8 ms·

It feels a bit like you're championing a narrative of "See, it's not so bad! You'll just get your stuff stolen and your car vandalized!" I wouldn't feel so smug

It feels a bit like you're championing a narrative of "See, it's not so bad! You'll just get your stuff stolen and your car vandalized!" I wouldn't feel so smug about that. I lived in SF for ~15 years, experienced multiple car breakins (when I had a car) and one weird guy who walked up to me on the street and said "I have a gun and I'm going to shoot you" (which I somehow calmly ignored). For the record, I didn't comment in that thread and I generally don't feel the need to bash SF in public - I just simply moved out.

ipqk 4y ago
You just extrapolated that narrative up in your head. The OP said nothing that remotely hinted at that.
idopmstuff 4y ago
The problem with saying that SF has relatively low violent crime is that it ignores the constant, extremely aggressive verbal assault that people are just accustomed to. In the years I lived there, I had people scream at me that they were going to kill/stab/etc. me at least a couple of dozen times (I would describe this as violent crime). Of course, if you call SFPD, they'll just tell you it's not an issue and ignore you, so those don't go into any statistics.
- cemerick 4y ago
  You're right, "violent crime" is a term of art that involves the commission of a…crime. "Verbal assault" is not assault. I guess if you don't like the vibes in a place, you can go somewhere else, but trying to use such things to influence how people talk about or perceive actual, no, for real crime is intellectual malpractice.
  - Consultant32452 4y ago
    We should convince the SF tourism board to use this motto. Come to San Francisco, where our vibe is constant threats of murder but you probably won't actually get murdered!
    - Swizec 4y ago
      Just to offer a counter-anecdote: In 8 years of living in SOMA, which has the 2nd highest crime rate after Tenderloin, nobody has even once threatened to kill me. Or even hinted at wanting me harm. Property crime is a different story. That has indeed been a problem.
      - y-curious 4y ago
        My first time in SOMA I had a homeless guy almost piss on my shoes followed by another guy shadow-stabbing with a real knife and pointing at me. Let's call it a mulligan.
      - SllX 4y ago
        Why even offer a counter-anecdote? Are you trying to give the impression to impressionable people that not every person gets threatened with murder on a regular basis here? That’s true, but it seems like you’re just trying to discount one person’s lived experience. I know women that get groped on MUNI regularly but not every woman gets groped on MUNI. People don’t usually threaten me, but I’ve stopped people from threatening others in front of me. Hell, I’ve stopped a guy from trying to roll another guy sleeping on the street into oncoming traffic. Nobody has ever stolen my phone from me, but that doesn’t mean phones have never been stolen from people. And before you go to the stats, just remember something: lies, damned lies and statistics. If the police don’t get involved, there’s no police report. If the DA doesn’t charge a crime, there’s no “crime” even if there actually is. Homicides and property crimes tend to leave the most evidence behind, but those aren’t the only crimes that matter and even the criminal amounts of piss and shit around just the MUNI and BART stations probably isn’t generating any police reports either. Verbal harassment and threats also don’t tend to generate enough of the right kind of paperwork to make it into the stats, but it doesn’t make it less real.
        Swizec 4y ago
        > Why even offer a counter-anecdote? To say that “constant threats of murder” does not accurately describe SF.
  - bigtex88 4y ago
    You've got a really weird black and white view of these things. As long as people aren't literally murdering you then it's ok? The idea that "real crime" only happens AFTER the actual crime has taken place is super bizarre. That's not how the world works. Go find me a city that has people that are super happy and nice to each other and also has a high murder rate. Wait, I bet you can't. Talking about the petty crime and the "vibe" is absolutely on topic for this, because that sort of laissez-faire attitude leads to murders like the one we're discussing.
    - jjulius 4y ago
      >Talking about the petty crime and the "vibe" is absolutely on topic for this, because that sort of laissez-faire attitude leads to murders like the one we're discussing. ... you mean the murder in question that, as we've found out in this article/thread, has nothing to do with the "petty crime" and "vibe" that you're referring to?
      - bigtex88 4y ago
        Still seems like a good opportunity to me to bring up the general "whatever" nature in SF regarding crime. Perhaps this stabbing took place because the assailant felt more brazen knowing that the police in that city won't do anything? Let's just let the homeless and the mentally deranged do whatever they want in SF. That's definitely a good way to run a modern city. Better than hurting their feelings! /s
