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.
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.
People want to talk about crime, drugs & homelessness all the time. It is only in high profile cases where the issues seem topical, that HN can't discourage discussion around them.
> quasi-apocalyptic worldview re: some American cities
I don't see why speaking out about lack of police enforcement is seen as 'quasi-apocalyptic'.
> despite all available data contradicting that worldview
All available data is in favor of those speaking out about crime & drugs in west coast cities. Additionally, the eye test seems to portray a situation that's more dire than even the data might suggest. (underreporting, catch & release).
Indeed, because that's not what this forum is for. There's ten thousand fora online for general, local, or city-policy political discussion; those topics are only germane in this forum when they relate to tech or the processes of tech.
When the CEO of YCombinator blocks people on Twitter for disagreeing with him online on SF politics[0], it tells me I don't want HN to be a haven for that.
I think we all live in our own bubbles, because I see so much discussion of SF crime.
I also think it's important to note that there is a huge difference between "should we prevent random street killings?" and "how much effort should SFPD exert to protect cars when the majority of actual SF residents don't even own one?"
EDIT: Just to cite my sources: [0] shows 397k registered cars in SF [1] shows 810k residents.
[0] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv-research-reports/research-...
[1] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/sanfranciscocit...
The quickest path to karma at HN is to post anything about BA housing.
While we should use data, we should also understand where there may be issues with the data that we're using.
> 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.
- Keep an eye on their hands.
- Attempt to de-escalate the person.
- If they brandish a weapon in extreme close proximity to yourself, use both your hands to firmly grab onto the hand/wrist that's holding the weapon and extend your arms fully (using your skeleton to maintain that distance and provide added strength). Your focus should be on controlling that hand so they don't stab or shoot you. Yes, you may incur injury regardless, this is what's colloquially known as a "shit sandwich".
- Increase distance and vacate the area as soon as possible. If they have a gun, run in a zig zag pattern and seek cover (blocks bullets) or concealment (hides you, but doesn't stop bullets).
- Once you are safe, then report the incident to law enforcement (if they'll do anything).
Jumping to conclusions and pushing narratives isn't the exclusive purview of any particular group, especially not in 2023.
For those interested in the topic, I recommend Loewen's "Sundown Towns". My copy's on loan, but I think it's in Ch 11, "The Effects of Sundown Towns on Whites" that he talks about the culture among descendants of white-flight suburbanites, their low-to-no-experience views on the horrors of the city, where Those People run rampant. Many are terrified of even going to cities. To people who actually live in the cities, their view is almost unrecognizable.
As an example from something in my feed reader today [1], take Theo Wold, a former Deputy Assistant to the President for Policy (under Trump) and current Idaho Solicitor General. He quote-tweeted a photo of a white woman hugging two Black men. They were the Tennessee Three, the state legislators who were under threat of expulsion for protest.
His comment: "Every Red State will have to wrestle with the fetid, urban Leftist vote sinks. That begins with asking the question: why does the GOP continue to push the annexation/development of rural land that only grows the size and power of Leftist strongholds?"
Fetid stronghold sinks! Sounds pretty bad. In our favor, at least we have taco trucks on every corner.
It reminds me of nothing so much as this bit from Chairman Mao: "It is very necessary for the educated youth to go to the countryside to be reeducated by the poor and lower-middle peasants. Cadres and other people in the cities should be persuaded to send their sons and daughters who have completed junior or senior middle school, college or university, to the countryside. Let us mobilize."
[1] https://balloon-juice.com/2023/04/13/late-night-open-thread-...
I would say that the comparison is apt - since we compare the tech/science successes of SF with the rest of the world, we should also compare the crime rates with it.
Brandishing a weapon is legally different from open carry, and is already a crime. Brandishing means to draw or exhibit the weapon in a threatening manner, or to use it in a fight, other than in lawful self-defense.
SF is a dangerous city. That seems to be the main point of concern here.
Do you have a citation on that?
I am not fully researched on this topic, but as a lay observer it appear that the gun rights side basically categorizes anyone who is willing to commit a mass shooting as mentally ill, and hence every mass shooting is a result of mental illness by definition. But it does not follow that mass shooters are mentally ill by any professional standards.
If this is a valid premise, then you know you are doing something wrong as a society. Mass shootings are common place in the US (with currently 177 mass shootings this year so far). This is not normal.
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.
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.
--
Sorry Dang, you're right.
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.
That doesn't mean cities like SF aren't outliers, of course. But it really is the safest period of US history
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/...
[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.
"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
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.
You are making the poster's exact point for them. Take a step back, breathe, think.
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.
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.
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?
Thank you!
