[HN Gopher] Arrest made in SF killing of Bob Lee - alleged kille...
___________________________________________________________________
Arrest made in SF killing of Bob Lee - alleged killer also worked
in tech
Author : cemerick
Score : 817 points
Date : 2023-04-13 13:56 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (missionlocal.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (missionlocal.org)
| firstSpeaker wrote:
| My first travel to SF was in 2010 and last one in 2018. In the
| 2018 trip I wasn't comfortable walking in the market street to
| get back to my hotel in the evening (I was staying in Hyatt
| Regency). Maybe I got older and more fearful for my safety, but
| that is a personal experience I have with SF.
| sdze wrote:
| [flagged]
| mbauman wrote:
| Yes, let's jump straight to other conclusions now.
| infamouscow wrote:
| Unless you're participating in the investigation, you don't
| have any ampliative knowledge to contribute.
|
| This begs the question: what do you think the comment feature
| is for, exactly? Why are you even reading and responding to
| other comments?
| sdze wrote:
| Yes. That's why the comment section is here.
| piva00 wrote:
| Not really, it's more geared towards having substantial
| discussions, not whatever fantasy comes out of our minds.
| preseinger wrote:
| it absolutely is not here for this purpose
| sdze wrote:
| it is and you won't change that. Just because you have
| some delusions what you believe a comment is and what
| isn't.
| graderjs wrote:
| There's such a thing as tact and respecting his widow and
| kids than to jump straight to scandalous speculations that
| besmirch his integrity, which are easy to make but in poor
| taste.
| asdfman123 wrote:
| I knew this wasn't a "random occurrence" due to drugs and
| homelessness. People almost never stab each other for no reason.
|
| But when I suggested it in an earlier thread I was criticized and
| downvoted for "spreading conspiracy theories."
|
| I know we shouldn't speculate but everyone else was speculating
| that it was random!
| j4pe wrote:
| Joe Eskenazi, the author of this piece, is a solid journalist who
| helps run the tiny donation-funded Mission Local. They've done
| incredible reporting on corruption in the SF city government and
| punch way above their weight in the stories they break. I have
| respect for how Joe refused to join in reporting this murder as
| evidence of a violent crime epidemic, while still reporting on
| homelessness and property crime.
| Pils wrote:
| The current CEO of YCombinator regarding an article in Mission
| Local a few days ago:
|
| _Mission Local seems to serve their local bureaucratic masters
| over the basic public safety needs of the people._ [0]
|
| _This is gaslighting. You should be ashamed._ [1]
|
| _In this case they are "independent" of a sort_ [2]
|
| In all fairness, he did retweet this article a couple hours
| ago.
|
| [0]
| https://twitter.com/garrytan/status/1644520924828540929?s=20
|
| [1]
| https://twitter.com/garrytan/status/1644510807060021249?s=20
|
| [2]
| https://twitter.com/garrytan/status/1644535178856124418?s=20
| toss1 wrote:
| This is a prime example of the growing stated perception
| outside of tech bubble, "tech bros killing each other and
| blaming the homeless". It didn't take long for people to
| start posting that.
|
| Yes, street crime is itself a taking of rights and freedom of
| the people living and working in a place, and it is more
| important to contain it than to maximize the criminals'
| rights.
|
| But this shows that the reputation of the tech industry is
| pretty much underwater, and premature postings like that
| don't help.
| rideontime wrote:
| In all fairness, I'll be impressed when he posts a retraction
| and apology.
| ginger2016 wrote:
| I concur! He should apologize.
| ginger2016 wrote:
| I know in Twitter everyone is inflammatory, however a CEO
| should exercise restraint and show leadership, and hold
| judgement until facts are clear, in this case he clearly
| failed.
| phone8675309 wrote:
| Don't hold your breath.
| rideontime wrote:
| Of course, I know better.
| yonran wrote:
| The top part of Joe Eskenazi's earlier article
| https://missionlocal.org/2023/04/bob-lee-crazy-bob-
| mobilecoi... was good (where he reported evidence that the
| Bob Lee killing was not a robbery), but I agree with Garry
| Tan that the bottom part of the article (where he makes a
| broader commentary on whether San Francisco is "safe"
| unrelated to Bob Lee) is gaslighting and reductionist. It
| makes many claims and implications that are questionable:
| e.g., that rampant property crime does not make you unsafe
| (despite the fact that many thieves are armed), that
| festering drug addiction does not make you unsafe (which may
| have been a contributing factor to the car not stopping for
| the victim), that the problem with crime is "feelings" rather
| than real risk, and that those who are concerned about crime
| must have come from sheltered "suburbs". And there's no
| mention of anti-Asian robberies that got the previous DA
| recalled.
|
| Eskenazi is a well-connected journalist, but he is also
| arrogant and often presents only one side of issues. For
| example, virtually nothing that he wrote in this article
| (anonymously sourced from disgruntled politicians) about the
| magnet school Lowell High school ended up being true (magnet
| schools do not violate state code as claimed, and the school
| did return to test-based admission which he claimed would not
| happen) https://missionlocal.org/2022/02/lowells-old-merit-
| based-adm.... So while his reporting is mostly good, you have
| to be aware of his bias.
| Pils wrote:
| I think you are trying to pigeonhole Eskenazi's argument
| into the standard "progressives don't care about crime"
| punditry that's popular on the right. I would suggest re-
| reading the column with a more open mind. His argument is
| that _feeling safe_ is as important, if not more important
| from a policymaking perspective, as empirical measures of
| safety ( "real risk") such as violent crime rate. He is in
| fact arguing the exact opposite of what you are
| characterizing him as arguing ("rampant property crime does
| not make you unsafe", "festering drug addiction does not
| make you unsafe"), and seems to have advised politicians to
| ignore these issues at their own peril.
|
| The problem is that just like violent crime rates don't
| fully explain feelings of safety, things that make one feel
| unsafe don't fully explain all violent crime. Since Bob
| Lee's murder did not seem to be a result of either drug-
| induced psychosis or a mugging gone wrong, Joe made the
| correct call that the murder was likely unrelated to either
| of those issues.
|
| That all being said, it appears that you have issues with
| him based on unrelated reporting on an issue you seem to
| care deeply about. A good of a time as any to examine any
| potential biases you might have when receiving new
| information so you don't accidentally embarrass yourself on
| Twitter!
| jeffbee wrote:
| Mission Local is great. We are blessed with a wealth of local
| journalism like Mission Local, Cityside, even SF Standard if I
| hold my nose about the fact that it is controlled by a
| reactionary political movement. It is why I never understood
| the whining about "support your local newspaper". There's no
| chance of me ever subscribing to the Chronicle. I donate to
| these other, better news outlets instead.
| shuckles wrote:
| SF Standard has some of the city's best journalists on staff,
| and you'd be hard pressed to identify how Moritz is
| influencing their coverage decisions.
| [deleted]
| biomcgary wrote:
| I have not heard of the SF Standard (I'm not in CA). You seem
| to value SF Standard (at some level) even while disagreeing
| with underlying political stances. That juxtaposition seem
| unfortunately rare in the current era, could you expand on
| what value they create (for you)?
| jeffbee wrote:
| SF Standard does not seem to have an overt reporting bias.
| So far I find their articles informative. But they are 100%
| funded by a PAC the agenda of which I do not fully embrace.
| pentagrama wrote:
| I'm in doubt if is ethical journalism reveal the name and
| LinkedIn profile of an alleged killer, sounds like doxing to
| me.
| doctoboggan wrote:
| Depends on the track record of the journalist and whether you
| believe that they did their due diligence and have good
| sourcing.
| hker999 wrote:
| It's only because he's a white male. Person of color suspects
| rarely get doxxed by the media and the story usually
| disappears the next day.
| napierzaza wrote:
| [dead]
| hindsightbias wrote:
| I'll go with the perp being rich and white. LinkedIn has
| already been deleted. No conspiracy needed.
| RamblingCTO wrote:
| What? What has the race and the finances have to do with
| anything? He's not white, he's of Iranian descent I
| believe. The LinkedIn is still online. Even tho I disagree
| with doxing someone that might turn out not to be the
| victim.
| sowbug wrote:
| Arrests sure better be public record in a free country.
| kstenerud wrote:
| In Germany it's not public, nor are you allowed to publish
| the name of a person arrested. This is to protect the
| individual's privacy and shield them from public
| retribution and prejudice, which I think is a far more
| enlightened stance.
|
| In America, the stigma of an arrest follows you for the
| rest of your life.