        jjulius 4y ago
        >Let's just let the homeless and the mentally deranged do whatever they want in SF. That's definitely a good way to run a modern city. Better than hurting their feelings! /s If that's the takeaway you're getting from this comment chain, I really don't know what else to tell you.
    - projectazorian 4y ago
      > Go find me a city that has people that are super happy and nice to each other and also has a high murder rate. Wait, I bet you can't. Many Mexican and Brazilian cities have much higher murder rates and people are still generally happier and nicer than in the US, especially if SF is the basis for comparison.
  - pbourke 4y ago
    Your comments are disingenuous. A decline in the quality of life in a city due to crime, substance abuse, homelessness and untreated mental health disorders has an immense affect on one’s well being. That goes doubly so for people with spouses and children. If you are confronted by a mentally ill person screaming threats at you, is your first thought to seek comfort in the violent crime stats? You must be some kind of robot, if so.
  - LawTalkingGuy 4y ago
    You're wrong. Verbal assault is assault, and is violence, because it leads to the reasonable expectation of violence. You don't know if the crazy person threatening to kill you will actually try to do it so you have to imagine that they will. -- Sorry Dang, you're right.
    - dang 4y ago
      You broke the site guidelines badly with this comment and have been breaking them in other places too. We ban accounts that post like this, so would you please stop? If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
  - zo1 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - projectazorian 4y ago
      Which “tough” practices do police need access to? Extrajudicial beatings and murder? Torture? Tell us please, don’t hide behind euphemism.
      - zo1 4y ago
        How about arresting them for the crimes they commit. That's more than enough.
    - giantrobot 4y ago
      > Couple that with police not really being able to be tough on degenerate hood youths and voila Police should terrorize anyone you don't like. Awesome system you're proposing.
  - marcinzm 4y ago
    Menacing/verbal threats/criminal threats are a real crime in most places including California.
  - handoflixue 4y ago
    Threatening to assault someone is, in fact, a real crime. You cannot, legally, go around "screaming that you're going to kill/stab/etc." people. Looks like Penal Code 422, if you need a concrete reference for California specifically
  - idopmstuff 4y ago
    The problem is you actually don't understand what assault is. Assault does not involving actually touching someone - that's battery. What you're describing as verbal assault is actually assault and is a real crime, generally considered to be violent crime in crime statistics.
- nostrademons 4y ago
  You just learn to tune it out. Crazy people gonna crazy. It's like the announcements that come over the PA at airports for "Please report any unattended baggage - if you see something, say something", or 99% of what the news media writes, or Putin's threats to nuke the West, or the breathless pitches of startup founders that they're going to change the world.
cemerick 4y ago
The only thing I'm "championing" (just pointing out, really) is that certain populations seem to enjoy using anecdotal tragedy to promote their own quasi-apocalyptic worldview re: some American cities, despite all available data contradicting that worldview. I'm sure everyone here appreciates the update on your locale, and your own stories of property crime and/or non-criminal (yet perhaps unnerving?) personal interactions. Alas, none of that appears to be relevant to either the submitted story, or homicide or any other violent crime.
- idopmstuff 4y ago
  Someone saying that the have a gun and are going to shoot you is very clearly assault, which is a criminal act. It would generally quality as a violent crime in statistics (if SFPD took reports of threats of violence, which they will not). While we should use data, we should also understand where there may be issues with the data that we're using.
  - ambulancechaser 4y ago
    The gist of your point is 100% correct. I just want to point out that under the common law definition of assault (and i have no idea what definitions are in effect in SF), the fact that the person calmly ignored them points that this might not be assault. > Assault is generally defined as an intentional act that puts another person in reasonable apprehension of imminent harmful or offensive contact. No physical injury is required, but the actor must have intended to cause a harmful or offensive contact with the victim and the victim must have thereby been put in immediate apprehension of such a contact. Calmly ignoring the threat is evidence that the person was not "in immediate apprehension of such a contact". I only bring this up because i think it's interesting, and the underlying point you are making is 100% correct. This kind of thing is not normal nor innocent and not to be tolerated.
