> A friend who was planning to meet Lee in Miami this weekend told The Standard that Lee had been in San Francisco on business, had stayed an extra day and was killed on that day.
I am genuinely curious to know how SF residents feel about this.
This thread is 90%+ people denying the very existence of a problem.
Last time I was in SF, people were shocked that I felt less comfortable than I do in Detroit. Detroit doesn't tolerate half the shit SF does - no encampments, no wandering screamers, etc. Yes, violent and organized crime is much higher - but when you're QOL is lower than the symbol of urban decline........
Detroit is almost exactly the same size as SF. Detroit has cheap housing AND STILL BUILDS MORE. SF has decided that NIMBYism is the solution to homelessness, and it's obviously not working.
Size as in geographic area or population? Detroit has blocks and blocks where only a single house exists, thousands of empty lots and abandoned homes. Easier to build when there’s cheap empty lots.
If by "all-time low" you mean "the highest of the last 10 years" (we need to go to 2012 to find a higher value, with 2007/2008 being the peak of the last 20 years).
And also if we're willing to accept this pretty high bar...
For comparison the UK, not exactly the safest country in Europe, had 12x the homicides for 80x the population, which puts SF at 6 times more homicides per population.
Funny stat. Majority of murders happen in family. The recent FBI stat says that family members were responsible for 43% of them. Gangs are responsible for about 30%.
Now since large number of families moved out from SF, and there are more no big local gangs (since there are no families) you have about 40% more random homicides. And these random ones are the worse and the most scary ones.
When crime stats say "gangs" they're not just talking about a street gang with a name, list of members, defined territory and stuff like that.
They're also talking about people who engage in business that is not state sanctioned and therefore have to settle disputes with their own violence instead of getting a court to threaten state violence on their behalf. One part time drug dealer rounding up a couple buddies and putting a bullet in a guy who ripped him off will show up as and makes up a huge chunk of what's considered "gang violence" in these stats.
When comparing cities it's useful to differentiate between random crime and crime where the parties to know each other.
The scary part of SF homicides now that you can be walking around and some crazy guy just shoots you or stab you without any reason whatsoever. They are not professional criminals: they are just so drugged up or whatever.
I think that should be rephrased, I see what you mean but it sounds weird to call 43% a majority since the other 57% of murders are not family related.
> I am genuinely curious to know how SF residents feel about this.
Based on the subreddit, which is usually a trash fire, it's what you'd expect I guess? Everyone thinks murder is bad, so we start at that baseline, and from there it's a couple classes of people arguing with eachother: those that are happy to consider san francisco "a shithole" or whatever hot reactionary word of the day the rest of the country is using to label SF as enemy #1 of traditional american values and are essentially exuberant to have a new single point of data to sling around, and those that are overcorrecting against this and diminishing the real problems in SF in an attempt to whitewash while to be fair making things seem more true to reality, that is to say, portray SF as, statistically speaking, relatively safe and boring for a US metropolitan area.
As a former SF resident I think it's really sad that someone got murdered and I'm really angry about it. I'm mad at whoever did it, what a scumbag. I'm hopeful that there will be justice. I'm also afraid that this might give ammunition to reactionaries that want to overfund or overarm the SFPD, and that this will lend further political strength to politicians like bloodthirsty DAs that get their rocks off to throwing young POC in prison for minor drug offenses.
Cynically, part of me knows that finally some of the issues SF has been facing and the various leaders have been ignoring or handling poorly will probably be handled properly now that a rich person has been murdered. Well, no, cynical me again, probably this just means the cops will be cut loose a bit more and ineffective, punitive policies will be enacted / enforced / tightened.
It seems strange to me that when a person is murdered the first concern is how it will affect criminals. I mean I understand the concerns of an over active and under regulated police force, but my understanding is that San Francisco’s issues are largely the exact opposite: the police and the DA office have essentially legalized many forms of crime by refusing to prosecute people. It hasn’t seemed to make San Fransisco any better for it. At what point does the idea of punishing individuals for criminal activity stop being taboo?
> It seems strange to me that when a person is murdered the first concern is how it will affect criminals.
Funny, I have never seen the “first concern” being how it will affect criminals.
