So much of the problem in SF comes down to the progressive politician types who only want to things that "impact the root causes of crime" and its extremely frustrating and frequently just plain wrong. Yes, you do not solve the "root problem of why people choose to commit crime" by putting repeat offenders in jail, but you do make the world way better for everyone else who is not a criminal. Poor people, immigrants, the downtrodden all disproportionately benefit from tough on crime policies because they are the people for whom have the least resources to isolate themselves from the chaos and antisocial behaviors of the worst among us. Its not a white kids in the marina that need to walk past piles of shit and needles to get to school, its the poor immigrant kids in the tenderloin who need to deal with this.
> So much of the problem in SF comes down to the progressive politician types who only want to things that "impact the root causes of crime" and its extremely frustrating and frequently just plain wrong.
It's getting bad in LA as well. I've lived in Westwood (UCLA) and now Santa Monica since I went to school here around 2012. You'd always see homeless people every now and then, but they were mostly isolated to encampments and the "bad areas." Not anymore. I walk around a lot and work in coffee shops and hotel lobbies, and in the past year, I've witnessed people shooting up literally next to a kid's playground, I've been offered meth in the middle of the street (at like 10am in the morning, mind you), I hear people screaming/yelling at the top of their lungs outside of my apartment at midnight, had to dodge human poop in the middle of a sidewalk, a homeless person used my garage (the door was stuck open for a few weeks until someone came out to fix it) as a drug den, etc.
I'm literally considering running for city council to try to fix this. We changed the city government a few years ago, but it's gotten worse, not better. It's honestly insane. I have a few friends that just had babies and I have no idea how you could raise a child in a city like this. When I get married/have kids, I'm not sure I would stay here.
Are we talking Arizona St. or Santa Monica Blvd or Sotel or west of the 405 here? Because Santa Monica Blvd. has been pretty bad for decades. That Starbucks/parklet area at Santa Monica and Bundy has been the worst for a long while.
I think there's probably some middle ground between "throw all homeless people in jail" and "tolerate homeless people doing meth next to an elementary school."
There appears to be a belief that 'poor people' are hopeless maniacs that lack all self-control. It's a disparaging mindset that lures in and compounds addictive behavior. How many full lives aren't lived due to egotistic fallacies?
People like to blame the politicians for what’s happening. However the politicians are not electing themselves.
The problem is the people who with great intentions make things worse. Wait a few minutes until someone posts that “statistically it doesn’t happen and you are wrong”.
What you mean is social policy is mostly an excuse for expanding government, and government control. And "helping with root causes" always means expanding government departments, rather than, for example, dealing with housing shortages.
Eliminating the root causes of crime is a noble goal. Of course you can treat both the root cause and the symptoms, but if you want to get at the root cause, you have to know what the root cause is.
Of course nothing complex has a single root cause. The main one I'm seeing though is extremely addictive drugs, specifically Meth and Fentanyl. A certain percentage of people, if they try these drugs, will become hopelessly addicted until they are living on the street stealing to buy more drugs. SF seems unwilling to do anything to disrupt this cycle.
So I believe we put too many people in jail for too long. I think our justice system is pretty broken. Having said that, to fix it I never thought of just letting people commit crimes like areas in California seem to be doing. That's just as asinine but in the other direction.
I always imagined giving people much lighter sentences for most things and if they repeat, then give them harsher and harsher sentences. Only the worst repeat offenders would get what they get today. I imagined not overcharging people hoping to scare someone into a plea. I imagined police not being able to interrogate and lie to children without a parent present. I imagined getting rid of pre textual stops to get innocent people's id's. I imagined "I smell marijuana," as not allowable probable cause. I imagined removing most K9 units. I imagined removing most SWAT units except for the largest cities. I imagined being able to remove bad police, bad prosecutors and bad judges from their positions of power. I never imagined letting people commit crimes with no fear of any repercussions.
The guy who hit the marina person on the head with a pipe was considered a "frequent flyer" by the SF police. They have tons (like 20+) of complaints against this person and the group they live with for various things like drug use, menacing behavior, starting fights, stealing, etc. A few businesses on the street have restraining orders on this person preventing them from entering for example the walgreens. A large issue we have with our criminal justice system in CA/SF right now is that "low level" non felony crimes (like theft of less than 950 dollars, public drug use, pooping in the street, menacing others), are treated more or less like an administrative issue and the criminal might be fined, but they won't be jailed, and there isn't an escalation policy where more and more low level crimes result in an escalation of consequences. This means that people can repeatedly perform extremely anti social behaviors (street shitting, public meth smoking, stealing 200 dollars of whatever from a store, threatening people and screaming) over and over and over again without an escalation of consequences for their actions. There is an escalation policy for things like murder or other felony crimes, but these escalations usually take a long time, and the end result is the repeat offenders do kill or cause serious harm before they are put in prison and taken out of society.
> So I believe we put too many people in jail for too long. I think our justice system is pretty broken. Having said that, to fix it I never thought of just letting people commit crimes like areas in California seem to be doing. That's just as asinine but in the other direction.
> I never imagined letting people commit crimes with no fear of any repercussions.
This is a myth. Police everywhere prioritize violent crimes. Jails and prisons everywhere prioritize retaining violent criminals and when they have to, attempt to release the lowest risk offenders. When people have been prematurely released from jail it is not out of misplaced compassion. Mostly people are being released because the system is already at capacity. In fact many jails in the U.S. are well above capacity before they decide to release people. Some as much as 150%
No matter where you are, a lot of violent crime goes un-solved. That has been true for decades. People cover up their crimes and many are reasonably good at it.
The rise in crime during and following the pandemic has been significant for small, medium and large cities regardless of the policies adopted by those cities and regardless of the overriding politics of the state they are situated in.
How much prison time does a person "deserve" for publicly injecting themselves with a chemical? How many more jails or prisons should we build to hold them? How much prison time do they "deserve" for doing it again? What percentage of the unhoused population should we continuously churn through the system? For the criminal justice system to contain this, I suspect you would have to create a large internment system which would something like double the size of U.S. incarceration.
As I see it, the system is not failing for a lack of cruelty. But because there is a sizable population who have nothing left to lose.
> How much prison time does a person "deserve" for publicly injecting themselves with a chemical?
Long enough that they stop doing it.
> How many more jails or prisons should we build to hold them?
When the alternative is people literally filling public sidewalks with feces, as many as we need to hold them.
> How much prison time do they "deserve" for doing it again?
Exponential back off from society would be nice.
> What percentage of the unhoused population should we continuously churn through the system?
It’s not being homeless that leads one to defecating on the street. It’s mental issues and drug addiction.
The homeless who want to live better lives have plenty of opportunity. It’s the fringe class that wants live on the street, rolling from high to high, that are the problem.
> For the criminal justice system to contain this, I suspect you would have to create a large internment system which would something like double the size of U.S. incarceration.
Probably something on that order. Likely a bit less as it’s about 10K homeless in SF and 125K total incarcerated in CA. Even stretching it state wide it wouldn’t double.
Cost wise it would definitely go up, but it’d be distributed across the entire State rather than just the local crime, quality of life, and property value hit that is experienced by the law abiding people in the affected areas. So that seems like a net win.
While I deeply disagree with you and I recoil at the idea of a system under which a person might spend literal years in prison for taking a shit where they "shouldn't", I respect your honesty. Usually when I pose these kind of questions people lie about their true expectations because they wish for such harsh measures in secret but rather not be associated with them.
> literal years in prison for taking a shit where they "shouldn't"
No, and you know that's not what anyone is saying. Shitting in public, or in other people's private areas, shouldn't have zero consequences simply because the ultimate consequences sound harsh out of context.
And yes, because jailing someone who has sunken to pooping on the street is generally an important part of their treatment plan. Not letting people live in squalor is actually kindness, even if the alternative is enforced.
> such harsh measures in secret
Oh my. Are you serious? Harsh measures? Some people try to raise children without rules and they always do more harm than good. Especially trying to avoid such simple rules about reasonable boundaries.
> No, and you know that's not what anyone is saying.
In reply to the issue of how we should be punishing "petty" street crimes, the commenter I was replying to said,
> An exponential back off from society
In my experience, exponentials grow pretty quickly. So yeah, it kinda seems like that's what they were implying.
> Shitting in public, or in other people's private areas, shouldn't have zero consequences simply because the ultimate consequences sound harsh out of context.
Give me the context in which pooping anywhere, any number of times seems reasonable to punish with significant jail time. Yes, there should be some form of discouragement from this but making sure people have access to a toilet seems a lot easier.
> And yes, because jailing someone who has sunken to pooping on the street is generally an important part of their treatment plan. Not letting people live in squalor is actually kindness, even if the alternative is enforced.
Jail does not help people. It is statistically shown to make their lives materially worse, make them less healthy and make them more likely to commit further crimes. Treatment sure, I'm all for it. Even when it doesn't work.
