative. Part of that is because my nearest city of any substance is Portland, and it's not especially violent. SF does look more violent compared to Portland, but objectively SF is actually just average or less. Lots of big cities are more violent[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_crime_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...

TigeriusKirk 4y ago
So sorting by Violent Crime (Total), we see San Francisco is 37th out of the 100 listed.
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  Citing murder rates (and ignoring other crimes) is one of the preferred tactics of people who want to say that big cities have low crime rates. Police in big cities go after big crimes like murders, but tend to ignore "lesser" crimes, so as a result, gangsters and other career criminals stick to those lesser crimes, and generally do a lot more of them.
  - jwagenet 4y ago
    It’s the same in SF, where the most visible crimes by far are not murder, but smash and grabs and shoplifting.
    - busterarm 4y ago
      Assault and battery and armed robbery are also violent crimes that are significantly under-reported. /s lived in NYC for almost 40 years.
  - rubyn00bie 4y ago
    Provide a link to an empirical source or you’re literally just making this up based on feels and shit you see on TV…
    - pclmulqdq 4y ago
      A useful source was literally cited in the comment I replied to. Look at rankings of cities by crime. You will find SF and NYC close to the bottom of the pack on murders, but toward the top on property crimes and low-level violent crimes. As to the ignoring crimes, here you go: https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/06/us/alvin-bragg-manhattan-district-attorney-crimes-prosecution/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/06/us/alvin-bragg-manhattan-dist...
      - jascii 4y ago
        So, "gangsters and other career criminals" stick to marijuana possession? That doesn't sound like a bad deal...
        pclmulqdq 4y ago
        It's not a bad deal at all, if that's what they stick to. It's really mostly non-violent thefts these days. That still doesn't make the area "low-crime" or "safe."
      - rubyn00bie 4y ago
        You completely misrepresented what they would prosecute, literally from the article you linked to: > marijuana misdemeanors, including selling more than three ounces; not paying public transportation fare; trespassing except a fourth degree stalking charge, resisting arrest, obstructing governmental administration in certain cases, and prostitution Literally nothing you insinuated. Please stop peddling lazy lies and ideas.
        pclmulqdq 4y ago
        You might want to read the primary source before accusing someone of lying. Misdemeanor assault and petty theft are also on the list. I admit that I chose a left-leaning article to cite so that people like you would read something rather than dismissing it outright as biased, but the primary source is linked there. CNN, apparently peddlers of "lazy lies" themselves, chose not to put the full list down.
  - piva00 4y ago
    > Citing murder rates (and ignoring other crimes) is one of the preferred tactics of people who want to say that big cities have low crime rates. People in this thread are specifically talking about violent crimes, not all crimes, which murder rate seems to be one of the good metrics to use, no?
    - pclmulqdq 4y ago
      No, because they don't correlate with violent crime rates, which are also tracked. Murder is actually a really weird crime: if basically never happens between people who don't know each other.
  - jascii 4y ago
    OP isn't citing murder rates, they're citing "violent crime (total)" as mentioned in the linked article.
    - pclmulqdq 4y ago
      The linked article cites murder rates.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  Yep, and when we sort cities by population density, it's a good bit higher than 37th. SF has plenty of problems, but apparently violent crime isn't the most noteworthy of them.
nightski 4y ago
This data is from 2019, pre-pandemic and almost 5 years ago. Things have changed.
- CalChris 4y ago
  Has it? 2019 is the latest aggregation the FBI publishes. Looking at the SFPD Dashboard, homicide hasn't changed from last year at 13. https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/stay-safe/crime-data/crime-dashboard https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/stay-safe/crime-data/crim...
  - tequilatex 4y ago
    Homicides has gone up during the pandemic--56 in 2022 vs 41 in 2019. I think NYC also went up, but NYC is still safer than SF (5 deaths per 100k vs 6.9 per 100k for SF).
ecshafer 4y ago
I went to Portland for a week last year. I saw 6 different instances of a violent, obviously mentally ill, presumably homeless person physically attack a random person (once at a restaurant, twice at a tram station, thrice on the street, all broad daylight). That was more instances that I had seen in 5 years in Philadelphia, a city jokingly referred to as Killadelphia. Portland might not have a lot of gang violence (which is what really gets numbers up), but not violent isn't how I would describe the city.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  I've lived in the vicinity of Portland for almost 50 years and haven't seen as much violence as you did in one week. You must have been hanging in really rough area of town, or just got very unlucky.
  - runjake 4y ago
    I spent 1.5 days in downtown PDX (roughly around the Portland City Grill) recently and my experiences roughly match the OP. It was shockingly bad. Crazy, violent people "everywhere". Tents covering the sidewalks. There wasn't a parking garage around where there weren't piles of human excrement.
  - KarlKemp 4y ago
    No, they’re just making stuff up.
  - ecshafer 4y ago
    This was staying in Downtown and the "Lloyd District" I suppose it was called. Leaving those areas did seem a bit better, but it was still pretty bad. In the same time frame I was in downtown Newark, Trenton, Baltimore, Detroit, NYC. Portland was by far the worst of the bunch.
    - selimthegrim 4y ago
      Lloyd center has always been a late night hang out for gangbangers
8ytecoder 4y ago
I grew up in a violent town (high murder rate - even blatant). The difference between that and SF is that you don’t personally experience that violence in my home town. It’s really quite rare it affects someone you know. It’s even rarer for it to be direct. SF is different. Within my first year there i had already seen someone shot in front my building (i didn’t witness it but the aftermath). An asian friend was slapped and her phone taken - she’d have given the phone anyway so the slap felt unnecessary. You fear parking your car - not trembling in your pants fear but a dread that you’ll have to deal with that shit again (now the breakins happen while you’re still in the car). You don’t know when someone is yelling on the street whether they are harmless or gonna attack you - doesn’t have to be a weapon just yelling at your face with saliva splattering all over you would traumatise you enough - yup, that happened too. My girlfriend and I used to try to help them. We’d give them leftover food - bakery items mostly. We’d see that all tossed on sidewalk when we walk that way again. There was always glass on the sidewalk. There’d be random tents you’ll have to get around. This is daily and adds up. Like I said, I grew up in a violent town. So avoiding travel at night or going around the house locking windows or being aware of the approaching blind dark spot is something I’m used to. Most everyone around me was not. Even those from the Bay Area haven’t seen. I used to think they were weak but the truth is no one has to put up with it and I think people have the right to “feel” safe as well. (Again, none if this will show up in a statistic and I’m not saying these people should be locked up in the name of tough on crime either. These are absolutely property crimes and quality of life crimes but you do feel fear and dread almost everyday)
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > I grew up in a violent town (high murder rate - even blatant). The difference between that and SF is that you don’t personally experience that violence in my home town. It’s really quite rare it affects someone you know. If it has a high murder rate, that obviously is not true for all values of “you”.
  - chelical 4y ago
    It's true for an overwhelming percentage of people even in the most violent cities since most violent crime is confined to a small subset of the city.
dahfizz 4y ago
> but objectively SF is actually just average or less. Did you look at your own source? SF is 37 out of 100 for violent crime. That's comfortably above average, not "average or less"