    - Lochleg 4y ago
      It's a reasonable belief and fear that person will carry out the act. You are probably misinterpreting the reasonable part, especially when people mask their reaction to try to get away or out of shock / instinct. The person making the threats probably gets enjoyment from getting a rise out of random strangers. Also, returning to the original context, there are too many people on the street that have severe mental health crises going on and are freely roaming some cities. They don't necessarily need to go to be convicted of a crime as a solution.
freejazz 4y ago
>It feels a bit like you're championing a narrative of "See, it's not so bad! You'll just get your stuff stolen and your car vandalized!" I wouldn't feel so smug about that. You are making the poster's exact point for them. Take a step back, breathe, think.
testbjjl 4y ago
> I just simply moved out. Thank you!
spaceguillotine 4y ago
This happened to me in much smaller and "safer" cities as well. This is America
bitwize 4y ago
> It feels a bit like you're championing a narrative of "See, it's not so bad! You'll just get your stuff stolen and your car vandalized!" I wouldn't feel so smug about that. "You can be mad but I guess I don’t personally view my car as an extension of myself and I’ve never really felt violated any of the 15 or so times my car was broken in to. Once a guy accidentally left a cool knife in my car so if it keeps happening you might get a little treat." --Seth Rogen
medellin 4y ago
It’s impossible to reason with anyone from SF who thinks the city isn’t that bad. Reality is most large cities are absolute trash now. But at least where i live i can talk with people who aren’t living in some reality distortion field
- JoeJonathan 4y ago
  I miss the 1970s, when big cities were just swell!
- nobody9999 4y ago
  >It’s impossible to reason with anyone from SF who thinks the city isn’t that bad. Reality is most large cities are absolute trash now. But at least where i live i can talk with people who aren’t living in some reality distortion field I'm 56 years old and have lived in NYC for most of my life. And I can tell you (and provide appropriate statistics if you're unwilling or unable to look for that easily available data) that NYC (I can't speak to SF, although my brother and his family lived there for many years -- including in the Tenderloin -- and I found it a delightful place) is enormously safer and cleaner than it was for the first 35 or so years of my life. When I was a child, there were street gangs in most neighborhoods, people would put signs on their car windows noting the lack of valuables inside in hopes of not having their windows smashed (In one case, circa 1978-80 I saw a car with its window smashed and the little sign that had been on the window saying "no radio, nothing of value, and the perpetrator of the vandalism wrote "just checking" on the sign). You almost never see that any more. Streetwalkers were in most neighborhoods (even the nice neighborhoods), leaving used condoms to litter the streets every morning, Times Square was a shithole. No Disney store -- mostly just porn shops and peep shows, and with con artists, robbers and other miscreants. Cocaine (crack, mostly) was openly sold on street corners even in wealthy neighborhoods. Homicides in 2020 were less than 1/3 what they were in 1980[0] (and while that number increased significantly in 1987, that was because of a change in classification when "cause of death" was "unknown", the death being classed as "homicide" whereas previously, those were not included in "homicides" previously[1]. So, no. Large cities (and SF among them -- although NYC is, on a per-capita basis even safer than SF) in the US are, for the most part, enormously safer than they were even 15 years ago. And since you don't seem to have much of an idea of what's really going on (and maybe don't care if it doesn't fit your trained-in prejudices?), I'll give you a tl;dr: You're talking out of your ass and it smells that way too. Yuck! [0] https://criminaljustice.cityofnewyork.us/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/2020-Shootings-and-Murder-factsheet_January-2021.pdf https://criminaljustice.cityofnewyork.us/wp-content/uploads/... [1] I searched around a bit, but couldn't find anything online, but that's true for a lot of news from before 2005 or so. But it was big news, because (see graph in [0] above) "homicides" increased significantly due to this change. Edit: Fixed typo.
rchaud 4y ago
> It feels a bit like you're championing a narrative of "See, it's not so bad! Steven Pinker has made a career out of this. Ironically a lot of his adherents are quick to jump on the "this is the safest time in human history" statistical warbling when discussing an issue they feel doesn't personally affect them.
- throwaway29812 4y ago