> Oh my. Are you serious? Harsh measures?
Yeah, I actually believe depriving people of their freedom of movement is a really big deal.
"Jail does not help people. It is statistically shown to make their lives materially worse, make them less healthy and make them more likely to commit further crimes. Treatment sure, I'm all for it. Even when it doesn't work."
The chronically homeless drug addicts of san francisco that everyone is concerned with are beyond helping. For the worst 1-10% that stir up all of the news and fears, the solution here is not a treatment plan and release back to society. These folks should not go to solitarty confinement, or even a normal jail, but we absolutely need a long term mental health detention facility process for these folks. Many of these people (1) cause a huge negative impact to everyone around them through their antisocial behavior (2) have a huge cost to society through their consumption of public resources like 911 calls, police/fire/emergency room visits street cleaning of shit (3) these people absolutely refuse any voluntary treatment options up to and including supportive housing that allows drugs and alcohol. They don't want to live in apartments, they don't really even have the concept of agency that we understand, they are so far gone that they need to be cared for by the state in a higher capacity then they are right now.
> Give me the context in which pooping anywhere, any number of times seems reasonable to punish with significant jail time.
Sure, even doing it just once if I were to do it in your living room. Or in front of your house, if I had a reasonable alternative.
> Yes, there should be some form of discouragement from this but making sure people have access to a toilet seems a lot easier.
Okay, so you are fine with arresting anyone who simply won't use the provided toilet? Great.
What if I don't put the toilet right in my yard, but put the toilet over there somewhere, so you're not all up in my space? Why is 'right here' the magical place where people must camp and poop?
> Jail does not help people. It is statistically shown to make their lives materially worse, make them less healthy and make them more likely to commit further crimes.
That's far from true in all contexts. Unhoused criminals on the streets of a modern drug city face incredible risk from being left to live in the camps, and jail doesn't necessarily mean supermax anyways.
> Treatment sure, I'm all for it. Even when it doesn't work.
How wonderfully liberal.
I'm for forcing people into the treatment that's proven to work rather than kindly letting them die horribly.
maybe not prison but a detention and mental health care facility, but yes generally agreed with the above comment. My wife is a dr at a hospital in SF and treats many chronically homeless patients for various issues. There are about 1-2k chronically homeless folks in SF who need treatment against their will/desires (their desires are either to continue drug use until they die or their desires are unintelligible), and the large majority of them will never recover to a point where they will be in a point where they can live outside of an inpatient mental health hospital/detention facility.
I am not opposed to involuntary treatment. I did not let "A Clockwork Orange" disproportionately shape my world view as it seems so many in the intervening generations have. I grew up with family members who required in-patient mental healthcare more than once. And I understand that letting people persistent in psychosis is not "letting them be themselves".
I believe though that making acts which people do in private, severely punishable when performed in public for want of private spaces is a depraved form of puritanical virtue mongering. I don't believe the constitution gives people an absolute right to "virgin eyes" or "virgin ears". And that is a personal judgement you will not convince me of otherwise.
Are you referring to public defection and/or drug use or screaming at the top of one’s lungs for hours at a time?
Those are primarily public health issues regardless of people’s puritanical views. Hygiene, noise, environmental ordinances and such!
We have a lot of rights stripped away from individuals (including you and me) to promote the public health at large.
Furthermore, the constitution doesn’t get everything right and isn’t a backstop for arguing against anything (except in a legal forum) as it is a living document (albeit with a high bar) and more recently demonstrated through overturning judicial rulings.
> Those are primarily public health issues regardless of people’s puritanical views.
So why such a consistent obsession with making them stop or tolerating these acts done in private. If public health is the concern wouldn't needle exchanges, public toilets and street cleaning would be practical solutions? (I guess I should say Victorian rather than Puritanical.)
> We have a lot of rights stripped away from individuals (including you and me) to promote the public health at large.
Which ones?
> Furthermore, the constitution doesn’t get everything right and isn’t a backstop for arguing against anything
As far as I knew it was the basic document which outlined how rights between people and between people and the star should be balanced. And while it has a lot to say about rights to liberty, I find little to indicate we have a right to not see unpleasant things in public.
I don't think the status quo is good. I don't like avoiding shit on the sidewalk. I don't like explaining to my son why a man is stupified with a needle sticking out of his arm.
But I weigh those unpleasant events against throwing people against the system and taking their freedom and it's clear to me that their right to liberty outweighs my right to a pleasant Sunday stroll.
I think there is a moral imperative to change but I think turning once again towards creating a heartless state bureaucracy and pitting it against people who have absolutely nothing is not the change we need. I know that these people have been kicked over and over and over again and that to keep kicking is not a thing that makes sense. They are numb to the pain and you will not change them. You will only show how hard you can kick.
> So why such a consistent obsession with making them stop or tolerating these acts done in private.
My point was that the underlying reason for not tolerating these acts is not because they are being done in public. Them being done in public does make them more obvious and a more pressing concern than if done in private.
There is a concerning obsession if they are done in private as well. And there are efforts to curtail use of drugs, mental health support, and so many such programs for people who partake or suffer in private as well. It doesn’t extend to curtailing their liberties - in that you are correct.
Once it starts spilling into the public, it has an effect on society to a greater degree that when in private. Public hygiene and quality of life standards for a majority are being inhibited because of a minority.
The “obsession” is warranted if the symptoms are getting worse. I want “obsession” to be proportional to the scale of the problem.
> If public health is the concern wouldn't needle exchanges, public toilets and street cleaning would be practical solutions?
Agreed, agreed and agreed :) solutions to symptoms and not the problem though.
>> We have a lot of rights stripped away from individuals (including you and me) to promote the public health at large.
> Which ones?
Many of the ones from the example ordinances I’ve listed. You cannot blare music any any time of the night. You cannot do home construction however you want to. You cannot chop down trees (within reason), pollute streams, burn trash on your private property. You cannot route your waste drain to the street…. And so many more.
> I don't think the status quo is good. I don't like avoiding shit on the sidewalk. I don't like explaining to my son why a man is stupified with a needle sticking out of his arm.
We are on the same page again.
> But I weigh those unpleasant events against throwing people against the system and taking their freedom and it's clear to me that their right to liberty outweighs my right to a pleasant Sunday stroll.
It’s not just a Sunday stroll. It’s also normalizing the behavior to a certain extent by leaving it unchecked.
Also, I do not see any “liberty” on the streets when the people on question barely have the mental wherewithal to think clearly. We don’t let people with mental defects from birth live on the streets no matter their age. Social services curtails their liberty quite severely when compared to you and me more often than not by keeping them in institutions that can care for them. The care is not great in any sense of the word but we also don’t let them live on the streets in the name of liberty. But if they become mentally deficient to the extent of a person who was born with such defects due to their independent actions then we somehow cannot take away some of their liberties. That’s hypocritical. We also take away liberty from people who commit crimes - there is precedent to do so. It needs to be weighed against societal good not “feel good” morality. One is measurable and feelings generally aren’t.
Liberty is a sliding scale not an absolute.
> I think there is a moral imperative to change but I think turning once again towards creating a heartless state bureaucracy and pitting it against people who have absolutely nothing is not the change we need.
Bureaucracy by definition is heartless. Paper pushing that is… the people who administer it are the ones with hearts. Don’t falter bureaucracy for the lack of trained people who can work with those who need the help. There are thousands of people who live in our system who honestly want to help. They are restricted by the resources available to them. The people who have absolutely nothing are better off in a heartless bureaucracy than on the streets dying by the droves with life expectancies approaching that of pre-historic human beings. That is more heartless.
> I know that these people have been kicked over and over and over again and that to keep kicking is not a thing that makes sense.
Leaving them be is just another version of kicking them. Doing nothing is just as extreme as jailing them. We need to do something that is in between those two extremes. In any solution though - any at all - liberties will be infringed upon. I suggest not using infringing on liberties as an argument against doing something in this situation. Because curtailing liberty will be part of any solution to combat a disease that takes over rational thought.
Meta point - I think we are mostly on the same page to be honest. Thank you for debating. I hope my arguments do not come off as haughty or attacking. I’ve had a couple of night caps when posting this so please excuse my ramblings if any.
While I am against our current method of dealing with drugs, hard, lose control of yourself drugs are a scourge on society and the people they infect.
Honestly, I would like to see habitual public drug users who get convicted of that sentenced into a red light district of some sort as punishment. The conviction allows the "system" to sentence them against their free will. They are going to do drugs regardless of the threat of jail, but at the same time, the rest of society shouldn't be subjected to their behavior. If nothing else, ignoring it is pretty unsanitary and can lead to disease, etc. Based on this article, it's fairly unsafe as well.
The "old" method of jail doesn't work and drug waring has stripped us of so many freedoms, people that came before it probably wouldn't recognize the country. On the other hand, just allowing it to happen isn't a solution either.