| luckylion wrote:
| I agree, especially pre-trial. I disagree post-trial.
| When a judgement has been made "in the name of the
| people", the people should be able to know the name.
| Timon3 wrote:
| But _forever_? Shouldn 't a person who does wrong have
| the option to actually make things right? Should a
| mistake somebody makes at a young age follow them until
| their death, even if they have gone through the actual
| judicial punishment? If there's no way for them to ever
| "make things right" in the eyes of society, it doesn't
| leave many choices - which is a big contributor to the
| high rates of repeat criminals.
| microtherion wrote:
| I don't know how other countries handle this, but I
| learned a few years ago, somewhat to my surprise, that
| Switzerland has in some cases provided a high profile
| murderer with a new identity after they served their
| sentence, precisely so they could go on with their life:
| https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunther_Tschanun
| sterlind wrote:
| if a politician is arrested on corruption charges, are
| you not allowed to name them? or if someone's spouse is
| arrested for their murder, you can't disclose it? or that
| the suspect is, say, a tech worker rather than a homeless
| person? how can you possibly cover high-profile crimes if
| you're not allowed to disclose facts about the suspects?
| pohuing wrote:
| You can do it after judge said guilty. High profile just
| uses initials.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| In America most people are never declared guilty by a
| judge, they get held in jail until they give up and agree
| to the prosecutor declaring them guilty instead.
| not2b wrote:
| Juries, not judges, declare people guilty in the US.
| Prosecutors don't declare people guilty either; what
| you're talking about is people taking a plea bargain and
| pleading guilty. Bail reform can help take the pressure
| off of people to falsely confess to get out of jail, and
| we need more of it.
| kstenerud wrote:
| > how can you possibly cover high-profile crimes if
| you're not allowed to disclose facts about the suspects?
|
| It's done like this: https://www.dw.com/en/german-police-
| arrest-25-suspects-over-...
| sterlind wrote:
| that exposes quite a lot more information than I
| expected, given OP's description of how the privacy laws
| work. it includes the suspects' ages, backgrounds and
| (very distinctive) first names. it took me a mere second
| to find their full names by Googling - there's not many
| 71-year old noblemen named "Heinrich XIII"!
|
| so I guess it's a figleaf? good for them, I guess?
| iudqnolq wrote:
| The UK is a good example of a generally* similarly free
| country without guaranteed public access to arrest records.
| This balances the potential benefit to the public from
| knowing against the definite harm to the accused.
|
| (*There are definitely significant ways each is less free
| than the other and there's no rigorous way to say which is
| worse)
| sowbug wrote:
| Yes, it's a balance. I don't want my government hustling
| people into vans and disappearing, but I don't want minor
| indiscretions to become media-amplified scarlet letters,
| either.
|
| A reasoned discussion begins with an acknowledgment that
| the public has a right to monitor its government, and
| that individuals have a right to privacy. Unfortunately,
| the USA PATRIOT Act substantially dimmed the sunlight on
| government law-enforcement activity, and the _Dobbs_
| decision severely weakened privacy as an emergent
| constitutional right.
|
| Edit: As I was writing this reply, I came up with an
| interesting legal theory. The right to publicity is
| traditionally understood as a celebrity's right to
| control the commercialization of his or her image. Might
| we say that the modern attention economy has turned
| _everyone_ into a potential celebrity, and thus that
| _everyone_ should be allowed to control the _commercial
| publicity_ of their persona? This would draw a
| potentially meaningful line between the public 's right
| to know (which I expect is popular) and the media's right
| to commercially exploit the salacious details of an
| accused's crime (which is, sadly, extremely popular;
| otherwise, it wouldn't be as prevalent as it is today).
| I'm sure attorneys and legal scholars have already
| explored this idea.
| tqi wrote:
| I think the person you're replying to is saying that:
|
| - If a government arrests someone, it should be forced to
| acknowledge both that it happened AND give the reason for
| arrest
|
| - Media should have the right to report on arrests,
| without interference from the government.
|
| This protects from abuses of power against for example
| political opponents. Of course, these same laws make
| arrests for common crimes problematic for the people
| being arrested. And I don't think it is feasible to
| codify an objective line between the two.
| iudqnolq wrote:
| Yes and I'm presenting a counterexample of a free country
| where the media does not have the unlimited right to
| report on arrests.
| sowbug wrote:
| Good point on the media's right to report. Prior
| restraint is icky except in the most exigent and extreme
| circumstances.
| bialpio wrote:
| There's also presumption of innocence so publishing
| personal info of someone not convicted is akin to doxxing
| to me.
|
| Edit: typos.
| AlgorithmicTime wrote:
| [dead]
| RoyGBivCap wrote:
| Convictions*
|
| People get arrested, their name smeared, presumed guilty,
| and then go to trial and it wasn't them. Lives get ruined
| over for crimes not committed.
|
| IIRC, Israel doesn't publish arrests, just convictions. So
| it's not a new idea.
|
| Florida's "sunshine law" mandates arrests be public record,
| and it's lead everyone to believe there's more crazy people
| in Florida than anywhere else, which just isn't true.
|
| Sure we shouldn't have black sites where people just get
| nabbed and disappeared either, but "guilty until proven
| innocent" is just a fancy idea if your life gets ruined
| before the trial. Look at what happened to Rittenhouse.
| Kicked out of his college and _then_ "not guilty on all
| counts" at trial. It's a miscarriage of justice.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| It's fundamental to the principles of habeas corpus that
| the overwhelming power of the government to arrest,
| prosecute, and imprison someone be wielded in broad
| daylight.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| Not everyone needs to know for habeas corpus to work.
| Narrow lamplight can be just as efficacious.
| microtherion wrote:
| Given how heavily and uncritically the initial theory of a
| homeless/lower class person as the killer was promoted (not
| least of all here on HN), I think it made a lot of sense to
| reveal that the actual suspect now arrested worked in the
| tech industry and was acquainted with the victim.
|
| Beyond that, it's nor clear to me that revealing the actual
| name or other personal details of the suspect serves a
| legitimate purpose of advancing justice or society; however,
| it is not out of keeping with journalistic practice in other
| criminal cases in California. Suspects' names get printed in
| newspapers for far lower profile crimes all the time.
| bink wrote:
| I can see some benefit in that potential witnesses might be
| more likely to come forward. If I hear of a terrible crime
| and it turns out my neighbor was arrested for it I might
| potentially have some valuable information to contribute.
| I'm still not sure if it's a good thing though.
| simplotek wrote:
| > (...) I think it made a lot of sense to reveal that the
| actual suspect now arrested (...)
|
| Have we learned nothing from Reddit's Boston bomber witch
| hunt?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Sunil_Tripathi
| jamespo wrote:
| I've learnt that's a poor comparison to this
| simplotek wrote:
| Please explain what leads you to believe that doxing
| suspects, exactly like in the Boston bomber case, is a
| reasonable idea.
| [deleted]
| hluska wrote:
| It is painfully simple. Charges are a matter of public
| record. Naming random brown people as terrorists only
| creates innocent victims.
|
| Honestly, it's time to let this idea die. It's not only
| completely wrong but it's not making you look very
| bright.
| dapearce wrote:
| In this example there is enough evidence the suspect has
| been arrested by police, which is a public record. Not
| remotely the same as the Boston bomber reddit-
| misidentification case.
| jstarfish wrote:
| It is every bit the same and every bit as shitty a
| metric. Remember Richard Jewell?
|
| The man's only crime was being the first person to find a
| live bomb and help people escape it before it then
| detonated and killed 100+ others. The fucker was a
| literal goddamn hero.
|
| But then the media implied he was a sad loser rent-a-cop
| who _planted a bomb so he could find it and pretend to be
| someone important for a day_. It was absolutely depraved,
| and that 's before the FBI started harassing him.
|
| But hey, all's fair for anyone named as a suspect by law
| enforcement. They _always_ get it right the first time
| around. _Everyone_ who gets arrested is later convicted.
| They _always_ kick down the right door before sending the
| SWAT team in.
|
| Fuck internet vigilantes, and the FBI.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| I agree, but we can't only have this discussion when
| someone wealthy is implicated in a crime. On any other
| given day the SF carceral brigade is out for blood. Just
| recently a prominent person was talking about _bringing
| back lynching_. So when they suddenly start waxing on
| about the rights of the suspects, we should absolutely
| press them on their change of heart.
| simplotek wrote:
| > I agree, but we can't only have this discussion when
| someone wealthy is implicated in a crime.
|
| We don't.