What I have seen, instead, is a weird fetish by most Americans, but most importantly, politicians, to increase punishment for criminals and expand police powers and protections, despite tons of evidence this doesn’t work and the US already having more punishment and more police powers than peer countries with far lower crime.
Some people respond by suggesting that we should try changes that actually help reduce crime and homicides as opposed to those that just help satisfy a knee jerk animalistic desire for punishment.
I think people who overestimate how threatened by violent crime they are outnumber the people who underestimate how threatened by violent crime they are at least 100:1 if not 1000:1
I know that "better safe than sorry" makes for great low effort virtue points but at the end of the day there is a point at which the broad and diffuse harm that we incur combating crime is greater than the marginal reduction in said crime.
I don't want to live in a world where walking down the street of a neighborhood one looks too low class for invites a police response because of someone else's poor risk assessment.
It's not legalized by the legislature. It's just not enforced by default by the prosecutor. There's a big difference. The prosecutor can still choose to enforce as they see fit or in "special" circumstances. On one hand I can respect the check and balance against an out of touch state legislature that prosecutor discretion provides. But a state policy to not prosecute certain classes of property crimes that have a victim(!!!) because of demographic make up of the people who engage in them hearkens back not to a prohibition era sheriff saying "alcohol isn't my job" but to a Jim crow era sheriff enforcing inequality under the law.
My first concern is how it will affect people the police historically over-target. That means black people and LGBT people. I'm re-reading my comment and I think I alluded to that, so I'm a little concerned that you said "how it will affect criminals".
> the police and the DA office have essentially legalized many forms of crime by refusing to prosecute people
This is a broad oversimplification of the situation in SF. I keep hearing this myth from people that don't live in SF that the police have been, like, abolished or something, but in reality no politician comes anywhere close to touching police abolitionist rhetoric.
In reality the cops absolutely hated the last DA and it seems they started sucking at their jobs on purpose as a result. The new DA they seem to like a lot more. Regardless, blame always seems to deflect off the cops and onto the nearest politician when it comes to basically anything in SF.
Replies to you are discussing how "crime is legal" in SF and I really have no idea what this could mean. It sounds like fox news gobblygook to me.
No, your false dichotomy was supposing that we must have some arrangement of people (historically in the usa this means black people) feel unsafe around police in order for the rest of us to feel safe in society.
It's not just a false dichotomy, it's illogical. If a given set of people doesn't feel safe around the police, they don't feel safe in society. They are us, unless you're willing to dehumanize them, so therefore a world where we don't feel safe around the police is actually your second case, where we don't feel safe at all.
I click through this thread desperate for a conservative position that isn't teetering on a stack of rhetorical fallacies or cognitive biases. Are you able to provide one?
I thought I was providing one, in the form of the utilitarian argument that it's better for some people to be scared of police than for everyone to be scared of each other. You can disagree with utilitarian ethics, but it's not a rhetorical fallacy to promote them, and certainly not when presenting them as "the least bad option."
I'm just so tired that this position is still held by people. It's just so easy to see the issue one can't help but wonder why you're preferring to believe the inherently racist take.
No, certain races do not commit more crimes than other ones; certain races get convicted and arrested more than other ones.
The evidence bears this out in reality. The racist interpretation is strongly incorrect. The data supports my position, not yours. Why do you hold the racist position anyway?
In random stops and searches, contraband is found more often on white people, than black people. Why do more black people go to jail? Easy, systemic racism. What possible other conclusion could you reasonably arrive at?
Regarding Ronen, handwaving vague fear mongering about police abolitionism isn't good enough. I'm forced to throw buckets of analysis into a comment for the millionth time to counter a racist interpretation of crime statistics, but you get to drop a tweet and say you saw someone steal food once and thus argue that progressive solutions to reducing crime are all naive and stupid? Nah. Do your footwork. See if your position has any actual strength.
Anyway, the budget for sfpd is already high, and has only gone up year on year. The police haven't been defunded.
Lol at the comment about public camping. Dare I even ask what you prefer the city does with homeless people?
Most criminal justice reform is implemented at the state level so hopefully you are assured that punitive sentences for petty crimes is not actually possible anymore in California.
In any case, even the most pro-incarceration DA electable in San Francisco would be a reform candidate in almost every jurisdiction of the country.
I am genuinely curious to know how SF residents feel about this.