  It is the safest time in human history. Not for your laptop sitting in a car perhaps, but the greater context is important.
- handoflixue 4y ago
  I mean, violent crime really has fallen dramatically in the past 30 years, at least in the US: https://www.statista.com/statistics/191219/reported-violent-crime-rate-in-the-usa-since-1990/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/191219/reported-violent-... That doesn't mean cities like SF aren't outliers, of course. But it really is the safest period of US history
- dgs_sgd 4y ago
  Steven Pinker made claims about humanity as a whole. We can definitely be in the safest period in human history while at the same time having some cities that are pretty dangerous
emodendroket 4y ago
I’ve been accosted by strange people in multiple cities if that’s the standard of disorder now. Not saying it’s nice for that to happen but I don’t think it says much about SF.
- nobody9999 4y ago
  >I’ve been accosted by strange people in multiple cities if that’s the standard of disorder now. Not saying it’s nice for that to happen but I don’t think it says much about SF. As have I. One of the most serious was at the bus station in the huge metropolis of Santa Cruz, CA[0] (population ~63,000 in 2020). As I've said elsewhere many, many times: There are assholes everywhere. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Cruz,_California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Cruz,_California
ZanyProgrammer 4y ago
Which all has jack and shit to do with this case.
davidgerard 4y ago
No, it would be the narrative where multiple HN commenters in the previous thread took this as a launching point to call for a full authoritarian crackdown of the homeless.
ajross 4y ago
And as other folks in this topic are pointing out, anecdotes like that are simply misleading. San Francisco is not a high crime US city. Period. It is not. It is middle-of-the-pack at worst. Nor is it getting "worse faster". It saw a crime wave across the pandemic that is receding now, just like most of the world. It's just wrong. You're wrong. Any narrative to the effect of "SF is unsafe because of ..." is wrong, because SF is not unsafe in any measurable way. And more to the point: those very (wrong) narratives are simply out of control among the prevailing demographic here on HN. And frankly it's getting kinda toxic.
- handoflixue 4y ago
  > SF is not unsafe in any measurable way. Well, no. SF is not unsafe in any measured way. You can easily observe from this thread, anecdotally, the police routinely ignore people shouting threats and other crimes. It's entirely possible that if we actually measured all of those, and counted them as the crimes that they are, that SF would look remarkably worse.
  - ajross 4y ago
    Do police measure "shouting threats and other crimes" anywhere, though? You're literally inventing a new category of crime just to be able to claim SF is the worst. Isn't the Occam explanation here that... you're just wrong? Blunt counter-hypothesis: Tech bros are a bunch of suburban snowflakes who never lived in a dense urban environment before and are addressing their culture clash with hate instead of understanding. This is anecdotally true in my experience, which means I'm right by your logic, no?
    - handoflixue 4y ago
      > You're literally inventing a new category of crime There are actual laws against threatening people I'm not inventing anything. I grew up in a major city with plenty of crime problems, and I still absolutely expected police to respond to someone who had a knife and was threatening to kill people. Clearly things have gotten worse if they're now ignoring such crimes. > Isn't the Occam explanation here that... you're just wrong? First, I never claimed SF was the worse - I simply said we don't have enough information to make reasonable conclusions in either direction. Second, Occam's razor says that if the crime statistics are the same in two cities, but we have a ton of anecdotal evidence that one city is ignoring certain crimes, then that latter city probably has a higher crime rate. If we had page after page of anecdotes that SF techies are just snowflakes and what they're responding to is totally normal, that would obviously change the equation. Of course, keep in mind, if you're right, we've simply established that EVERY major urban center has a huge problem of "crazy people threatening people on a regular basis", and that's still an incredibly undesirable situation that we want to fix. I'd also be curious why I don't hear about people from New York, London, Seattle, etc. reporting that it's totally normal for crazy people to threaten them with a knife. Surely there are techbro snowflakes in Seattle, at a minimum?
confidantlake 4y ago
I also lived in San Francisco. Was never threatened by a random weirdo. Lived in a different city and was threatened (he said he would beat me to death). But somehow the city I live doesn't have constant bellyaching about how dangerous it is despite having a higher violent crime rate than San Francisco.