The only good thing jail does for an addict is forces them to be clean and clear headed for a little while, assuming they aren't smuggled in.
"lose control of yourself" is the problem. If you're doing it in public and shitting everywhere, you've lost control of yourself. If you can't work to pay for your habit because you're too zonked to show up, you've lost control of yourself. If you get evicted because you can't work because of your habit, you've lost control of yourself. If you start robbing people to support your habit, you've lost control of yourself. If drugs become your #1 thing in life and nothing else matters, you've lost control of yourself.
They're a scourge because they're make you feel really good. Then they make you feel just good. Then they don't make you feel anything, but if you stop, you feel like shit, so you can't stop. Now you have a lifelong addiction that will never quit nagging you. If you stop for a while then slip up just once, you can OD and die because your body lost some immunity to it. They can grab ahold of anyone at any time. They can make you do really unethical things you never would have done if it wasn't for the habit. It's a really dirty trick. Alcohol is the same way.
If you do drugs and can keep your shit together, power to you. I would just suggest to be mindful of who's in control: you or the habit.
In any other city in America: if you got high on meth in your own apartment, went outside and starting screaming, pooping, and acting belligerent, you would be arrested.
The problem is the antisocial behavior, homeless or not.
> Its not white kids in the marina that need to walk past piles of shit and needles
Cue Rob Henderson’s luxury beliefs theory: Many rich white liberals support policies that lead to crime/chaos because it signals their high status and the options it affords (ie. I’ll just move to my other house in Marin if SF gets too crazy)
> So much of the problem in SF comes down to the progressive politician types who only want to things that "impact the root causes of crime" and its extremely frustrating and frequently just plain wrong. Yes, you do not solve the "root problem of why people choose to commit crime" by putting repeat offenders in jail, but you do make the world way better for everyone else who is not a criminal.
AND by doing that you do harm, by perpetuating racist systems of of injustice and oppression. The only way to solve that more important problem is by addressing the root causes and allow longer term healing to happen.
Yes, that means some people will be inconvenienced, but that's acceptable and a necessary part of the solution. The only way to speed that phase up is to implement comprehensive reparations quickly.
> Tragic video shows dying Cash App founder Bob Lee was ignored by bystanders as he begged for help after being stabbed in San Francisco early Tuesday…Footage showed Lee lifted his shirt to show [a] driver his two stab wounds — but collapsed to the ground as the car drove off…Lee raised one arm in an attempt to flag down [another] car and jumped back onto his feet, but the driver sped away…
This is sickening, the fuck is wrong with these people?
I am pretty sure I might have ignored this in San Francisco, but probably not in other cities. I have walked next to people that looked injured, and harmed before in SF and not batted an eye, because nobody else did. It quite frankly is a city that numbs you to human suffering on the street.
Would and have. I was in a bad part of town (not SF) at night, and two people flagged me down on the street. When I stopped (door locked, window down half an inch, in gear and ready to peel out), one stayed in the middle of the street, and the other walked over and said, "My buddy's been stabbed. Can you get us to the hospital?" So I drove them to the ER.
Another time this guy was screaming on the street, with blood running down his face. He'd been mugged, and the mugger pistol-whipped him when he didn't have anything worth taking. I took him to the ER, too. I'm rather grateful to him - he used my kleenex to avoid turning my passenger seat into a biohazard area. Not a drop on my seat or floor.
Personally, I think my reaction to seeing extremely violent crime would be to run away and try not to get involved. I'm not going to watch the video, but that was my first thought.
When bleeding homeless people have come up to me in SF (not uncommon) I usually just try to move on. I assume a similar reaction here, though I don't know if I'd have been able to tell this was a Normal Person who was dying.
Being approached by bleeding homeless is not uncommon in SF? As a more rural person, the nonchalance with which you deliver that statement is _shocking_ and is sort of ironic because if I was to claim such a thing was common in SF or that it's insane that it's normalized there, my friends who live in the city would be very offended, take it personally, and tell me how wrong I am
I think a lot of citizens have rose colored glasses. I just can't figure any other way to square my horrifying personal experiences in the city and anecdotes like this one with the impassioned defense the city receives whenever it is criticized
Keep in mind that urban areas don't explicitly produce these problems. People with these problems tend to congregate in urban areas because that's where the needed services/networks/etc exist. People from rural areas have the same problems - they just tend to suffer in silence (more room to hide in rural areas) or move where they can survive more easily (urban areas).
I might have overstated it a bit. I'd estimate that ~7 bleeding homeless people have approached and interacted with me over 10 years that I lived there. Some not so terrible (lots of scabs and kind of meth-vibe of "I've been scratching my skin for the last week"), a couple noticeably bad (wearing wrapped hospital-looking badges on the head and concerning-looking open wound on arm).
I've probably SEEN, from a greater distance, I don't know... 100 homeless people in pretty desperate-looking situations.
I don't know. It's the worst in SF I've seen in any city, but I haven't spend a ton of time in LA's skid row. In India, I saw a lot of limbless and child beggars, including a pair of kids who were intentionally whipping themselves for donations [0], but I've felt more "afraid" in US than in India, where it's more "this is sad."
I once tried helping a drunken homeless man that was throwing up blood at 1 in the morning when I was on my way to the office to pick up some paperwork. My phone died the moment I took it out of my pocket to call an ambulance. I spend the next 30 minutes trying to get the guy help including calling the intercom of a hospice/clinic around the corner. I ended up talking to another homeless woman who impersonated a doctor on the intercom of the hospice to get them to call an ambulance.
Where I live it's impossible to imagine not stopping for someone with their hood open on the side of the road, let alone if they were physically injured. Big snow days are so much fun, with everyone helping to dig and push each other out of big snow banks, grinning and laughing.
Communities are made of people who look out for each other. If you put enough people together who don't, you've created something else entirely.
All people need is hearing about a single case of somebody being punished for self-defence (and not even necessarily with imprisonment if the judicial process is painful enough) to turn them off from sticking their neck out.
Actually they are in states without a castle doctorine and stand your ground laws. Unfortunately, California is not the place I want to be during a home invasion. If I so much as brandish my gun to the invader my chances of going to jail that night approach 100%
Stop spreading FUD. That's not how self defense laws work in California.
You absolutely have the right to brandish, and use, a gun to defend yourself and/or your family if your home is being invaded. Or even on the street.
Stand your ground laws are about the right to use violent or deadly force in a situation where you are not at home and could otherwise retreat and avoid harm. Also, California has the Castle Doctrine (Penal Code 198.5 PC, https://www.shouselaw.com/ca/blog/penal-code/does-california...).
This is not FUD. Liberal DAs are extremely intense against potential gun crimes. Any concealed carry class will explain that being arrested for a gun crimes in a blue city is almost always going to get you in far more trouble than in a red locality. This is a highly politicized group of crimes, with political decisions made by elected judges on ones fate.
Again, you don't need to be convicted for your chance of going to jail that night approaching 100%, particularly if the gun discharges, regardless of justification.
That is literally FUD...You're making claims which are 100% contrary to how the criminal process actually works.
DAs don't make the decision to arrest you if you're found with a gun during an incident. Cops make that decision. The DA doesn't even see the case file until the next day, at the earliest. So you're problem seems to be with the...liberal police?
And by the way...those "liberal DAs" you're slamming are the ones pushing back against mandatory gun enhancements, which were passed during the Republican era of government in California. LA's ultra-liberal DA was the subject of an attempted recall for trying to ban his DAs from adding gun enhancements to crimes.
I helped carry a semi-passed out homeless-looking man in an undefined state to an ambulance uphill through snow this winter. Not sure if he had any injuries, but he wasn't cooperative.
Seriously, I'm shocked at these other replies. How can you see someone like this and not help? Nobody is asking anyone to get in a knife fight, but at the very least call someone.
If I just left someone to die like that it would be hard to look in the mirror after.
I mean, Jesus. Not trying to argue with you at all, but if that's the gut reaction to a man bleeding out with two stab wounds ... man, you gotta move, you're too hardened.
I think people get scared and then panic. Not many folks are used to being around a person who is bleeding from a stab wound.
I was walking home through a park and saw a girl who was slumped over and it looked like she was dead. My heart started pounding, for some reason it scared me pretty badly. I went and found the police and they refused to even believe me. I then found another homeless person and asked her to check (part of the reason I didn't want to go near is that I'm a male).
The greater "crime in sf" conversation is ultimately about establishing that the misery in front of you is not your concern. We did this so we could feel justified in ignoring homelessness, but it will also be used to ignore you, if you're dying in the street.
I'm not convinced it's so nefarious. When the problem is this big, individuals eventually feel unable to help; not to mention that the mental health aspect causes people to (rightfully?) fear erratic/dangerous behavior. West Coast cities are putting massive amounts of money into the problem, but the problem is so much bigger than they can reasonably handle when people are able to move from other locales to cities with more services. It's a national problem and we're collectively blaming SF/LA/Seattle/Portland for not solving it.