|
| If you're serious about this, you're also responsible for
| not pushing for doxing of random suspects. You can't
| argue that there are good witch hunts and bad witch
| hunts.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| Are we reading the same Hacker News? I see people
| advocating for extreme punitive measures and expanding
| the carceral state _all the time_ on here.
| jstarfish wrote:
| I agree with you too, but don't think holding politicians
| to their lies or fixating on class warfare is really the
| most pressing part of the situation. He's calling for
| lynchings because he knows there's a receptive audience
| for it.
|
| _That 's_ the part you should be most worried about,
| because a mob so empowered could just as easily turn its
| gaze to _you._ Good luck trying to be a nuisance to that
| prominent person once the mob gets a taste for blood.
| Before participating in doxxing frenzies or lynch mobs,
| nobody _ever_ stops and thinks "what if this guy didn't
| actually do it?"
|
| No expansion of the carceral state required, we'll just
| deputize an angry mob to play the part of Executioner.
| hluska wrote:
| What a terrible comparison. There is a massive difference
| between identifying someone who has been charged and
| randomly naming brown people the killer.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| It's hard to believe that you're not aware the name is
| published by the police following an arrest, which was almost
| certainly the subject of a warrant application.
| aeternum wrote:
| Is the public's failure to understand the meaning of the word
| alleged a problem with journalism?
|
| The police arresting people in secret has historically been
| .. problematic at best.
| olliej wrote:
| There are two issues that compete:
|
| 1. Police secretly arrest people and toss them in jail
| never to be heard of again
|
| 2. People are erroneously arrested, there name is publicly
| attached to a crime through a bunch of reporting, then
| they're released before trial or found not guilty
|
| The first is fairly clear, the 2nd is a problem because
| being released is generally not news, so google search or
| whatever forever links the persons name to a crime they
| didn't do. Then you have a bunch of humanisms: the person
| the lawyered there way out of the crime, or "they must have
| been involved otherwise why would they be arrested", etc.
| So there is a permanent cost to being publicly arrested for
| something you didn't do even if justice happens and you
| don't ever see court. That's why you some times see people
| in the judicial system releasing "this person is absolutely
| innocent" type press releases.
| say_it_as_it_is wrote:
| Joe Eskenazi shared the identity of the _alleged_ killer,
| potentially ruining the life /career of someone who may not
| have killed Bob.
| dang wrote:
| That's standard practice isn't it? If you get arrested for a
| newsworthy crime, the news will say your name while saying
| "alleged" to make it clear you haven't been convicted yet.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| I don't think hiding the names of accused suspects is
| realistic. Instead, we should try to educate the public and
| remind them that people are still innocent until proven
| guilty.
| Aloisius wrote:
| The jail shared it. It's a public record.
| etc-hosts wrote:
| Looks like the SFPD waited a while to verify a possible
| narrative of what they believe happened before making an
| arrest.
|
| If it's all made up, that would be amazing. Doubtful.
| paulgb wrote:
| Eh, there's a reason we have a system where the accused has
| the right to make their case in court. An arrest is a
| strong signal but by design has a lower burden of proof
| than it takes to punish someone within the system. Given
| that being publicly accused of a heinous crime can do
| irreparable damage in the age of Google even if ultimately
| acquitted, I'd rather err on the side of caution here.
| kaycebasques wrote:
| They really do some amazing reporting. Based on the fact that
| this is the first article I'm seeing on this topic, it seems
| that Mission Local may have got the scoop [1] on the Chronicle
| and other big newspapers on this high-profile topic. That is a
| big deal for journalists (if I recall correctly) because it
| means you're doing better original reporting and you're more
| connected to the neighborhood.
|
| [1] https://grammarist.com/idiom/get-the-scoop/
| bombcar wrote:
| Any small local news organizations will almost ALWAYS get the
| scoop on the big ones, for local news. Because the vast
| majority of "big" news things are a division of some
| conglomerate and just regurgitate Reuters.
| emodendroket wrote:
| Most local newspapers these day are glorified advertising
| circulars with maybe one or two reporters they actually
| employ.
| Loughla wrote:
| The local papers I am familiar with in my region are
| literally (not figuratively) just re-print houses for
| prior-approved PR stories from local schools, businesses,
| and government offices.
|
| It's really quite sad.
| kaycebasques wrote:
| The Chronicle still does a lot of local reporting.
| justizin wrote:
| Yes and they rushed to cast this tragedy as part of an
| imagined crime epidemic.
|
| There are some good contributors to the Chronicle, but
| they skew fairly conservative for SF and have for a long
| time.
| wand3r wrote:
| > Imagined crime epidemic
|
| Is the SF/Bay Area really having an "imagined" crime
| epidemic? Serious question. Seems the crime rate is very
| high
| fdr wrote:
| Property crime has been high for decades. Violent crime
| moves here and there, but is somewhat unremarkable for an
| American city.
| throwntoday wrote:
| Things are worse than ever and reading comments like this
| that dismiss it genuinely confuses me. So because other
| cities have similar or worse crime rates, we should just
| accept it?
|
| Urban decay is happening all across this country and it
| needs to be addressed aggressively before you or someone
| you know gets stabbed to death.
| WesternWind wrote:
| Things are not worse than ever. Things are slightly worse
| after the pandemic, but nowhere as bad as the 70's. Feel
| free to check the statistics.
|
| Anyway I agree we need to get aggressive, but a lot of
| folks thinks that means more cops. We spend a hell of a
| lot on police, but police don't address the root causes
| of most crimes.
|
| We need to aggressively invest in urban areas with new
| housing, job opportunities, drug treatment, gang
| disruption, violence interruption, mental health care,
| and other meaningful interventions in the cycles and
| circumstances that lead people to commit crime.
| not2b wrote:
| American cities almost all have far lower crime these
| days than they did decades ago, and SF has a
| significantly lower murder rate than many cities.
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/06/us/san-francisco-crime-
| bob-le...
| JieJie wrote:
| This is great writing, "the abrupt closure of the mid-market
| Whole Foods, leaving San Franciscans just eight other Whole
| Foods within city limits". What a scoop, brilliantly
| delivered.
| gnicholas wrote:
| Sure, it's a cute jab, but 8 WFs in an entire city is not
| that many. Even if you have a car, there are large swaths
| of the city (Richmond, Sunset), where a WF is a bit of a
| slog during regular traffic (and worse during rush hour).
| And of course, many city dwellers don't have cars, so
| having to lug groceries up SF's famously hilly streets is
| not great for more than a fraction of a mile or so.
| gcheong wrote:
| Good thing there are other groceries and farmer's markets
| and Prime delivery to fill the gap left by the one WF
| closing then. Living in the Sunset, yes it's true if I
| want to go to a Whole Foods I'd have to either drive, or
| bike or take public transit to the one over by the
| Haight, the one down at Stonestown mall or the one on
| Upper Market. But I don't usually because the Safeway is
| within walking distance and that's good enough for me
| most of the time and if not there's Other Avenues, Sunset
| Super, 22nd and Irving, and Gus's all relatively close by
| just to name a few off the top of my head.
| majormajor wrote:
| The actual city of SF is not that large. Something like
| 800k people. Not very big of a footprint either. 8 is no
| small number.
|
| Austin TX has 964K, is where Whole Foods was founded, and
| has 5 according to the locator on their website.
|
| Los Angeles has almost 4M people and has 7. (As well as
| ones in various other cities that are intertwined with
| the weird geographic footprint, but also 4 times as many
| people in the "official" city limits for those 7.)
| prpl wrote:
| Haight WF is about as close as Masonic Trader Joe's (and
| somehow easier to park at) for most in the richmond and
| sunset - though Calmart is better than both.
|
| Andronico's was much better than both before safeway took
| over
| magicalist wrote:
| People in the Richmond and Sunset have closer Whole Foods
| than the one that closed.