ipqk 4y ago

You just extrapolated that narrative up in your head. The OP said nothing that remotely hinted at that.

idopmstuff 4y ago

The problem with saying that SF has relatively low violent crime is that it ignores the constant, extremely aggressive verbal assault that people are just accustomed to. In the years I lived there, I had people scream at me that they were going to kill/stab/etc. me at least a couple of dozen times (I would describe this as violent crime). Of course, if you call SFPD, they'll just tell you it's not an issue and ignore you, so those don't go into any statistics.

cemerick 4y ago
You're right, "violent crime" is a term of art that involves the commission of a…crime. "Verbal assault" is not assault. I guess if you don't like the vibes in a place, you can go somewhere else, but trying to use such things to influence how people talk about or perceive actual, no, for real crime is intellectual malpractice.
- Consultant32452 4y ago
  We should convince the SF tourism board to use this motto. Come to San Francisco, where our vibe is constant threats of murder but you probably won't actually get murdered!
  - Swizec 4y ago
    Just to offer a counter-anecdote: In 8 years of living in SOMA, which has the 2nd highest crime rate after Tenderloin, nobody has even once threatened to kill me. Or even hinted at wanting me harm. Property crime is a different story. That has indeed been a problem.
    - y-curious 4y ago
      My first time in SOMA I had a homeless guy almost piss on my shoes followed by another guy shadow-stabbing with a real knife and pointing at me. Let's call it a mulligan.
    - SllX 4y ago
      Why even offer a counter-anecdote? Are you trying to give the impression to impressionable people that not every person gets threatened with murder on a regular basis here? That’s true, but it seems like you’re just trying to discount one person’s lived experience. I know women that get groped on MUNI regularly but not every woman gets groped on MUNI. People don’t usually threaten me, but I’ve stopped people from threatening others in front of me. Hell, I’ve stopped a guy from trying to roll another guy sleeping on the street into oncoming traffic. Nobody has ever stolen my phone from me, but that doesn’t mean phones have never been stolen from people. And before you go to the stats, just remember something: lies, damned lies and statistics. If the police don’t get involved, there’s no police report. If the DA doesn’t charge a crime, there’s no “crime” even if there actually is. Homicides and property crimes tend to leave the most evidence behind, but those aren’t the only crimes that matter and even the criminal amounts of piss and shit around just the MUNI and BART stations probably isn’t generating any police reports either. Verbal harassment and threats also don’t tend to generate enough of the right kind of paperwork to make it into the stats, but it doesn’t make it less real.
      - Swizec 4y ago
        > Why even offer a counter-anecdote? To say that “constant threats of murder” does not accurately describe SF.
- bigtex88 4y ago
  You've got a really weird black and white view of these things. As long as people aren't literally murdering you then it's ok? The idea that "real crime" only happens AFTER the actual crime has taken place is super bizarre. That's not how the world works. Go find me a city that has people that are super happy and nice to each other and also has a high murder rate. Wait, I bet you can't. Talking about the petty crime and the "vibe" is absolutely on topic for this, because that sort of laissez-faire attitude leads to murders like the one we're discussing.
  - jjulius 4y ago
    >Talking about the petty crime and the "vibe" is absolutely on topic for this, because that sort of laissez-faire attitude leads to murders like the one we're discussing. ... you mean the murder in question that, as we've found out in this article/thread, has nothing to do with the "petty crime" and "vibe" that you're referring to?
    - bigtex88 4y ago
      Still seems like a good opportunity to me to bring up the general "whatever" nature in SF regarding crime. Perhaps this stabbing took place because the assailant felt more brazen knowing that the police in that city won't do anything? Let's just let the homeless and the mentally deranged do whatever they want in SF. That's definitely a good way to run a modern city. Better than hurting their feelings! /s
      - jjulius 4y ago
        >Let's just let the homeless and the mentally deranged do whatever they want in SF. That's definitely a good way to run a modern city. Better than hurting their feelings! /s If that's the takeaway you're getting from this comment chain, I really don't know what else to tell you.
  - projectazorian 4y ago
    > Go find me a city that has people that are super happy and nice to each other and also has a high murder rate. Wait, I bet you can't. Many Mexican and Brazilian cities have much higher murder rates and people are still generally happier and nicer than in the US, especially if SF is the basis for comparison.
- pbourke 4y ago
  Your comments are disingenuous. A decline in the quality of life in a city due to crime, substance abuse, homelessness and untreated mental health disorders has an immense affect on one’s well being. That goes doubly so for people with spouses and children. If you are confronted by a mentally ill person screaming threats at you, is your first thought to seek comfort in the violent crime stats? You must be some kind of robot, if so.
- LawTalkingGuy 4y ago
  You're wrong. Verbal assault is assault, and is violence, because it leads to the reasonable expectation of violence. You don't know if the crazy person threatening to kill you will actually try to do it so you have to imagine that they will. -- Sorry Dang, you're right.
  - dang 4y ago
    You broke the site guidelines badly with this comment and have been breaking them in other places too. We ban accounts that post like this, so would you please stop? If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
- zo1 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - projectazorian 4y ago
    Which “tough” practices do police need access to? Extrajudicial beatings and murder? Torture? Tell us please, don’t hide behind euphemism.
    - zo1 4y ago
      How about arresting them for the crimes they commit. That's more than enough.
  - giantrobot 4y ago
    > Couple that with police not really being able to be tough on degenerate hood youths and voila Police should terrorize anyone you don't like. Awesome system you're proposing.
- marcinzm 4y ago
  Menacing/verbal threats/criminal threats are a real crime in most places including California.
- handoflixue 4y ago
  Threatening to assault someone is, in fact, a real crime. You cannot, legally, go around "screaming that you're going to kill/stab/etc." people. Looks like Penal Code 422, if you need a concrete reference for California specifically
- idopmstuff 4y ago
  The problem is you actually don't understand what assault is. Assault does not involving actually touching someone - that's battery. What you're describing as verbal assault is actually assault and is a real crime, generally considered to be violent crime in crime statistics.
nostrademons 4y ago
You just learn to tune it out. Crazy people gonna crazy. It's like the announcements that come over the PA at airports for "Please report any unattended baggage - if you see something, say something", or 99% of what the news media writes, or Putin's threats to nuke the West, or the breathless pitches of startup founders that they're going to change the world.