TigeriusKirk 4y ago

So sorting by Violent Crime (Total), we see San Francisco is 37th out of the 100 listed.

pclmulqdq 4y ago
Citing murder rates (and ignoring other crimes) is one of the preferred tactics of people who want to say that big cities have low crime rates. Police in big cities go after big crimes like murders, but tend to ignore "lesser" crimes, so as a result, gangsters and other career criminals stick to those lesser crimes, and generally do a lot more of them.
- jwagenet 4y ago
  It’s the same in SF, where the most visible crimes by far are not murder, but smash and grabs and shoplifting.
  - busterarm 4y ago
    Assault and battery and armed robbery are also violent crimes that are significantly under-reported. /s lived in NYC for almost 40 years.
- rubyn00bie 4y ago
  Provide a link to an empirical source or you’re literally just making this up based on feels and shit you see on TV…
  - pclmulqdq 4y ago
    A useful source was literally cited in the comment I replied to. Look at rankings of cities by crime. You will find SF and NYC close to the bottom of the pack on murders, but toward the top on property crimes and low-level violent crimes. As to the ignoring crimes, here you go: https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/06/us/alvin-bragg-manhattan-district-attorney-crimes-prosecution/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/06/us/alvin-bragg-manhattan-dist...
    - jascii 4y ago
      So, "gangsters and other career criminals" stick to marijuana possession? That doesn't sound like a bad deal...
      - pclmulqdq 4y ago
        It's not a bad deal at all, if that's what they stick to. It's really mostly non-violent thefts these days. That still doesn't make the area "low-crime" or "safe."
    - rubyn00bie 4y ago
      You completely misrepresented what they would prosecute, literally from the article you linked to: > marijuana misdemeanors, including selling more than three ounces; not paying public transportation fare; trespassing except a fourth degree stalking charge, resisting arrest, obstructing governmental administration in certain cases, and prostitution Literally nothing you insinuated. Please stop peddling lazy lies and ideas.
      - pclmulqdq 4y ago
        You might want to read the primary source before accusing someone of lying. Misdemeanor assault and petty theft are also on the list. I admit that I chose a left-leaning article to cite so that people like you would read something rather than dismissing it outright as biased, but the primary source is linked there. CNN, apparently peddlers of "lazy lies" themselves, chose not to put the full list down.
- piva00 4y ago
  > Citing murder rates (and ignoring other crimes) is one of the preferred tactics of people who want to say that big cities have low crime rates. People in this thread are specifically talking about violent crimes, not all crimes, which murder rate seems to be one of the good metrics to use, no?
  - pclmulqdq 4y ago
    No, because they don't correlate with violent crime rates, which are also tracked. Murder is actually a really weird crime: if basically never happens between people who don't know each other.
- jascii 4y ago
  OP isn't citing murder rates, they're citing "violent crime (total)" as mentioned in the linked article.
  - pclmulqdq 4y ago
    The linked article cites murder rates.
rootusrootus 4y ago
Yep, and when we sort cities by population density, it's a good bit higher than 37th. SF has plenty of problems, but apparently violent crime isn't the most noteworthy of them.