This was an extremely predictable and long foreseen outcome of the policies enacted by SF and DA unwilling to enforce the law. Rather than doing the work to understand the critics of these policies, SF just put their head in the sand and called everyone critical of these policies a bigot. Now the chickens are coming home to roost.
The biggest problem with these stupid policies is the chilling effect that remains even if the policies are completely reversed. You can't expect anyone wants to be a police officer after all of the vitriolic hatred and demonization that have culminated to this. This isn't going to be easy to reverse any time in the next 10 - 15 years. Consequently, the think the only feasible path forward to protect the public is vigilantism.
The last time I was in San Francisco was January of 2020 - I was staying near the convention center and I was surprised by how open the drug use had become. I’d been traveling the city off and on for around 20 years, and while you could always find someone doing drugs if you went looking, I wasn’t used to seeing groups of people huddled on the sidewalk openly injecting what I imagine was heroin and/or fentanyl. Nobody seemed to mind. I also saw a guy who was so out of his mind on something, leaning up against a mailbox, that it took him several seconds to realize his pants had fallen down and several more to do something about it. This gentleman was not wearing any underwear. Again, it didn’t seem to shock or bother any of the numerous people walking by, some of them with small children. It was very, very strange.
The most frustrating part about the conversation is that politics takes away the fundamental fact that what is happening in the city is not normal and there is no one else to blame for it other than the city officials, not the pandemic, not the wfh tech workers, just the city.
You can’t separate the two. CA has made drugs and misdemeanor crimes effectively un-policeable. Billions of dollars in taxpayer funds have been given to nonprofits to improve homeless conditions but they’ve only gotten worse while the nonprofit operators grow rich. People exploit loopholes in the safety nets to get money for drugs. These are all unintended consequences of poorly conceived policy making.
No. My comments are about drugs, misdemeanor crimes (e.g., theft), and homelessness. All run rampant in SF. I only attributed the first two to policing. Homelessness by itself is not a crime. I guess you feel otherwise for you to interpret it that way.
As for the welfare system, people are using EBT to buy bottled water, dumping the bottles out in the parking lot, then turning the empty bottles back in for cash through the recycling program. They use the money for drugs or alcohol. That’s one example.
People are not doing that. Real life is not the fox news segment you are describing. Either cite evidence for outlandish claims or they will be dismissed.
I know you can't prove a negative or whatever but why are you so confident in your claim that no one is doing that, and why should we believe you? I dated someone who worked at a drug rehab facility and after hearing the stories she told me about the ways people there took advantage of the system, I have 0 problem believing the water bottle thing. I take these stories with a grain of salt, but to outright deny that anything like that happens is really just demonstrating your ignorance of the subject. Talk to anyone who has ever worked with homeless people or drug addicts and they will tell you some wild stories.
in san francisco "wellfare" dollars are being spent enabling drug use and likey spent on drugs. The wellfare im talking about is not TANF money/fedgov wellfare but the project homekey hotels and the CAAP benefits program. Project homekey hotels are a great idea IMO, except that they didn't screen homeless tenants for drug use, and lots of tenants turned their rooms into drug dens, completely destroyed the rooms or entire hotels, and now the city is on the hook for a low 10s of millions of dollar amount to various private hotel owners for property destruction. Homekey is a statewide program in CA, not SF specific, and these issues happen all over the state. CAAP (https://www.sfhsa.org/services/financial-assistance/county-a...) is a program where the city and county of san francisco give 687 dollars a month in cash to low income housed and/or homeless people. Lots of the money goes to elderly chinese folks in chinatown and helps them make rent and pay for food, lots of money from this program also goes to drug addicted homeless or SRO residents in the tenderloin and gets spent on meth and fent the day the cash is sent. The open air drug markets are significantly busier on days that the cash is disbursed and you can see empty evelopes for distribution all over the neighborhood.
> CA has made drugs and misdemeanor crimes effectively un-policeable.
This is only a problem if "policing" these crimes actually removes them. All evidence shows that unless you just intend to permanently lock up all homeless people (therefore giving them....housing), policing drugs and poverty doesn't fix the problems for anyone
> Billions of dollars in taxpayer funds have been given to nonprofits to improve homeless conditions
True. The west coast has a massive homeless problem. And a progressive government. So they invest in trying to fix it.
> but they’ve only gotten worse
Housing inequality has also gotten massively worse over the last several decades. And in general many other social programs have gotten defunding (Such as mental health support)
And in general North America-wide drug usage is only going up and indicators of despair are going up.
Western society has problems and we are not dealing with the root causes. Middle-class millennials have resigned themselves to never owning a house, and never being able to retire. While they have a social safety net from their boomer parents, it's not yet a crisis. When the boomer parents spend all their accumulated wealth to survive the last decade of their lives, it will become a societal crisis.
But the early signs are already being shown by the lower class.
My point is that we don't know HOW MUCH WORSE the problem would be if those organizations weren't in place. For all we know, they are dramatically reducing the rate of regression.
> while the nonprofit operators grow rich.
[citation needed].
This is an absolutely ubiquitous conservative talking point but the only evidence I see of it is that people working for these non profits make living wages (good, shouldn't they be able to?), and the CEOs of these companies make comparable money to CEOs of profitable organizations. Which...is good, isn't it? Don't you WANT to be able to hire the best people for these roles, and don't you need competitive comp to be able to attract it.
> People exploit loopholes in the safety nets to get money for drugs.
Drug addicts will do almost anything to do drugs. The root causes of drug addiction may be character weakness (they're not, but we don't need to have that debate today) but once someone is addicted, it doesn't matter what happened - they have a medical disease, and treating it as anything but does not help anyone.
But if we want to help people not become drug addicts we need to deal with the underlying societal causes of despair.
> These are all unintended consequences of poorly conceived policy making.
You're right. For instance, one terribly conceived policy is policing this problem and spending millions of dollars to lock up people in jails and prisons for this instead of just spending money on socialized subsidized housing.
A social safety net from housing to universal basic income will dramatically reduce the problems in questions.
But even in the most progressive cities of North America, this is just not on the table. And instead when people speak about "bad policy" what they're really saying is "I want to see MORE police".
If people who sell Heroin die, then there will be less victims who will get addicted to such products.
Consumers who get addicted to Heroin are essentially poisoned (and nearly condemned to death) by their dealer.
It takes some time, but it would cleanup the whole situation, without putting the blame on regular consumers (who are eventually, step by step, pushed toward finding solutions to their addiction because sourcing the products is more and more difficult).
Yes, murders happen, even in peaceful societies. No matter if you have strong laws.
Now if you get rid of dealers, then, not only you have less drug issue, but you also have less murders due to less gang fights (as an interesting/bonus side-effect).
Singapore is a societal model that works for some people. It does not work for most, and certainly not for those who believe in North American culture.
This much repression and zero tolerance of drug usage percolates to the rest of society and other civil liberties that most people in the West would say they want full freedom to partake in. (Including soft drugs)
Why? I'm happy to blame the city official partially, but isn't it significant that SF, more than other big cities, was dependent on tech tenants who have largely gone remote?
That's not entirely true. You may not live in SF but only work in SF. In this situation you have no say in SF government because your voting rights are based on where you stay and not where you work. Maybe there needs to be a way to better distribute your vote? If you're in a place for about 1/2 your waking hours of the week, maybe you should get a say in the government of that place?
Edit: This is a situation with most metro areas. Definitely with Chicago where there is a large contingent of folks who commute from the suburbs.
People generally only elect what they find to be the least detestable of the faux-representatives that their party strategists and financial backers put forth.
It's possible for harmful but popular policy to go forward with no one but your average constituent to blame, but when every option is a different set of false promises and failures to execute, and "the discourse" is driven mostly by dollar-driven propagandists, it's hard to place the blame for dysfunctional government on voters generally.
People generally only elect what they find to be the least detestable of the faux-representatives that their party strategists and financial backers put forth.
It's possible for harmful but popular policy to go forward with no one but your average constituent to blame, but when every option is a different set of false promises and failures to execute, and "the discourse" is driven mostly by dollar-driven propagandists, it's hard to place the blame for disfunctional government on voters generally.
it's a mistake to believe that any major political party adheres to a principled political philosophy, but it's true that single-party politics is ripe for corruption, which is CA (especially SF and LA) in a nutshell. it's much easier for money to talk when only one party is listening. this is the same dynamic that antitrust in commerce is meant to prevent. politicians spend something like 80% of their time now soliciting donations, even in single-party areas, which is very telling of their priorities (rhetoric be damned).