cemerick 4y ago

The only thing I'm "championing" (just pointing out, really) is that certain populations seem to enjoy using anecdotal tragedy to promote their own quasi-apocalyptic worldview re: some American cities, despite all available data contradicting that worldview. I'm sure everyone here appreciates the update on your locale, and your own stories of property crime and/or non-criminal (yet perhaps unnerving?) personal interactions. Alas, none of that appears to be relevant to either the submitted story, or homicide or any other violent crime.

idopmstuff 4y ago
Someone saying that the have a gun and are going to shoot you is very clearly assault, which is a criminal act. It would generally quality as a violent crime in statistics (if SFPD took reports of threats of violence, which they will not). While we should use data, we should also understand where there may be issues with the data that we're using.
- ambulancechaser 4y ago
  The gist of your point is 100% correct. I just want to point out that under the common law definition of assault (and i have no idea what definitions are in effect in SF), the fact that the person calmly ignored them points that this might not be assault. > Assault is generally defined as an intentional act that puts another person in reasonable apprehension of imminent harmful or offensive contact. No physical injury is required, but the actor must have intended to cause a harmful or offensive contact with the victim and the victim must have thereby been put in immediate apprehension of such a contact. Calmly ignoring the threat is evidence that the person was not "in immediate apprehension of such a contact". I only bring this up because i think it's interesting, and the underlying point you are making is 100% correct. This kind of thing is not normal nor innocent and not to be tolerated.
  - Lochleg 4y ago
    It's a reasonable belief and fear that person will carry out the act. You are probably misinterpreting the reasonable part, especially when people mask their reaction to try to get away or out of shock / instinct. The person making the threats probably gets enjoyment from getting a rise out of random strangers. Also, returning to the original context, there are too many people on the street that have severe mental health crises going on and are freely roaming some cities. They don't necessarily need to go to be convicted of a crime as a solution.