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| This seems like a good opportunity to plug SF's great
| independent grocers. Please do not sleep on The Good Life
| Grocery, Rainbow, or the several Gus' Community Market
| locations around town, not to mention all the other small
| grocers around the city.
|
| Some more great places in my local riding area: Midtown
| Market in Dogpatch (pricey but really good produce), and
| Glen Canyon Market, which was recently acquired by Gus. A
| cute small grocery store with a butcher counter just
| opened near Portrero, and there's also Avedano's butcher
| on Cortland Ave (near a Good Life) and Olivier's in
| Dogpatch.
|
| Swiping my hand over a mystery panel to pay for my
| groceries is very cool at WF, but there's no shortage of
| great places to restock the fridge and pantry all over
| SF, and where the money you spend is going more to local
| places and locals.
| kylestlb wrote:
| If you live in the Sunset you most likely have a car.
| kaycebasques wrote:
| Edit: I thought that this comment was tangential and
| sarcastic but I was incorrect.
| gowld wrote:
| It's a quote from the article. You might have missed it.
|
| https://missionlocal.org/2023/04/bob-lee-killing-arrest-
| made...
|
| It's an expression of appreciation for the author's
| saracastic humor, reporting on the thinness of evidence
| for anti-SF commentary, a major theme of the OP article.
| kaycebasques wrote:
| OK, I totally misunderstood the comment in that case. I
| have edited my previous comment. Sorry for the
| misunderstanding.
| [deleted]
| jkestner wrote:
| I wish more reporting would have the level of context and data
| that this piece does, instead of lazily quoting experts with an
| agenda.
| asdfman123 wrote:
| If you like this article, think about subscribing to them.
|
| Lots of little papers like this seem healthy and then
| unceremoniously go out of business because they don't make
| enough money in ad revenue to pay their journalists like
| 45k/yr. That's not a typo: that's how much Bay Area reporters
| make.
|
| Support local journalism!
| okdood64 wrote:
| Yes, I think this was one of the better pieces of journalism
| I've read recently. It was a breath of fresh air.
| mkehrt wrote:
| I cannot praise Eskenazi highly enough as a reporter.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I don't know anything about Mission Local, but reading of the
| article prior to reading your comment left me with the
| impression that the author was really invested in this being a
| targeted killing. The first part of the article started strong,
| and then it felt like the author was grinding a political axe,
| though I'm sure it's in response to other articles grinding
| different axes. It was a well-written article to be sure, but I
| guess I've grown weary of motivated journalism.
| not2b wrote:
| Looks like the author had very good reason to think that this
| was a targeted killing, as in, if the suspect did it it was a
| targeted killing.
|
| Jumping to the conclusion that some homeless guy or street
| thug did it, without any evidence, is also something that
| people with axes to grind do on a regular basis.
| [deleted]
| timbob53 wrote:
| [flagged]
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| If you find it difficult to recognize a solid journalist in
| someone who uses language in a standard way that you
| _dislike_ , that would be a problem with your own ability to
| exercise judgment.
| kcplate wrote:
| [flagged]
| roundandround wrote:
| > But the city's violent crime rate is at a near-historic
| low, and is lower than most mid-to-large-sized cities.
|
| Wow, more evidence that this is a city in the US?
| kcplate wrote:
| I have walked around my city in the US for decades and can
| count on one hand the number of times, I have seen crime
| happen live and in person on our streets. In a recent
| single trip to SF that was just a few days, I can say I saw
| perhaps a half dozen active crimes. Also of note, i have
| seen public urination only once here, but saw it twice in
| between the airport and my hotel in SF.
|
| Live where ya want and how you want, but let's not pretend
| SF is no different than other places in the US. It is, and
| frankly it's shocking and blows my mind that people pretend
| it's normal.
| johnea wrote:
| Yep, just more proof that San Fransisco is overrun with the
| criminal wealthy...
| joeblubaugh wrote:
| So are all the right wingers gonna apologize for pinning this on
| street crime?
| bsuvc wrote:
| [flagged]
| azinman2 wrote:
| [flagged]
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| I don't get it. Are you saying that Republican policies are
| ruining the city? Or are you saying that the established
| laws and regulations have nothing to do with the problem at
| all?
| azinman2 wrote:
| The GP said "So are all the right wingers gonna apologize
| for pinning this on street crime?"
|
| My point is in agreement with the GP the right wing media
| loves to crap all over SF/LA and talk about how democrats
| are ruining the (country, city, XYZ). The parent comment
| didn't seem to understand what they were referring to, so
| I gave a link that was a quick google away.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| I'm not arguing. I'm saying that we know don't know if it
| definitely was Democrat policies that created the
| problem, but we definitely know it wasn't Republican
| ones. For all we actually know they could be right. Can't
| be upset at that, especially while lacking any sort of
| plan or process to deal with the problem.
|
| I personally think the great weather is just as much
| factor as anything else. If I were homeless in North
| Dakota, I'd be doing whatever it took to get to warm
| weather. Now couple that I know the city won't take down
| my tent or throw me in jail, move me, will feed, cloth,
| and give me helpful things, yea, probably sounds like a
| decent plan vs freezing to death after being hassled by
| authorities.
|
| It shouldn't be a crime to be unfortunate, but it's also
| not sustainable to have 60,000 (admitted, but probably
| closer to 80-100k) homeless people in LA alone.
|
| So, I present a steelman style question... What if
| they're right? How would we know? And would it be helpful
| to dump on media outlets that talked about just because
| we didn't want to see it?
|
| Why it is no one can even remotely entertain the
| possibility they might be wrong?
| azinman2 wrote:
| I don't think it was a democrat or republican that was
| responsible for the murder of Bob Lee, which is the
| context here. And with it the right wing media who used
| it as another bullet in their non-stop culture wars and
| fear mongering for votes.
|
| If you're asking why is it that SF has the problems it
| does, well that's very complicated. WWII imports of
| African-Americans to build ships soon out of jobs,
| various displaced groups by the booms and busts, vast
| social benefits that attract homeless as most other
| places lack it, supportive liberal policies that nurture
| it, one party rule that goes uncontested, homeless-
| industrial complex that pisses away money without any
| consequences, growing income inequality in one of the
| most expensive places in the world, liberal population
| who want to help versus hurt/jail/eliminate the
| vulnerable, street drugs that have become more and more
| lethal and addictive over time, laissez faire attitudes
| about drug consumption and sales, warm weather,
| population that enables panhandling, other states that
| buy one way bus tickets for their homeless, CA laws that
| basically prevent people from going to prison for many
| non-violent crimes, etc etc.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| > And with it the right wing media who used it as another
| bullet in their non-stop culture wars and fear mongering
| for votes.
|
| Their? Takes two my man. There are no winners. Whatever
| you think "their side" is doing, so is "your side".
|
| Drop that side crap and you'll see it too.
| sidibe wrote:
| "admitting that SF has a crime problem". It does have crime
| problems, drug problems and homeless problems. Since this
| topic was about violent crime sure you can admit it has a
| violent crime problems but it's no more than normal, in fact
| below average in the USA.
|
| It's the same demographic around here that pride themselves
| with thinking they are cold hard rationalists that also
| steadfastly refuse to look at SFs actual violent crime
| statistics to compare to the rest of the country.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads into ideological flamewar.
|
| I realize this topic has been fraught with it from the
| beginning, but even by that relative standard the comment was
| particularly bad.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| tinglymintyfrsh wrote:
| I recall a sad point to this case captured on surveillance video:
|
| As Bob Lee was bleeding out, he went to driver for aid who
| ignored him and fled the scene. Shouldn't they be arrested and
| charged for failure to render aid? Perhaps he would've had a
| chance if he had arrived at a trauma ER but it's now an
| unknowable.
| emodendroket wrote:
| I don't think you have a duty to render aid, and it's hard to
| blame someone not wanting to get involved in a stabbing.
| addisonl wrote:
| Not a legal requirement in this country.
| curiousbean wrote:
| [flagged]
| tempaccount420 wrote:
| Don't say that! What if someone has financial interests to say
| otherwise? That would be very rude to them.
| stfutechbros wrote:
| I wonder if we will get apologies from the people who used this
| to justify spreading horribly malicious rhetoric toward homeless
| people.
| dang wrote:
| Trollish usernames, which yours unfortunately is, are not
| allowed on HN because they subtly troll every thread they post
| to.
| https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
|
| If you want to rename your account, we can do that, but in the
| meantime I've banned this one.
|
| Also, please don't use HN for ideological or political battle--
| it's against HN's rules:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
| AbsoluteCabbage wrote:
| Capital punishment is the only sane solution.
|
| When you put a violent criminal to death, the crime rate is
| permanently and instantly lowered. If you lock them in a cage for
| 20 years we all pay the bills and they end up coming out and
| murdering again on the first day out. Total insanity.
| confidantlake wrote:
| Yeah which is why Iran and North Korea are beacons of safety
| and Iceland is a hellhole. /s
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > [death penalty or ultimately useless imprisonment]
|
| This is known as a false dichotomy. Perhaps, instead, we can
| think of other things which are more agreeable than either of
| these.
| anonkogudhyfhhf wrote:
| I know in the last thread everyone said he was a hero. But I
| looked at his bio and his last job was a token selling scam.