Except for the fact that what is happening in San Francisco is completely normal. All violent crime stats in SF are still trending downward. The only increase in crime is non-violent theft, and the current rates are just a return to pre-pandemic levels, which makes sense given that there were far fewer opportunities for people to interact during the pandemic. And all of these crime rates are relatively the same or even better than the rest of the country.
What you're experiencing is confirmation bias. You read about one crime, then started noticing all of the stories about crime, formed a theory based on this hyper focusing, and now you believe it's worse than ever despite the stats clearly showing otherwise.
What I am experiencing is data being misused. I've lived in the Bay Area for more than a decade and yeah, it's not as violent as the 90s, but compared to a decade ago, violence is increasing.
If you are a resident, you very well know that a huge portion of crimes, violent or not, are not being reported because of the end result. Property crime is through the roof. My car has been broken into 3 times in the last year or so. Before that, I've only had my car broken into once in a decade before. I've had to call the police 3-4 times (apart from the car break ins) in the last 2 years for individuals in crisis, sometimes threatening violence. I never had to do it in the decade before. In fact, the first time I had to do it, I wasn't sure if I call 911 and had to look up the non emergency line. Yes, all of this is anecdotal or "personal experience", but talking to everyone I know around me, all of their "personal experiences" have only gotten worse recently. Which makes me believe that at this point, the data paints as accurate picture as anecdotes these days.
You're claiming that hard data from numerous sources doesn't matter because it doesn't match up with your personal experience, and then doubled down on your claim that violent crime is increasing, despite every source imaginable disagreeing with you. We apparently live in different universes.
What I’m suggesting is that the “data” is not accurate because a large amount of crime, property or violent, is not reported. Things like theft and property damage is not reported unless it’s thousands of dollars or if insurance requires it. Things like damage to your garage door because someone tried to break in, stolen catalytic converters, stolen Amazon packages etc rarely get reported. Retail theft also gets underreported. Violent crime like someone spitting on you, throwing things at you, pushing you to the ground and running away etc. doesn’t get reported unless there is a big injury or a weapon was involved.
Again, you're making things up because it "sounds correct" to you, but that doesn't make it reality. Your examples of violent crimes that go unreported seem to be based entirely on interactions you've had or heard about with homeless people. Yes, SF has a substantial homeless population, which increases the likelihood of those extremely minor "violent" offenses happening. But that isn't new, at all, and it's baseless and ridiculous to suggest that an increase in awkward incidents with the homeless means that there is a tsunami of attempted murders.
Seattle, NYC, Dallas, Chicago and a hundred others also have huge homeless populations and even higher rates of violent crime that are actually trending upward, but you don't see the populations of those cities going into a full panic or claiming that the violent sky is falling. SF residents are getting caught up in mass hysteria. It's really as simple as that.
He is explaining that once crime becomes so common, it is not reported (and hence not statistically accounted for).
Also statistics can be manipulated in many ways, I'd trust 1000% more the feeling of people living in the town, than official statistics.
Here, all the testimonials I see, my own experience in SF, plus all the posts really confirm that there is an issue, without having to care about the statistics or what the politics or police wants to show.
You don't see such with Tokyo for example.
And Tokyo, you get your cup of tea/coffee stolen, it may be accounted as a crime. In SF they would laugh at you and it would be a total waste of time.
The idea that violent crime is reported less in SF than any other city is a fallacy based on, again, confirmation bias. Also, theft isn't violent crime. And as I already explained twice, theft in SF has returned to pre-pandemic levels, while violent crime in SF is still consistently lower than most large cities and decreasing. Violent crimes almost always get reported. So, your argument is based on the opposite of reality.
It's a concerning level of paranoia to suggest that multiple and separate data collection sources, including the city government, local police, state police, the FBI, justice advocates and local journalists, are ALL manipulating statistics to create a narrative that SF is safer than your perception. Especially considering that your personal narrative would be preferable to the police agencies, since it would allow them to more easily demand (and receive) more funding if violent crime were actually on the rise.
Please go read the threads about the Bob Lee suspect arrest, so you can see all of the people who were making the same mass-hysterical argument you're making, but admitting how they now regret getting caught up in that "SF is the Thunderdome" hysteria.
>It's a concerning level of paranoia to suggest that multiple and separate data collection sources, including the city government, local police, state police, the FBI, justice advocates and local journalists, are ALL manipulating statistics to create a narrative that SF is safer than your perception.
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” - Upton Sinclair
>Please go read the threads about the Bob Lee suspect arrest, so you can see all of the people who were making the same mass-hysterical argument you're making, but admitting how they now regret getting caught up in that "SF is the Thunderdome" hysteria.
Yes, you really disproved SF as a violent and lawless place with that argument.
No, he's claiming those sources are shit because they don't recognize what everyone in SF knows - that crime reports aren't taken and thus they can't be counted.
> "Below is a look at the total number of crimes reported to the San Francisco Police Department over the past five years."
Those "studies" aren't hard data, they're pure propaganda.
The police would prefer the statistics show a rise in violent crime, because that would quickly result in an increase of their funding, which they actively and publicly pursue constantly. So if it's propaganda, it's self-defeating propaganda, making it far more likely that you're experiencing paranoia based on mass hysteria, rather than a police department going massively out of their way to turn down millions of dollars.
The police simply count what they can - actual formal reports. They aren't lying because they aren't claiming that this fully describes the situation in the city.
The fact checkers, who I am accusing of being empty political bias machines, lie by pretending that "are the official crime statistics lower" is the question that residents and tourists need to know. Their headlines and conclusions don't match the questions they're asking and they're smarmy in their dismissals of disbelievers as politically motivated.
> if it's propaganda, it's self-defeating propaganda,
No, it's not the police who are propagandizing here. It's the "news" misusing the police data.
> making it far more likely that you're experiencing paranoia based on mass hysteria
The current state of this debate is to essentially bully people into agreeing with manipulated statistics, that seeing the density of human filth degeneracy and decadence, that this is all “normal”. Finally, we’ve found a “lived experience” we can ignore.
> What you're experiencing is confirmation bias. You read about one crime, then started noticing all of the stories about crime, formed a theory based on this hyper focusing, and now you believe it's worse than ever despite the stats clearly showing otherwise.
Exactly. The whole "crime is terrible in SF" is just a Republican propaganda narrative that people who should know better are buying into.
All west coast hippie liberal cities are experiencing it, so it is indeed normal.
Same shit in SF, Portland, Seattle, and even Vancouver CA!
It's a PNW problem. We are simply too libertarian and hate cops too much. Everyone else in this thread thinks it's something else. It's not. People here fucking hate cops and will turn society to anarchy to be rid of them.
They aren’t meant to solve mental illness, they’re meant to keep the non-mentally ill and everyone else safe. “Solv[ing]” mental illness, such as it can be, is not relevant to the immediate question of safety.
So then, all of the people suffering from mental illness and drug abuse should just be rounded up and arrested? That seems to be the solution a lot of people on HN are proposing. You know what the real problem is? Not caring for these people and getting the help they need. Arrest isn't going to change a thing. They'll get out of jail and go right back to it. Unfortunately a certain segment of the population would rather put money into a police force than anything else. End of the day, no one really seems to care what happens to the _people_ having trouble, just that they're not visible.
Your own statement implies mentally ill people are a danger to everyone. That's just sickening.
My statement implies that the police exist to triage safety problems. I did not say anything about rounding people up and arresting them. Your response is par for the course in how this debate goes. Someone points out that, gee gosh golly, things feel unsafe for law abiding normal people just going about their lives. They request that laws on the books are actually enforced - not more complicated than that. And you jump in and say that we're advocating for a "sickening" solution to this problem. Call me a Nazi if you want, I suppose.
The real problem is that you don't have any solutions other than "do the same thing but more louder". And, yes, mentally ill people are in fact a danger - to themselves and quite often to others. Completely bizarre that there's ostensibly smart people who don't get that.
>They'll get out of jail and go right back to it.
Many of these people should not be allowed out of jail. You are imagining that everyone in that situation is a benign hippie that is just down on their luck.
>End of the day, no one really seems to care what happens to the _people_ having trouble, just that they're not visible.
This is a totally dystopian way to frame this. People like me, who have a problem with these policies, are pointing out that the infatuation with homelessness some progressives have is making things worse.
Either way, shouldn't San Fran have plenty of money from all the tech there and plenty of extra office real estate from covid to try and put a dent in all the circumstances that lead up to someone needing to steal or getting addicted to drugs? Probably too optimistic of a take ...
Kinda silly to assume that the data is an exact reflection of reality when that link is reporting on "incidents". Especially when you can visit the city and witness stark difference compared to walking around somewhere like Miami, Houston, or New York.
Incidents are actual reports to police, not a log of all activities happening in the city. Several factors can influence reporting rates in a city, causing over or underreporting. Especially if you doubt the effectiveness and corruptibility of the police. Homicides are direct reports of victims and more accurate.