freejazz 4y ago

>It feels a bit like you're championing a narrative of "See, it's not so bad! You'll just get your stuff stolen and your car vandalized!" I wouldn't feel so smug about that. You are making the poster's exact point for them. Take a step back, breathe, think.

testbjjl 4y ago

> I just simply moved out. Thank you!

spaceguillotine 4y ago

This happened to me in much smaller and "safer" cities as well. This is America

bitwize 4y ago

> It feels a bit like you're championing a narrative of "See, it's not so bad! You'll just get your stuff stolen and your car vandalized!" I wouldn't feel so smug about that. "You can be mad but I guess I don’t personally view my car as an extension of myself and I’ve never really felt violated any of the 15 or so times my car was broken in to. Once a guy accidentally left a cool knife in my car so if it keeps happening you might get a little treat." --Seth Rogen

medellin 4y ago

It’s impossible to reason with anyone from SF who thinks the city isn’t that bad. Reality is most large cities are absolute trash now. But at least where i live i can talk with people who aren’t living in some reality distortion field

JoeJonathan 4y ago
I miss the 1970s, when big cities were just swell!
nobody9999 4y ago
>It’s impossible to reason with anyone from SF who thinks the city isn’t that bad. Reality is most large cities are absolute trash now. But at least where i live i can talk with people who aren’t living in some reality distortion field I'm 56 years old and have lived in NYC for most of my life. And I can tell you (and provide appropriate statistics if you're unwilling or unable to look for that easily available data) that NYC (I can't speak to SF, although my brother and his family lived there for many years -- including in the Tenderloin -- and I found it a delightful place) is enormously safer and cleaner than it was for the first 35 or so years of my life. When I was a child, there were street gangs in most neighborhoods, people would put signs on their car windows noting the lack of valuables inside in hopes of not having their windows smashed (In one case, circa 1978-80 I saw a car with its window smashed and the little sign that had been on the window saying "no radio, nothing of value, and the perpetrator of the vandalism wrote "just checking" on the sign). You almost never see that any more. Streetwalkers were in most neighborhoods (even the nice neighborhoods), leaving used condoms to litter the streets every morning, Times Square was a shithole. No Disney store -- mostly just porn shops and peep shows, and with con artists, robbers and other miscreants. Cocaine (crack, mostly) was openly sold on street corners even in wealthy neighborhoods. Homicides in 2020 were less than 1/3 what they were in 1980[0] (and while that number increased significantly in 1987, that was because of a change in classification when "cause of death" was "unknown", the death being classed as "homicide" whereas previously, those were not included in "homicides" previously[1]. So, no. Large cities (and SF among them -- although NYC is, on a per-capita basis even safer than SF) in the US are, for the most part, enormously safer than they were even 15 years ago. And since you don't seem to have much of an idea of what's really going on (and maybe don't care if it doesn't fit your trained-in prejudices?), I'll give you a tl;dr: You're talking out of your ass and it smells that way too. Yuck! [0] https://criminaljustice.cityofnewyork.us/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/2020-Shootings-and-Murder-factsheet_January-2021.pdf https://criminaljustice.cityofnewyork.us/wp-content/uploads/... [1] I searched around a bit, but couldn't find anything online, but that's true for a lot of news from before 2005 or so. But it was big news, because (see graph in [0] above) "homicides" increased significantly due to this change. Edit: Fixed typo.

rchaud 4y ago

> It feels a bit like you're championing a narrative of "See, it's not so bad! Steven Pinker has made a career out of this. Ironically a lot of his adherents are quick to jump on the "this is the safest time in human history" statistical warbling when discussing an issue they feel doesn't personally affect them.