| Maybe he made some enemies
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| It's not in the tech circle news, but this murder happened
| literally days after Hindenburg Research released a very long
| article on money laundering and widespread fraud at Block
| (CashApp's parent company). Apparently the app is widely used
| to launder drug money.
|
| Not saying that's related, but you would have to investigate
| that angle in a murder.
| dkn775 wrote:
| Wow that article is very detailed and there is tons of
| exploitative practices
|
| https://hindenburgresearch.com/block/
| bombcar wrote:
| I've always thought Marc Antony's speech was bullshit - "The
| evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred
| with their bones."
|
| It's way more common to ignore/forget/never mention again
| anything bad someone who died did.
|
| Also the crypto world seems to be getting a bit stabby in
| various ways, as things come crashing down there may be
| repercussions. Unlikely in this case, probably. Much more
| likely to be domestic of some sort.
| emmelaich wrote:
| Deliberate bullshit, knowing the context of that speech and
| how he follows it.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| He supposedly left SF because it was unsafe and people assumed
| he meant "those people".
| dj_gitmo wrote:
| This is perfect for a "ripped from the headlines" episode of Law
| and Order. They basically already did one like this
| https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/LawAndOrderS14E...
| The second act could hang on a chorus of techie bum-haters.
| mztwo wrote:
| As the news media and twitterverse peddled the whole "crime-
| ridden SF" angle, I felt myself getting drawn into the same topic
| and agreeing with numerous friends on how much the city has
| declined. This is a good reminder of how we gravitate towards
| powerful emotional narratives, which in the moment can feel
| absolutely true despite an utter lack of supporting facts on an
| individual murder case.
|
| I hope this brings some measure of peace and closure for his
| family and friends.
| spacemadness wrote:
| Is HN in the twitterverse? Because I sat back and watched
| people do the same thing here.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| The biggest lie people on HN tell themselves is that they are
| "special" and not just normal people like the rest of us.
| hintymad wrote:
| As much as I don't like SF's progressive politics, the data
| showed that the recalled SF DA Boudin didn't charge less on
| murders or narcotics:
| https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/We-obtained-
| never-.... Boudin did charge less on theft and burglary.
| asynchronous wrote:
| I don't understand why it can't be both: SF is degenerating
| when it comes to random crime AND this murder wasn't by some
| random thug.
|
| I remember reading blog after blog on HN about people moving
| out of SF specifically for what the city had become.
| klyrs wrote:
| Gravity is a force that attracts two massive objects. While
| that statement is true, it is completely irrelevant to the
| Bob Lee case. People using this tragedy as an excuse to flog
| their favorite scapegoat is disappointing.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| But kind of expected don't you think?
|
| That's why we call them scapegoats right? That's what
| people who scapegoat others do.
|
| Logic, Rational Thought, Dispassionate Analysis, these are
| all good. And one day, all humans will hopefully practice
| these disciplines as a matter of course. But right now, the
| vast majority of people are controlled by their emotions.
| What do they _want_ to be true? What do they _wish_ to be
| true?
|
| Well, that's what becomes "true". At least, true to them.
| virgildotcodes wrote:
| The linked article specifically shows that violent crime in
| SF is at an all time low, and lower than most other
| comparably sized cities.
| P_I_Staker wrote:
| Didn't SF used to be freaking scary prior to blowing up?
| I've heard people talk about it like they do Miami,
| Baltimore, Detroit, ect.
|
| An undesirable place that washed up people ended up,
| riddled with crime and violence.
|
| I think I might be getting the story wrong, but I recall
| hearing there used to be much more crime.
| js2 wrote:
| The crap? I grew up in Miami. It's a lovely city, not "an
| undesirable place that washed up people ended up, riddled
| with crime and violence." FFS.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| It's all about whatever world view or narrative makes us
| feel emotionally comfy these days. Calling Detroit,
| Baltimore and Miami war zones makes a lot of people out
| there feel emotionally comfortable. (And also illustrates
| how many of us are, fortunately, completely unfamiliar
| with actual war zones.)
|
| I wouldn't put too much weight in those kinds of
| comments.
| P_I_Staker wrote:
| I get where you're coming from. However, my opinion was
| based on physically being there back to back years when
| there were multiple shootings in public places (though
| not at the actual shootings). That and the fact that it
| was extremely violent in the 80s.
|
| This isn't just some media driven hysteria.
| asveikau wrote:
| Since the victim lived in Miami most recently, a lot of
| people writing about this case commented about crime
| statistics and it seemed to me that based on the data,
| Miami is a more dangerous place than San Francisco, with
| more murder, rape, assault, etc.
|
| I think where to draw the line is this "undesirable
| place" business. That's highly subjective, judgemental,
| and can cause you to lose sight of a lot.
| kelnos wrote:
| I think you've hit the nail on the head there:
| "undesirable place" can come from a lot of reasons. Sure,
| I think SF has become more undesirable due to the
| increase in visible homeless population (visibility most
| driven by the mentally ill and addicted, as well as the
| tent encampments), as well has rampant visible drug use.
|
| But I think the belief/feelings that this translates to
| much worse crime is just not correct. I can sympathize
| and agree with the idea that homeless and drug problems
| makes SF less desirable, but I don't think it moves the
| needle that much on safety and crime.
| P_I_Staker wrote:
| I'm sure it has nice spots and you can make a good life
| for yourself. However, I can assure you that
| historically, it's exactly that (though maybe not
| undesirable)
| [deleted]
| mcguire wrote:
| SF's population declined between 1950 and 1980, and it's
| homicide rate between roughly 1970 and the mid-1990s was
| up to 2 or 3 times what it is now.
| xyzelement wrote:
| I don't understand why Miami is ln your list. It seems
| clean and thriving.
| microtherion wrote:
| According to Wikipedia, Miami has nearly twice the murder
| rate of San Francisco, and more than three times the rate
| of New York City: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U
| nited_States_cities_b...
| js2 wrote:
| 11.23 per 100K. Tusla has a higher murder rate. You're
| about as likely to die in an automobile crash nation wide
| (11.1 per 100K), and in Florida, more likely (15.4 per
| 100K).
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7126a1.htm
|
| https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-
| statistics/detail/state...
|
| Lies, damned lies, and statistics. We're all afraid of
| all the wrong things.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Assuming you mean Tulsa, OK, rather than Tuzla, BH.
| js2 wrote:
| Ah, indeed. I had to read your comment several times
| before I finally realized my typo.
| asdff wrote:
| IMO miami is a highly class segregated area. You really
| don't see the working class areas while there visiting or
| on vacation unless you go out of your way to see them.
| orangepurple wrote:
| I was nearly shot by a gang in Miami for parking in front
| of the wrong house with a white panel van with tinted
| windows. Never had such an experience in any other US
| city. I managed to get away after a five minute high
| speed chase on city streets. Cops were nowhere in sight
| at any point and time was of the essence so calling 911
| was not an option.
| P_I_Staker wrote:
| Because I recently visited and two people were murdered
| in quick succession during spring break. They shut down
| Miami beach last year, due to back to back days of people
| shooting into crowds. In general, it just seemed wild and
| crazy.
|
| I really don't understand what you're talking about.
| kelnos wrote:
| Are the incidents you witnessed the common case, or
| outliers? That kinda makes all the difference.
| pfisherman wrote:
| Maybe Bayview / Hunter's Point / Sunnydale. But SF has
| never been a dangerous place. Not like Oakland or
| Richmond. Crime was much higher everywhere in the 80s and
| 90s.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| you might be thinking of the pervasive non-violent crimes
| like people doing drugs in the bustling business and
| shopping districts and shitting right on the sidewalk in
| the same. it's long been infamous for that.
| wombatpm wrote:
| I never thought the issue was violent crime. More like
| the constant low-level theft and public urination from
| the homeless, drug addicts, and mentally ill.
| drewda wrote:
| A great read on that very topic: https://en.wikipedia.org
| /wiki/Season_of_the_Witch:_Enchantme...
| joemazerino wrote:
| Not "all time low" but a 40 year low. Its easy to fuzz
| numbers when you start extremely high.
| mcguire wrote:
| According to the chart, the current homicide rate is
| about 7/100,000. I found a spreadsheet showing homicides
| going back to 1849. The rate between 1968 (happy birthday
| to me) and 1996 is significantly higher than now,
| bouncing around between 10 and 20. Between 1920 and 1967,
| it bounces around between a low of 2 (1938) and 9. The
| 1870s were another relatively high period.