Plus, the linked article is based on the San Francisco Police Department website's crime data. Not saying that nefarious activity is the case, but has this data been audited by a 3rd party? There's definitely an incentive to show that things are better than they are if funding, elections, etc. depend on it.
I think the relevant distinction is concentration. In other US cities with relatively high crime - the crime is concentrated in certain neighborhood and is heavily related to gang activity. So you provided you can avoid certain areas, you generally are able to avoid most crime. In SF the criminality has spilt out to have a broader impact in a way the aggregate statistics might not show. Previous advice that you would probably be safe anywhere in the city other than the tenderloin no longer applies.
The number one driver of theft and drug addiction is poverty. Unless SF commits to ending poverty, which they likely won't or can't, they won't address the causes of homelessness.
SF is especially "bad" because it has an incredibly high cost-of-living. If you're living in the area without a high-paying (tech) job, you're very likely to be only one or two surprises away from losing your housing.
I'm not in SF but so many of the responses here seem highly reactive in their politicization and catastrophization of the issue. I'm in NYC, and if you were to go the subreddit for it, you'd see similar claims, which IMO, are completely off-base. Can anyone provide me w/ a reasonable take?
Systemic issues exacerbated by national political trends and rapid uneven economic growth.
Due to the very real issue of police brutality in SFPD, local politicians are opposed to increasing funding for SFPD without oversight, and a number of politicians want to decrease it due to their police brutality record.
That said, SFPD is having a hard time retaining and hiring officers as they can get better salaries elsewhere in the Bay with less overtime. Fresh out of Academy cops in San Jose can earn a $111k base that caps at $189k, but SFPD's starting base is $103k and caps at $147.5k. Even factoring overtime, SFPD comes out to less than SJPD for hours worked, and other richer suburbs can pay even more than either wth even less hours.
Add to that politicization of the SF DA's office and Public Defender's office for the exact same reason (pay sucks so political hacks from both sides of the aisle fight for control) and you have dysfunctional local law enforcement.
On top of all that, SF had massively redeveloped a lot of formerly redlined neighborhoods (Western Addition/Hayes Valley, Mid-Market/Civic Center, Mission Bay+Potrero/Hunters Point) which in turn displaced those who couldn't afford to move to cheaper working class suburbs like Antioch and Vallejo.
Add to that the very real issue of neighboring states and cities (both Republican like Nevada in the 2010s and Democrat like NYC in the late 2010s to present) bussing their basket case issues out to San Francisco.
All this lead to the dysfunction that is seen today in San Francisco.
I think its largely an issue of what you care about / what bothers you.
SF has very high property and overall crime rates. This is objective fact. It has the 4th highest property crime rate in the country, and the 7th highest overall crime rate in the country[1][2].
However, the _violent_ crime rate is only slightly above average in SF. Some people don't care much about the rampant theft; they still feel safe.
The same is true of e.g. the homelessness and drug issues. There are objectively more homeless people & drug addicts laying out on the sidewalks in SF. Some people don't care, some people are really bothered by this.
Crime in NYC is unevenly distributed. Property crimes mostly in business districts, violent crimes mostly in a few neighborhoods with gangs. If someone lives in areas most popular with well-payed software engineers like the Villages or North Brooklyn they will not encounter most of this crime. The NYPD is as large as some nation’s standing armies for a good reason, it stops crime in certain areas effectively.
Typical cope response "the crime is not happening". We're so far beyond debating whether it's happening, don't try to gaslight people. Just walk around the damn city, there's filth, drug use, harassment, tent-cities. Don't talk-down standards as if it is a requirement to live like this... we can have clean safe cities without these problems, it is only a matter of will and enforcement.
I mean what are you looking for? People are sharing anecdotes because sUpPoSeDlY the statistics say it’s 100% A-OK and nothing to see here.
SF has reached a tipping point and the wildly inflated values of multi-million dollar condos and trophy commercial buildings are falling fall enough to start putting serious wealth at risk.
NYC has gotten markedly worse in the last ten years. Some people want to signal how urbane and/or liberal they are and pretend not to notice, but that’s bs.
No one likes walking down the street and seeing a guy yelling incoherently at passing cars, or getting on a subway car and finding someone sprawled across one of the benches smelling like shit.
All of your condescension aside, statistics tell the entire story. Crime in NY was, for many decades, far worse than it is now. It sounds like you may have lived much of your time here during the brief period of all-time low crime during the late 2000's/early 2010's and are basing your comparison on that anomalous era.
I lived in nyc from the early oughts. Things got better and better and then started getting worse. Should I be overjoyed about that because they were even worse yet in the 70s and 80s? Is that what your oh so objective statistics tell me to think?
How about we try to make things better instead of trying to sound smart by explaining that axtually this is not nearly as bad as the bubonic plague?
These are just strawmen, you were the one that asserted things are a certain way now compared to the past, which is objectively not true, and was responded to accordingly. Now, after being called out for the lie, now you are asking "why can't we work towards a solution" - well, why didn't you say that in the first place?
Yawn, that's not my point at all. It's an objective and indisputable fact that those were common things 10 years ago. It's not predicated upon being a real New Yorker or not, it's predicated upon recognizing actual historical fact. To which, your reply is completely disingenuous and should be disregarded entirely. You now make the point that because things aren't worse, we should accept them? I didn't say that, I said that you saying these things didn't happen 10 years ago is a flat out lie.
On one side you have reactionaries who want to solve the problem by throwing everyone in jail and generally creating more misery for everyone except rich tech workers.
On the other side you have idealistic liberals who want to solve the problem by adding more social services but taking no further action.
This is likely a problem created by extreme wealth inequality and the fix is probably not what the posters on this site would be interested in entertaining.
Every single city subreddit and local discussion is focused on crime and how high it is.
1: In almost all cases the statistics show that crime is actually going down, but the media reporting is going up.
2: Cities being crime-ridden hellholes is a narrative that is very convenient to the North American conservative narrative that cities are hellholes, progressives are soft on crime, the "real" citizens are in the suburban/rural areas who are scared, and that they are justified to be scared.
It's how despite the fact that overall trends of policy perspectives are moving leftward, the US Republicans and Canadian Conservatives remain relevant disproportionate to the polls for their actual policies: They feed on the fear so they create more of it.
3: West Coast cities (San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Los Angeles, and Vancouver Canada) get hit with this even more disproportionately because the citizens there confuse crime with visible poverty.
People hear "Someone was randomly stabbed", then they go on the streets, see someone homeless and on opiates passed out in the street, or get screamed about by someone on meth, feel unsafe, and correlate the two. Then they look around at the state of certain parts of the cities and scream the city is dying, and demand superficial solutions like impeaching the DA, or cleaning up a homeless encampment.
But the cities don't have a crime problem (more than other cities in North America). They have a VISIBLE POVERTY problem. They have a houselessness problem. And they have a drug addiction problem (which almost certainly is an outcome of poverty and houselessness.
The root cause for these is complex, from wealth imbalance, to insufficient social services, but the reason why THOSE CITIES specifically have them is that the west coast provinces and states are 1/ Progressive, 2/ Mild-climated in the Winter.
There is no other province or state that is both consistently progressive (and as a result offers SOME social services for homeless, mentally ill, or drug addicted people) AND you can survive a winter in the street. The east coast has the former, but not the latter. The southwest has the latter but not the former.
The combination of the above creates the effect you see.
"In almost all cases the statistics show that crime is actually going down, but the media reporting is going up."
No, the statistics show that reports to the police are going down. The reports are NOT going down because crime is going down; they are going down because victims are less and less likely to report the crimes.
On a recent HN discussion on crime in SF, someone said one of the reasons it's so visible is that high income and low income sections are adjacent and intertwined. Is this true? More importantly if perhaps more crassly, is it worth it? Does not keeping your crime isolated to the "bad part of town" result in a meaningful drop in the overall crime rate?
For example, the Whole Foods that shut down in the gentrified area around 9th street is a couple blocks from Hyde & Turk - which is the main drug market in the city.
The high rises along 5th Street near Moscone are adjacent to the SROs and homeless shelters on 6th.
Similar stuff in Mission District and Polk Street/Lower Nob Hill as well - a lot of older SROs/cheap apartments got converted into Hotels, Airbnbs, or resold as condos.
And despite all this, no one noticed the intergenerational poverty and gun crime in the Projects in Hunters Point and Visitacion Valley because they are cut off from the rest of the city.
Yes. West Coast cities (San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Los Angeles, and Vancouver Canada) consistently get talked about with this even more disproportionately because the citizens there confuse crime with visible poverty.
People hear "Someone was randomly stabbed", then they go on the streets, see someone homeless and on opiates passed out in the street, or get screamed at by someone on meth, feel unsafe, and correlate the two. Then they look around at the state of certain parts of the cities and scream the city is dying, and demand superficial solutions like impeaching the DA, or cleaning up a homeless encampment.