nightski 4y ago

This data is from 2019, pre-pandemic and almost 5 years ago. Things have changed.

CalChris 4y ago
Has it? 2019 is the latest aggregation the FBI publishes. Looking at the SFPD Dashboard, homicide hasn't changed from last year at 13. https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/stay-safe/crime-data/crime-dashboard https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/stay-safe/crime-data/crim...
- tequilatex 4y ago
  Homicides has gone up during the pandemic--56 in 2022 vs 41 in 2019. I think NYC also went up, but NYC is still safer than SF (5 deaths per 100k vs 6.9 per 100k for SF).

ecshafer 4y ago

I went to Portland for a week last year. I saw 6 different instances of a violent, obviously mentally ill, presumably homeless person physically attack a random person (once at a restaurant, twice at a tram station, thrice on the street, all broad daylight). That was more instances that I had seen in 5 years in Philadelphia, a city jokingly referred to as Killadelphia. Portland might not have a lot of gang violence (which is what really gets numbers up), but not violent isn't how I would describe the city.

rootusrootus 4y ago
I've lived in the vicinity of Portland for almost 50 years and haven't seen as much violence as you did in one week. You must have been hanging in really rough area of town, or just got very unlucky.
- runjake 4y ago
  I spent 1.5 days in downtown PDX (roughly around the Portland City Grill) recently and my experiences roughly match the OP. It was shockingly bad. Crazy, violent people "everywhere". Tents covering the sidewalks. There wasn't a parking garage around where there weren't piles of human excrement.
- KarlKemp 4y ago
  No, they’re just making stuff up.
- ecshafer 4y ago
  This was staying in Downtown and the "Lloyd District" I suppose it was called. Leaving those areas did seem a bit better, but it was still pretty bad. In the same time frame I was in downtown Newark, Trenton, Baltimore, Detroit, NYC. Portland was by far the worst of the bunch.
  - selimthegrim 4y ago
    Lloyd center has always been a late night hang out for gangbangers

8ytecoder 4y ago

I grew up in a violent town (high murder rate - even blatant). The difference between that and SF is that you don’t personally experience that violence in my home town. It’s really quite rare it affects someone you know. It’s even rarer for it to be direct. SF is different. Within my first year there i had already seen someone shot in front my building (i didn’t witness it but the aftermath). An asian friend was slapped and her phone taken - she’d have given the phone anyway so the slap felt unnecessary. You fear parking your car - not trembling in your pants fear but a dread that you’ll have to deal with that shit again (now the breakins happen while you’re still in the car). You don’t know when someone is yelling on the street whether they are harmless or gonna attack you - doesn’t have to be a weapon just yelling at your face with saliva splattering all over you would traumatise you enough - yup, that happened too. My girlfriend and I used to try to help them. We’d give them leftover food - bakery items mostly. We’d see that all tossed on sidewalk when we walk that way again. There was always glass on the sidewalk. There’d be random tents you’ll have to get around. This is daily and adds up. Like I said, I grew up in a violent town. So avoiding travel at night or going around the house locking windows or being aware of the approaching blind dark spot is something I’m used to. Most everyone around me was not. Even those from the Bay Area haven’t seen. I used to think they were weak but the truth is no one has to put up with it and I think people have the right to “feel” safe as well. (Again, none if this will show up in a statistic and I’m not saying these people should be locked up in the name of tough on crime either. These are absolutely property crimes and quality of life crimes but you do feel fear and dread almost everyday)

dragonwriter 4y ago
> I grew up in a violent town (high murder rate - even blatant). The difference between that and SF is that you don’t personally experience that violence in my home town. It’s really quite rare it affects someone you know. If it has a high murder rate, that obviously is not true for all values of “you”.
- chelical 4y ago
  It's true for an overwhelming percentage of people even in the most violent cities since most violent crime is confined to a small subset of the city.

dahfizz 4y ago

> but objectively SF is actually just average or less. Did you look at your own source? SF is 37 out of 100 for violent crime. That's comfortably above average, not "average or less"