|
| Interestingly, San Francisco's population declined from
| 775,000 in 1950 to 679,000 in 1980.
|
| Sources:
|
| Homicide in San Francisco, 1849-2003 (https://cjrc.osu.ed
| u/research/interdisciplinary/hvd/united-s...)
|
| Historical population of San Francisco (https://en.wikipe
| dia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_San_Francisco) plus some
| linear interpolation
| fghsqwads wrote:
| [flagged]
| random314 wrote:
| And then you posted it here
| mlyle wrote:
| Possibly an all-time low. It's hard to compare numbers
| >40 years old, because they very possibly are not
| measuring the same things.
|
| As to ease when you "start extremely high" -- SF is now
| safer, when it comes to violent crime, than most major
| cities in the US. What it does have is an extremely high
| rate of quality of life crime.
| bink wrote:
| As an example: domestic violence was absolutely not
| treated the same >40 years ago and the odds of it being
| reported at all were quite a bit lower.
| mikeryan wrote:
| San Francisco has had a relatively low, and consistent
| violent crime rate for about 20 years.
|
| Conversely it's also had a consistently higher property
| crime rate.
| [deleted]
| rwalle wrote:
| Did you just swap words unintentionally or intentionally?
| Violent crime is not the same as general "crime", which is
| the word used above.
| throwaway292939 wrote:
| Sure. However the "lack of safety" perception is real too.
|
| If a homeless person walks up to you and aggressively
| threatens you as you are passing by, no crime has occurred.
| But if you're an SF native, you've learned to shrug it off
| as a commonplace occurrence. You've learned to become thick
| skinned towards these incidences. And when a real crime has
| happened, you'd likely assign more gravitas to it.
|
| This is why there is a disconnect between numbers and
| quoted statistics and how people feel.
| throwaway292939 wrote:
| People who are downvoting this... care to justify your
| point of view? Genuinely curious.
| welder wrote:
| Here's a good explanation of why perceived crime increased at
| the same time as total crime decreased in SF with COVID.
| TLDR: the number of crimes decreased, but the total number of
| people out-and-about decreased even more. The result is if
| you went out-and-about you were more likely to experience a
| crime.
|
| https://sfstandard.com/perspectives/perspective-why-your-
| cha...
| j-krieger wrote:
| Also, not every crime is reported. Not everything bad is a
| crime.
|
| Swathes of homeless living in tents is not a crime. So is
| being screamed at by a drugged maniac. You also won't see
| people openly shooting up or defecating on the street in
| these stats.
| tsgagnon wrote:
| _I don't understand why it can't be both: SF is degenerating
| when it comes to random crime AND this murder wasn't by some
| random thug._
|
| Always important to reflect on whether stances like "SF is
| degenerating" are based on a rational analysis of what is
| actually happening, versus a more emotional response to
| stories that might be more like the topic of this post, just
| with less visibility into the exact circumstances of what
| happened.
|
| Not saying that's likely happening here, but the clear
| response to the original news was that this was the perfect
| example of what SF is becoming. How often does that
| assumption happen?
| tsunamifury wrote:
| You can appeal to facts and being as rational as you want,
| but people leave because of how they feel.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| The overwhelming emotion that people feel as they decide
| to leave San Francisco is "my god, housing is expensive!"
| kelnos wrote:
| Which is funny, because if everyone were leaving SF
| because of high crime rates or whatever, housing would...
| not be so expensive.
| itsdrewmiller wrote:
| "Nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded."
| bilbo0s wrote:
| I'm not the person you're responding to but I believe the
| point is that people leaving, doesn't make Bay Area
| degeneration a fact. Only actual Bay Area degeneration,
| can make Bay Area degeneration a fact. We need to know
| who is moving, who is coming in, the economics of the
| region, geological suitability to population demands,
| needs of the larger state and nation as it relates to the
| region. And on and on and on.
|
| A blog post about a guy who didn't like the dog poo in
| the Mission is not nearly enough data to draw the
| conclusions most of us were drawing. That includes
| myself. But after the glaring intellectual lapses I
| engaged in subsequent to the Asian mass shootings and the
| killing of the crypto exec, the inner me is attempting to
| reassert rational order by demanding intellectual honesty
| and logic. All of which is now firmly demonstrating to me
| that facts don't care about feelings, and will
| _gleefully_ bite you in the ass if they don 't align with
| the world view or narrative that you're emotionally
| comfortable with.
| stanfordkid wrote:
| Just because an economist wrote a utilitarian calculus
| saying "this is what makes a city great" doesn't make it
| so. The logic they use to define "good" ultimately has,
| at it's deepest core a morality. The morality that
| "longevity is good" "per capita GDP good", "average
| happiness good" ... is not an objective fact and has no
| bearing on how _human beings_ measure greatness. The
| anesthetized bug-brained western homo-economicus would
| probably be laughed at by a Spartan warrior ... is one
| objectively a "better" human than the other?
| bryananderson wrote:
| > We need to know who is moving, who is coming in, the
| economics of the region, geological suitability to
| population demands, needs of the larger state and nation
| as it relates to the region. And on and on and on.
|
| Exactly. And it turns out we know the answer: California
| has been hemorrhaging residents for 30 years and they are
| overwhelmingly lower-income, albeit with a recent surge
| in higher-income departures which correlates with the
| shift to remote work.
|
| https://www.ppic.org/blog/whos-leaving-california-and-
| whos-m... https://calmatters.org/california-
| divide/2020/01/not-the-gol...
|
| It's the housing, y'all.
|
| All of it.
|
| The homelessness vastly out of proportion to the area's
| drug-addiction and mental-illness rates. The property
| crime. The exodus.
|
| All of it. It's all the housing.
| smsm42 wrote:
| I've seen SF degenerating with my very own eyes and smelled
| it with my very own nose. Yes, this particular case may or
| may not be (we don't have jury decision yet) part of this
| pattern. But no amount of "akshually, this carefully picked
| statistic clearly shows that the crime is much better than
| it was in 1980s!" is going to change how I felt when I went
| to SF and how my eyes watered from the urine stench when I
| tried to ride BART in the city. Call me irrational as much
| as you want - but this is what being there felt lately, and
| it's obvious it is not only my personal point of view.
| justizin wrote:
| How long have you lived here? What were the conditions
| when you arrived, versus what you see now? What areas do
| you frequent?
|
| Have you ever made friends with a homeless person? Do you
| know anyone who has been homeless in the past?
|
| In my ~20y in SF, I have seen the exact same issues and
| political divides repeat over and over. There are
| certainly issues which need to be addressed, but the
| constant insistence that there is some short-term
| degeneration _constantly_ leads to the reimplementation
| of solutions that do not work, particularly homeless
| sweeps and policing of nonviolent property crime.
|
| Real solutions take time, commitment, dedication, and
| engagement from and with the community, not just shouting
| at a handful of politicians. That isn't gratifying enough
| for most people, who want to see some overnight
| transformation, which is what leads to homeless people
| being shifted around from block to block based on who
| most loudly demands that seeing the poor on a daily basis
| makes them unsafe.
|
| Further, this strategy prolongs and ingrains people being
| stuck on the street. Having access to the resources that
| help people get off the street, heal from addiction, and
| not be so desperate as to engage in petty property crime
| for survival makes everyone safer, including the folks
| currently living on the street. Being able to establish
| semi-stable communities ("encampments") where they can
| rely on each other to watch _their_ property, often
| including medications, identifying paperwork, treasured
| possessions like family photo albums which keep them
| tethered to reality, is key to seeing them improve.
|
| This is the strategy upon which navigation centers are
| built, and while not perfect, it works for a lot of
| people.
|
| The, "tough on crime, I don't want to see the homeless",
| strategy which has continually failed for _decades_
| actually, counterintuitively to many people - esp
| newcomers' - perception, makes us all less safe. If there
| _has_ been a decline in SF since you've moved here, it is
| almost certainly _because_ of these wasteful, costly, and
| dangerous approaches to public safety and health.
|
| It doesn't matter how many condo towers are built, SF is
| never going to be a gated community. If you want to live
| in a gated community, I suggest you move to one.
| kelnos wrote:
| Thank you for this. I haven't been here as long as you
| have (13 years for me). I do feel like I've seen a
| "decline", especially accelerated during the pandemic. I
| admit that these are just my personal impressions and
| observations, but: increased homelessness (with many more
| with obvious mental-health issues), increased visible
| drug use, increased car break-ins. And I say this as
| someone who was mugged 10 years ago in the Mission,
| without being the victim of any crime since then (well,
| ok, someone broke into my garage and stole a rusty broken
| bicycle a few years ago, but whatever). Emotionally, I
| feel like my experience 10 years ago might give me the
| opposite view, that things have gotten better since then,
| but that's not what I see or feel.