But the cities don't have a crime problem (more than other cities in North America). They have a VISIBLE POVERTY problem. They have a houselessness problem. And they have a drug addiction problem (which almost certainly is an outcome of poverty and houselessness.
The root cause for these is complex, from wealth imbalance, to insufficient social services, but the reason why THOSE CITIES specifically have them is that the west coast provinces and states are 1/ Progressive, 2/ Mild-climated in the Winter.
There is no other province or state that is both consistently progressive (and as a result offers SOME social services for homeless, mentally ill, or drug addicted people) AND you can survive a winter in the street. The east coast has the former, but not the latter. The southwest has the latter but not the former.
The combination of the above creates the effect you see.
Some people claim social services for the homeless make it "too easy" to stay unhoused. Googling the problem seems to only result in punditry and rhetoric but not any kind of meaningful analysis as to whether a "tough love" approach has any advantage over a generous one.
Yes, there is a subjective philosophical question here for sure. Are humans inherently lazy and greedy or cooperative and selfless? The answer is "both". But since you can't tell who's who, and the greedy selfish have a vested interest in hiding it to get more, how do you decide?
I think you decide what is a bigger moral crime:
* To leave someone who needs help without it, even when you have funds to help them
* To fund someone who doesn't need help, and who will take advantage of it?
It's similar to strong-link/weak-link theories on societies.
Ultimately, the homelessness is not the root cause. The root cause is poverty, mental health, drug addiction, or all of the above. Those are the things that need to be addressed first.
* To make things worse in a reactionary panic when doing less would have been better.
> fund someone who doesn't need help, and who will take advantage of it
That's not actually my primary, or even top-20 concern. I only fear accidentally giving them things that ultimately hurt everyone.
Giving people clean drugs actually hooked more people and not arresting people for "victimless crimes" led to more "victimless" deaths.
> The root cause is poverty, mental health, drug addiction, or all of the above.
Okay, but how does taking people off the street hurt all or any of those goals?
I'm not saying junkies should be in maximum security but I think mandating that they go to rehab is better than giving them the choice to stay in the street.
> Giving people clean drugs actually hooked more people
[citation needed]
> and not arresting people for "victimless crimes" led to more "victimless" deaths.
But what is the proposal? Arresting people and incarcerating them for petty crimes? The US already has the most incarcerated population in the history of the world
> I think mandating that they go to rehab is better than giving them the choice to stay in the street.
Maybe. But if you don't address the reason why someone started doing drugs, when you get them off drugs, they still have all the incentives to start again (poverty, despair, etc)
I think for people with otherwise SOME social net, we do this. But you can't mandate a homeless person with mental health issue "go" to rehab, you can only lock them up. And in that environment, you need to be treating their mental health, after you treat their drug addiction.
This is what western european countries do. But they also address poverty.
> But what is the proposal? Arresting people and incarcerating them for petty crimes?
What's an honest counter-proposal? "Allowing" minor crimes, or requiring people to simply let thieves take some of their things?
So, of course, yes. Arrest people for any crime that hurts other people, because the other option is that those others suffer or they need to defend themselves. Both of which are unfair and unproductive.
> you can't mandate a homeless person with mental health issue "go" to rehab, you can only lock them up
We aren't talking homeless, they're already easily helped.
We're talking the incurably anti-social and dangerous. People who routinely hurt their neighbors or damage their spaces and things. And yeah, you totally can mandate rehab - you lock people up and require rehab to leave.
We already have to lock them up anyways so if they choose not to benefit from or are actually incapable of participating in rehab then yeah you just leave them perpetually locked up in the lightest containment possible. It's generally easier and better, for them and us, than some "free to die on the streets" nonsense anyways.
And rehab is only much of the issue - many people are simply "ill" and are never going to get fully well. They don't need punishment, and have no substances to kick, but they still need fair and firm containment.
Arresting people and incarcerating them for petty crimes?
The result of not arresting someone for breaking into a car is not someone getting their car broken into, but an entire population who believes they are not safe.
Specifically on high/low income intertwined, yes. There is certainly some segmentation, but there are also places where one street is good and the very next street is bad and the next street is good. It's an interesting city for sure.
Politicians will always try to make numbers to fit their agenda. For example, the stats say that human trafficking is down but street prostitution is out of control (like on Copa St [1]). I have no idea how they made up these numbers but they did. So good for them - smart.
Anyway, the only how to fix this problem is to get involved. Contact your supervisor, police capital, etc. Be persistent. That is all I can say.
I look at posts like these as part of an orchestrated effort to have material at the ready in case Gavin Newsome or Kamala Harris run for office again.
No orchestration is necessary. If Gavin somehow gets the Democratic nomination for president, the GOP will plaster TV with ads saying he was the mayor of the most liberal big city in the country, show videos of the TL, and quote crime stats.
There's some weird push right now to advance not punishing crimes as a legitimate way to deal with criminals. If you Google Search right now for "does punishing crime work", all the top results are studies on how punishing crime is evil, we need compassion not conviction, yada yada. People seem to be seizing on these studies to say "look, punishing crime doesn't work, and since you disagree with this study, you're against science and you don't deserve to be listened to."
Honestly, I think the reason there are no studies proving that punishing crime works, is because it's such a brain-dead obvious conclusion that I'd guess nobody ever felt the NEED to make such a study. Society has been punishing crime for thousands of years. We've all changed our behavior to avoid punishment. If you've ever had a pet it should be perfectly obvious that avoiding punishment is an innate behavior baked into every animal and OBVIOUSLY it works to deter bad behavior. It's something as obvious to me as 2+2=4, or water is wet, or the sky is blue.
Fortunately there are other cities out there with actual sane leaders. But as long as SF keeps pushing this politically-motivated, head-in-the-sand "compassion not conviction" nonsense their city will continue going to shit.
The silver lining is that the bleeding hearts who champion this nonsense now have to live among the results of it. WFH is great but here's one reason to support back-to-the-office policies.
I tried Googling "does punishing crime work", and I got results about how some studies show it's ineffective, which is true and relevant - this does not imply that we should not punish crime for some definition of "punish", and I don't get any results about how it's "evil", or "yada yada".
>I think the reason there are no studies proving that punishing crime works, is because it's such a brain-dead obvious conclusion that I'd guess nobody ever felt the NEED to make such a study.
It's pretty easy to imagine how punishment might not have an appreciable effect on certain crimes in certain contexts, so it's confusing to assert that your conclusion is "brain-dead obvious". Punishment as a concept is indeed obvious, but only because it serves as an obvious outlet for our angry emotions, not because it "obviously" works effectively and in all cases.
You're injecting really strongly biased/unthoughtful wording into your opinion, which is a needless distraction.
This is only true if you believe that the purpose of punishment is rehabilitation. Depending on how severe the punishments it absolutely can affect crime rates. This is a very simple problem to solve. Remove the people from the streets. Punish drug dealers with severe, harsh penalties. Keep escalating until it stops. Do you think if we rounded up all the criminals and put them in jail, the crime wouldn't decline? Of course it would. It is only a matter of will and degree of punishment/enforcement.
>This is only true if you believe that the purpose of punishment is rehabilitation
I'm not sure what you mean by this - the purpose of all functions for dealing with crime (which may be called punishment) in civilized society is, in no particular order: 1. To protect people, e.g. by physical separation, 2. To rehabilitate, and 3. To deter (and, unfortunately in many cases, 4. To provide the basic human need to see the wicked punished).
>Depending on how severe the punishments it absolutely can affect crime rates.
That's an understatement! I only said it was true that some studies show punishment is ineffective, and that punishment "might not have an appreciable effect on certain crimes in certain contexts."
>This is a very simple problem to solve. Remove the people from the streets.
I think we should be able to agree that justice is complex in practice, and "remove the people from the streets" is leaving quite a lot unsaid. Maybe you meant that the problem statement is simple, which it is: "SF laws and/or enforcement are failing to keep people safe".
>Do you think if we rounded up all the criminals and put them in jail, the crime wouldn't decline?
This is unrealistic even in cities where enforcement is healthy, but even going along with the hypothetical: The topic was punishment as a deterrent. I.e. how well does the punishment of those people prevent them from doing it again once released, or prevent new people from doing it. Obviously regardless of the answer to that question, we need to separate from the rest of society those people committing violence, menacing, public drug-use, public defecation, etc (how best to keep them separated and rehabilitate/help them if possible is another obvious topic, but not one in the scope of my comments).
My original post was not a defense of SF - it was a criticism of another post that I think was written in a way that damages the conversation. Most of what I've written here is an attempt to clarify my post in light of your interpretation, rather than providing new information. Maybe this is my fault - but I also think you might be making assumptions about the specifics and degrees of my opinion, which is frankly the common thread of dysfunctional conversations everywhere, especially on topics poisoned by politics.