throwaway29812 4y ago
It is the safest time in human history. Not for your laptop sitting in a car perhaps, but the greater context is important.
handoflixue 4y ago
I mean, violent crime really has fallen dramatically in the past 30 years, at least in the US: https://www.statista.com/statistics/191219/reported-violent-crime-rate-in-the-usa-since-1990/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/191219/reported-violent-... That doesn't mean cities like SF aren't outliers, of course. But it really is the safest period of US history
dgs_sgd 4y ago
Steven Pinker made claims about humanity as a whole. We can definitely be in the safest period in human history while at the same time having some cities that are pretty dangerous

emodendroket 4y ago

I’ve been accosted by strange people in multiple cities if that’s the standard of disorder now. Not saying it’s nice for that to happen but I don’t think it says much about SF.

nobody9999 4y ago
>I’ve been accosted by strange people in multiple cities if that’s the standard of disorder now. Not saying it’s nice for that to happen but I don’t think it says much about SF. As have I. One of the most serious was at the bus station in the huge metropolis of Santa Cruz, CA[0] (population ~63,000 in 2020). As I've said elsewhere many, many times: There are assholes everywhere. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Cruz,_California https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Cruz,_California

ZanyProgrammer 4y ago

Which all has jack and shit to do with this case.

davidgerard 4y ago

No, it would be the narrative where multiple HN commenters in the previous thread took this as a launching point to call for a full authoritarian crackdown of the homeless.

ajross 4y ago

And as other folks in this topic are pointing out, anecdotes like that are simply misleading. San Francisco is not a high crime US city. Period. It is not. It is middle-of-the-pack at worst. Nor is it getting "worse faster". It saw a crime wave across the pandemic that is receding now, just like most of the world. It's just wrong. You're wrong. Any narrative to the effect of "SF is unsafe because of ..." is wrong, because SF is not unsafe in any measurable way. And more to the point: those very (wrong) narratives are simply out of control among the prevailing demographic here on HN. And frankly it's getting kinda toxic.

handoflixue 4y ago
> SF is not unsafe in any measurable way. Well, no. SF is not unsafe in any measured way. You can easily observe from this thread, anecdotally, the police routinely ignore people shouting threats and other crimes. It's entirely possible that if we actually measured all of those, and counted them as the crimes that they are, that SF would look remarkably worse.
- ajross 4y ago
  Do police measure "shouting threats and other crimes" anywhere, though? You're literally inventing a new category of crime just to be able to claim SF is the worst. Isn't the Occam explanation here that... you're just wrong? Blunt counter-hypothesis: Tech bros are a bunch of suburban snowflakes who never lived in a dense urban environment before and are addressing their culture clash with hate instead of understanding. This is anecdotally true in my experience, which means I'm right by your logic, no?
  - handoflixue 4y ago
    > You're literally inventing a new category of crime There are actual laws against threatening people I'm not inventing anything. I grew up in a major city with plenty of crime problems, and I still absolutely expected police to respond to someone who had a knife and was threatening to kill people. Clearly things have gotten worse if they're now ignoring such crimes. > Isn't the Occam explanation here that... you're just wrong? First, I never claimed SF was the worse - I simply said we don't have enough information to make reasonable conclusions in either direction. Second, Occam's razor says that if the crime statistics are the same in two cities, but we have a ton of anecdotal evidence that one city is ignoring certain crimes, then that latter city probably has a higher crime rate. If we had page after page of anecdotes that SF techies are just snowflakes and what they're responding to is totally normal, that would obviously change the equation. Of course, keep in mind, if you're right, we've simply established that EVERY major urban center has a huge problem of "crazy people threatening people on a regular basis", and that's still an incredibly undesirable situation that we want to fix. I'd also be curious why I don't hear about people from New York, London, Seattle, etc. reporting that it's totally normal for crazy people to threaten them with a knife. Surely there are techbro snowflakes in Seattle, at a minimum?

confidantlake 4y ago

I also lived in San Francisco. Was never threatened by a random weirdo. Lived in a different city and was threatened (he said he would beat me to death). But somehow the city I live doesn't have constant bellyaching about how dangerous it is despite having a higher violent crime rate than San Francisco.