|
| I go back and forth on feelings of safety: I think in
| some ways I do feel less safe now than I did when I moved
| here, but part of that are the differences between my
| attitudes and lifestyle at ages 30 and 40. Logically, my
| risk level is probably much lower now than it was 10
| years ago.
|
| But there's also just general fear, especially when
| walking near someone who is screaming at the moon. Maybe
| that fear isn't entirely rational, but I think the fear
| more comes from _unpredictability_ than anything else. A
| few years ago, my partner was standing on the Folsom
| /Embarcadero Muni platform, with 15 or so other people
| waiting for a train. A mentally-ill person came up onto
| the platform, occasionally ranting, walking past people
| standing there, when he, completely randomly and
| unpredictably, turned to someone waiting and punched him,
| hard, in the face (he doubled over, in pain, bleeding,
| his nose probably broken).
|
| For better or worse, that incident comes to mind most of
| the time whenever I walk past a homeless person who seems
| to have mental health or addiction issues, no matter how
| likely or unlikely it is that they might attack me. Add
| on top of that the fact that police will do essentially
| nothing when an attack occurs, even when they witness it
| happen, and people know this and don't feel like they
| have somewhere to turn if something happens.
|
| Anyhow, I'm rambling a bit, but I think my point is that
| people are afraid because they see a lot of weird,
| potentially dangerous things that don't fit into their
| view of what day-to-day life should be like, and they
| don't know what's going to happen to them in those
| situations. They hear stories -- even of isolated
| incidents -- like mine above, and that scares them.
|
| I completely agree that police sweeps of tent encampments
| are not the answer. But I also think you're putting too
| nice a face on these encampments (not sure why you use
| scare quotes; that is literally what they are). You are
| almost certainly correct in what you see as the good
| aspects of these areas, but they also have significant
| downsides, as breeding grounds for drug use and other
| health issues.
|
| For some out on the street, I truly believe involuntary
| commitment to some kind of mental health or addiction
| treatment center is the only real start to a solution. It
| can't stop there, of course: supportive housing, job
| training and placement, etc. is an absolute necessity.
| Getting someone clean and then throwing them back on the
| street is going to lead them right back where they were.
| But I'm tired of this idea that we're only allowed to
| help people who accept it. Refusing treatment or housing
| should not be an allowed option. "Tough on crime" is not
| the answer, but maybe some form of "tough love" is. I
| know California has a complicated (to put it mildly)
| history with forced mental health treatment, but that
| seems to be trotted out as an excuse to do nothing, and
| that's not ok either. To be clear, there are many who do
| want help, and accept it when offered, to varying degrees
| of success. But the most visible are those who have
| mental health and/or drug addiction issues, and asking or
| offering nicely often does not get us anywhere.
| kelnos wrote:
| "Akshually", pretty much any statistic you can find shows
| that crime is in SF is much lower today than it was in
| the 1980s.
|
| I've lived in SF for 13 years, which I know is not as
| long as many others, but I agree that _quality of life_
| has declined, at least in the time I 've been here. But
| quality of life and crime rates are not the same thing.
| Certainly, increasing crime -- especially violent crime,
| but also property crime -- can decrease quality of life.
| But quality of life can be hurt by things that you can't
| easily qualify as worse crime: increased homelessness and
| drug use, especially when those things are much more
| visible and in-your-face, as they have been here. The
| smell of urine and having to step over human poop is a
| quality-of-life issue, not a crime issue.
|
| And yes, while I assume peeing and pooping on sidewalks
| is at least a misdemeanor, drawing a direct line from
| that to "I'm gonna get assaulted or murdered" is the
| stretchiest of stretches.
|
| But still, I totally get why all this stuff makes people
| feel less safe, even though the city (aside from a few
| neighborhoods that people should avoid, just like in
| nearly every other city in the world) on the whole is
| actually pretty safe, including when compared with
| decades ago.
|
| But let's not conflate quality-of-life issues with crime.
| They are certainly intertwined in many ways, but they are
| not the same thing.
| ryandrake wrote:
| These threads about public pooping and open drug use show
| that a lot of people seem to equate their feelings of
| discomfort with feelings of danger. Just because
| something is upsetting to see doesn't mean it's
| dangerous. I've seen people relieving themselves on the
| sidewalk and have never once thought that they were a
| danger to me or my family. It's gross, but seeing gross
| things never injured anyone.
| kelnos wrote:
| Did you read what I wrote? My entire post was about how
| quality-of-life issues and crime/safety issues are not
| the same thing.
|
| While stepping over poop or smelling urine on the street
| doesn't hurt me, it doesn't exactly make me happy to live
| here either.
|
| (Fortunately I moved out of SoMa and into a nicer
| neighborhood a few years ago, so I don't have to deal
| with sidewalk piss and shit on a daily basis anymore.)
| ryandrake wrote:
| I don't know why this reply, I am totally agreeing with
| you!
| slg wrote:
| I don't live in San Francisco. I can't tell you exactly
| what is going on in the ground, so I don't know who is
| right here.
|
| However, this comment is falling into the exact situation
| that OP was trying to warn about. You are using an
| anecdote to dismiss statistics because the anecdote is a
| powerful emotional narrative that feels true. It is after
| all your own personal experience. However, that
| experience might not be an accurate representation of
| reality. OP warned to keep that in mind. Your response is
| effectively saying "no, my emotional narrative feels true
| so I'm sticking with it."
|
| Maybe you are right and your emotional narrative is true.
| As I said, I don't know. But I'll tell you if one side of
| a debate has statistics and the other side has feelings,
| I think it is smart to side with the side that has
| statistics.
| overrun11 wrote:
| City-wide statistics seem almost entirely meaningless in
| these contexts. Most violent crime is concentrated in
| specific parts of the city where the people who
| participate in these debates never go. A 10% decrease in
| violent crime in the most dangerous part of a city could
| cancel out a 10x increase in the areas where most HN
| people would likely be living in.
| slg wrote:
| I can't tell what point you are trying to make. Are you
| suggesting that while crime overall is down, this new
| situation is actually worse because the victims are now
| likely to have more money than past victims?
| [deleted]
| nradov wrote:
| The problem is that official statistics are worse than
| useless because most victims of minor crimes never file
| police reports. And I don't think you'll find any
| statistics at all on the intensity of odors in public
| transit stations.
| pb7 wrote:
| In that case, statistics in all cities should be equally
| as error prone.
|
| Statistics also don't collect how many annoying people
| are blasting shitty music on subways or how many morons
| are rolling coal in lifted trucks. There are unpleasant
| people everywhere.
| slg wrote:
| >most victims of minor crimes never file police reports
|
| Minor crimes like murder?
| kelnos wrote:
| > _The problem is that official statistics are worse than
| useless because most victims of minor crimes never file
| police reports._
|
| In that case, statistics should still be useful to
| observe trends, if they can't be used to determine
| accurate absolute numbers. We should expect the same
| percentage of people to not report crime when there are
| 1,000 car break-ins per month as when there are 100. Say
| that's 20%; seeing that number change from 200 to 20 is
| still teaches you about how crime rates change.
|
| Besides, we're talking about murder, here, and I would
| suspect that pretty much every murder ends up accounted
| for in the statistics. Contrary to what mafia movies
| would like us to believe, it's not that easy to hide a
| body indefinitely.
|
| > _The problem is that official statistics are worse than
| useless because most victims of minor crimes never file
| police reports._
|
| While urine smells certainly affect quality of life, I'm
| not convinced this particular statistic is all that
| relevant when talking about crime or public safety.
| zdragnar wrote:
| > We should expect the same percentage of people to not
| report crime when there are 1,000 car break-ins per month
| as when there are 100
|
| This ignores changes in police enforcement and
| prosecution of crimes. If there is very little overall
| crime and the police have the time to find the
| perpetrator, and the prosecutor agrees to bring charges,
| you're more likely to report the crime. If there is high
| crime, police are too swamped to deal with yet another
| break-in, and the DA is too busy dropping felonies to
| misdemeanors or not bringing charges at all, then people
| aren't going to bother reporting crime as much anymore.
| ramblenode wrote:
| > You are using an anecdote to dismiss statistics because
| the anecdote is a powerful emotional narrative that feels
| true
|
| Statistics can be useful, not useful, or misleading.