I think part of the problem is that we are not willing to foot the bill to put all the criminals in jail.
On a somewhat quibbling note, I will point out that violating traffic laws makes one a criminal, and I am pretty sure you have exceeded the speed limit.
You probably do not mean to put all the criminals in jail. And that raises the question of which criminals to put in jail which makes it much harder.
Addiction is lifelong so you're going to put drug addicts in jail you would need to use a life sentence. Based on my TV understanding of the penal system, this will not cure the addiction.
Also, if you put all the criminals in jail what you're really doing is providing a fertile breeding ground for criminal education, which is also not very healthy for society assuming you plan to ever let criminals out.
And of course we do also have the escape from movies and Australia as previous investigations of how to best deal with high crime rates
>And that raises the question of which criminals to put in jail which makes it much harder.
Why is this hard? Is there a problem with speeding that is lowering quality of life to the degree that violent, property, drug and homeless loitering is in major cities? Cmon man, we are all smart people here. The manufactured moral dilemmas are such a waste of time.
We can all conceive of hierarchies of crime, and right now unenforcement is the major problem so are we really at risk of jumping to extremes where speeding tickets lands someone in jail for a long time? Now, if speeding results in physical harm or car accidents, then at the very least those breaking them should lose their license. If that becomes an issue, then escalate until the problem is solved to a degree that makes a city a pleasant place to live. Maybe the problem is there are too many competing defintions here for what people think is desirable for a city..but open drug use, homeless/mentally ill squatting on sidewalks and harassing people, un-punished property and violent crime, mass theft at retail businesses etc seem fairly obvious to me maybe you have a different preference and like this stuff.
>Addiction is lifelong so you're going to put drug addicts in jail you would need to use a life sentence.
Yea maybe. I'd rathr have a nice clean city than concern myself with rehabilitation of hard drug users. Getting hooked on this stuff already means one has ruined their own life. Why do we have to allow them to ruin ours too?
Close your heart to sentimentality, or maybe direct that sentimentality to the people doing the right thing, not using drugs and trying to be productive citizens. Where is the empathy for them? This is the major blocker to solving these problems. I feel much worse for the good citizens who have to suffer living around this mess, than anyone addicted to drugs and whose behavior necessitates removing them from society so the rest of us can get on with our lives unomolested.
This mentality of hyper sympathy for what are essentially mindless zombies wreaking havoc (at some point the drugs preclude people from rational thought) is the core of why US cities have become so bad. It may be true that to clean up the streets requires abandoning the aversion to harsh punishments for these and other people. If collectively we cannot cross that chasm, then we're doomed to live in filth that will only get worse.
Thank you. It's astounding to me how difficult it is to argue with some people about this. It's seriously practically matters of basic sanity. Like what kind of bizarro-universe is this where people are trying to argue that people who speed are in the same category of "criminal" with violent drug addicts? I almost don't even know what to say to a response like that. It's practically bad-faith IMO but it's so fucking stupid and somehow such a supported position that I feel the need to fight against it.
The post in question did not do what you are accusing them of. They made a rhetorical statement about the word "criminal" that they even themselves qualify as "quibbling", and go on to demonstrate the usefulness of the quibble as the context for a relevant point.
On the other hand, you are broadly accusing those who disagree with you as stupid and insane.
I think SF is a mess. I don't have insight into how "bad areas" become that way or how best to systemically address them, but I do feel relatively confident in blaming the laws and/or enforcement for a failure to do what is in the system's power to keep people safe from each other and from themselves (to a reasonable extent - I don't expect precognition or magical rehabilitation capabilities). It makes me angry. However, unlike apparently everybody else, I don't consider myself educated on the topic beyond that. In this instance, I am trying to do my tiny part in defending the conversation from the tidal wave of fallacies that come with politically charged and emotional topics.
Serious question, but why would SF have more of a mental health and addiction problem than other cities? The climate would be nicer in, say, LA or the Carolinas so it's not weather-related.
I'm not sure that SF does have more of a mental health or addiction problem. It certainly is visible in SF, but other cities have worse statistics depending on what specifically you're measuring.
I'd say the reason it is more visible in SF is due to a combination of the density, walkability, and policies that don't hide the problem as much behind locked doors.
Do they try that in SF? My understanding was that they moved away from this model.
And it doesn't have to be jail if they have mental health or whatever issues. Just put the people that hurt other people in a place where they can't hurt other people.
They moved away from it because it doesn't work. It's not working anywhere else either, why would they go back to it?
The name doesn't matter call it what you want but when you take a stigmatized group widely considered criminal and a nuisance, not rightly or "correctly" part of society and put them in a place they are not free to leave atrocities are inevitable.
And why even them in the first place? Why is the conversation not about jailing a landlord who evicts someone in mental health crisis? They've caused plenty harm.
It's a good question! The climate isn't unique but I think the economic and income dynamics may be.
Either way though "this isn't working so let's do the other thing we know also doesn't work" isn't a very rigorous approach. I get the frustration but we know that wouldn't solve it, because it didn't solve it there and hasn't solved it anywhere.
> Why is the conversation not about jailing a landlord who evicts someone in mental health crisis?
What a commie answer, to blame the person who has actually supplied something because they can't keep providing forever.
Why not jail the neighbors, who obviously refused to start a go-fund-me to pay for the apartment?
Why not jail facebook employees for not making it mandatory to view said go-fund-me to pay for the apartment?
Why not jail the elementary school teacher who took a job in a different town many years ago, thus depriving the poor victim of a different path in life.
Why not simply jail anyone with more than the homeless person, to achieve full societal equity?
I didn't propose jailing anyone, I am an abolitionist. I asked why the conversation, already about jailing someone, is only about jailing that person. The other ones you pose are also reasonable questions with less clear answers but revealing to think about in a way. Except the teacher I just don't get that.
Calling me a commie is silly. I am a socialist come on. Y'all act like god revealed capitalism as his chosen economic system in 1991.
> Calling me a commie is silly. I am a socialist come on.
:D Honest question though if you're serious, is socialism just a temporary goal on the way to communism or is it a worthwhile final goal on its own?
> I didn't propose jailing anyone, I am an abolitionist.
More questions. Like, as a libertarian sort of thing, or a anarcho-utopian? In a society that has the concept of property? What would the society do, or expect a citizen to do, when someone was taking their food, or harassing them, etc?
> why the conversation, already about jailing someone, is only about jailing that person
Because the word tenant implies that they need to pay ongoing rent, and evictions are generally for failing to do so. Jail may be overboard in this situation (?) but applying sanctions to a person unwilling to return your property or leave your rental unit seems required or nobody would rent anything and all potential renters would suffer.
There doesn't seem to be any reason to punish the landlord, first because it's morally wrong to punish someone without a 'crime', and second because it wouldn't provide any class benefit to anyone either.
> Y'all act like god revealed capitalism as his chosen economic system in 1991.
No, we measure from when St Reagan personally tore down the wall in 1987.
sure you can, that's what they do in J burg. All the wealthy white people have electric security fences around their house and private security guards to protect them.
Wherever you are with this stuff, don't accept articles like this as a valuable, or even harmless, contribution to the discourse. It is using the terrible Twitter-based dark pattern of not actually taking a stand one way or the other, so that anybody can read the article and feel like they agree with it. Get angry, but you bring-your-own object for that anger.
To demonstrate, four out of the five articles that are supposed to be "the other side" are non-editorial news articles citing crime statistics. The other one is hardly an argument to "not get angry."
Whoever this person is, they spend too much time on Twitter and it really shows. Pushing and monetizing anger itself like this should be outright spotted for what it is: flame bait for clicks.
San Francisco was a thriving tourist city with a hip downtown close to Silicon Valley and Berkeley. Major venture capitalists set up shop in the city for basically no other reason than they thought it was cool and they wanted to be around other cool VCs (this is based on the impression I got from Ben Horowitz's book).
The whole "talent pool" was a self-fulfilling prophecy - there's no reason they couldn't have set up in more business friendly places like San Jose or Sacramento or even Nashville Tennessee for that matter. But it was always a bit of a flex of muscle to be in SF.
San Francisco as a city never needed these businesses. But they came anyway. So in most cities you have city planners that work really hard to build a desirable environment for attracting talent and businesses. I think people miss the point of SF's political problems.
And until Bob Lee's death, the VC class always had the money to kind of rise above San Francisco's problems and not see it for the dump it was increasingly becoming. It's as frustrating as it is needless - there are a hundred other cities in America better suited for VCs to set up shop in.
This is the "no peace" bit of "no justice, no peace". Law enforcement and the judicial system in the USA generally have squandered the trust placed in them because of systemic racism and the need to flex their power over ordinary people. Now those chickens are coming home to roost, as in SF they find they can't act at all without stirring up an abuse-of-power scandal. So they just let criminals go free and do their thing.