| Nothing about them is inherently meaningful or valuable--
| it depends entirely on the question and process
| generating the data and statistic. GIGO applies.
|
| Despite the meme that an anecdote isn't data, it actually
| is no different from data from the Bayesian point of
| view. It is an n=1 posterior with a prior of one's past
| life experiences. And many anecdotes together can be
| thought of as a multi-level model (if you don't believe
| this, just see what the methodology of many
| behavioral/observational studies looks like--it's
| collating anecdotes into "data"--including the crime
| statistics that you are after).
|
| > the anecdote is a powerful emotional narrative that
| feels true
|
| And researchers can absolutely be emotional! A study
| biased by the emotions and beliefs of a researcher will
| produce biased results. Statistics isn't an escape hatch
| from human bias; it actually compounds whatever bias
| exists in the first place.
| slg wrote:
| Yes, statistics can be misleading and/or biased. Yes,
| multiple anecdotes become data when combined (which is
| even more susceptible to being misleading and/or biased).
| Do you think either of these things are happening in this
| instance? If so, make that argument. I don't think there
| is much value in arguing that anecdotes are generally
| more valuable than statistics because that obviously
| isn't true overall.
| kbelder wrote:
| He is putting more emphasis on his _direct experience_
| than in statistics that are undoubtedly cherry-picked and
| potentially unreliable (by both political extremes). That
| 's not buying into an emotional narrative; that's doing a
| reality check.
| pb7 wrote:
| Aggregated year-over-year statistics are cherrypicked but
| his emotional experience isn't?
|
| Ok, here's my not cherrypicked experience: The issue is
| massively overblown. It's nowhere near as bad as the
| sour-grapes living elsewhere would have you believe.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| It is a kind of reality check, but as an individual you
| just see a very small slice of reality, so generalizing
| from that in space or time is often misleading. And some
| people cite their personal experience as a way of
| shutting down debate, ie 'don't tell me about the data on
| X, I've seen it with my own eyes', and making lengthy
| impassioned speeches to sideline other points of view.
| slg wrote:
| The direct experience of a single person has almost no
| value when assessing a problem as big as crime rates. It
| would be like saying cancer rates are up because two
| people you know got cancer. Direct experience shouldn't
| be given that much weight.
| kelnos wrote:
| Direct experience is colored by emotion. I was mugged in
| the Mission 10 years ago, and it felt shitty, and it took
| several years for me to feel comfortable walking in some
| areas of the city again, especially at night. But my
| _feelings_ were utterly irrelevant to what actual crime
| rates have been in the city since then.
|
| I agree with you that crime stats can be politicized, but
| it's equally sketchy to consider n=1 anecdotes as more
| reliable indicators. Certainly if you yourself experience
| or are the victim of crime at some particular rate and
| intensity, then that's suggestive to you, personally.
| It's entirely logical to make decisions about your own
| life -- like moving to a safer neighborhood, or avoiding
| areas in the city where you've experienced crime -- but
| it's not particularly useful when talking about the city
| as a whole, or in making general recommendations to
| residents on how to be safe.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| It is both, but these are unrelated facts.
| digitaltrees wrote:
| Because one topic, homelessness and its contribution to crime
| is irrelevant to the topic at hand, the tragic murder of a
| person. Yet there was a rush to link them. Why discuss them
| together when doing so implies a causal connection between
| them?
| sshconnection wrote:
| Love how HN loves data driven analysis, except when analyzing
| SF violent crime rates.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| The issue is not that "it can't be both". I personally think
| SF _does_ have a serious crime problem that is not being
| properly addressed.
|
| But all the comments, tweets, etc immediately came out
| blaming SF government and SF's general crime problem
| _specifically_ for Bob Lee 's death. Like they couldn't just
| wait a teeny bit before forming an opinion after more facts
| were known? Especially from the crowd that prides itself on
| "logic" and "data driven" decisions.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| asveikau wrote:
| The nature of the random crime is very different from violent
| crime. People were saying violent crime is the issue, and
| here was the proof, the turning point. All demonstrably
| false.
|
| You point out the falsity and people call you naive and say
| it's the crime stats that are wrong, not their take. Their
| version is reality.
|
| As a San Francisco resident, I don't want us wasting time,
| energy and resources going after the wrong problems.
| uhandHn wrote:
| [flagged]
| klyrs wrote:
| Ironically, when the killer is alleged to be another tech exec
| known to the victim, people here _still_ prefer to talk about
| "crime-ridden SF" instead.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Even the tech bros in SF are violent drug addicted killers
| twelve40 wrote:
| both can be true, crazy, right??
| phone8675309 wrote:
| Not surprising. You're on a forum full of techies and tech
| execs. It's like the people in Hollywood incredulous that
| #metoo movement was a thing because "they didn't know anyone
| like that!" until their coworkers and friends were outed.
|
| Same here - techies shocked, _shocked_ that one of "their
| own" could commit a crime like this. Easier for them to talk
| about crime in general than lay blame at the feet on one of
| "their own".
| nemothekid wrote:
| What was surprising to me is that everyone seemed to move
| in mass that this was some "random stabbing". Random
| murders are exceptionally rare. What bothered me is this
| was another high profile murder of someone involved in
| crypto. There were a dozen murders that fit the bill that
| happened last year, and seemed way more likely.
|
| The guy was stabbed in Rincon Hill. I don't consider that a
| crime ridden area.
| overrun11 wrote:
| Are you suggesting that committing murder and violent crime
| is pervasive among tech executives?
| klyrs wrote:
| Great question! How do tech executives compare to the SF
| general population this year, in murders per 100k?
| areoform wrote:
| In the future, it may be helpful to remember that murder and
| violence -- especially sexual violence -- are oddly intimate
| things, In 2011, in incidents of murder for
| which the relationships of murder victims and offenders were
| known, 54.3 percent were killed by someone they knew
| (acquaintance, neighbor, friend, boyfriend, etc.); 24.8 percent
| of victims were slain by family members. The relationship of
| murder victims and offenders was unknown in 44.1 percent of
| murder and nonnegligent manslaughter incidents in 2011.
|
| https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-...
|
| In short, people were killed by strangers 11.7% of the time.
| For 88.3% of murders (where the relationship between the killer
| and the victim was known), it was someone the victim knew.
|
| The statistics are similar for sexual violence.
|
| For juveniles and children who experience sexual violence, it
| is a family member of acquaintance 93% of the time. This
| percentage drops for adults to ~80%, i.e. in 80% of cases the
| victim will know the perpetrator.
|
| https://www.rainn.org/statistics/perpetrators-sexual-violenc...
|
| These crimes are very different from a mugging or robbery. It
| is easy to imagine why if you replay the situation in your mind
| -- looking someone in the eyes as you stab them, up close takes
| a lot emotionally. It is a very intense situation. Almost
| everyone -- if driven to it -- will steal out of desperation
| and hunger, but very few can look people in the eye, walk up to
| them and stick a knife in them. There is a strong psychological
| aversion to hurting other human beings built into most of us
| and it's what keeps society _mostly_ safe.
| kyleashipley wrote:
| Nit, but I think that 24.8% is a subset of the 54.3%, not
| additive - i.e. "family members" are included in the category
| of "people you know."
|
| (Confirmed with the pie chart in your first link.)
| areoform wrote:
| Great nit! I'll update it to the actual state i.e. only
| 11.7% of people are killed by strangers. 88.3% knew their
| killers in some capacity.
| timcavel wrote:
| [dead]
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > This is a good reminder of how we gravitate towards powerful
| emotional narratives, which in the moment can feel absolutely
| true despite an utter lack of supporting facts on an individual
| murder case.
|
| It seems equally weird to me that so many people are taking
| this anecdote as a sort of proof that San Francisco _does not_
| have a crime problem.
|
| Focusing on individual anecdotes and swinging from one
| conclusion to another is the real problem. The source of this
| unfortunate murder shouldn't dictate your entire view of a
| city's crime problem.
| timmytokyo wrote:
| Every major city has a crime problem and always has. The
| question is whether the situation is being blown out of
| proportion by sensationalist media or people with axes to
| grind. For a group that claims to be so rational, much of the
| HN crowd commenting here does seem to be averse to relying
| upon actual data.
| v0idzer0 wrote:
| Every major (and minor) city has crime. Not a crime
| problem. A crime problem means the rate is too high for the
| population size.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Not every city has the same crime problems. Stealing in
| Tokyo will get you thrown out of the country. Stealing in
| SF is acceptable and will get you praise.
| renlo wrote:
| Anecdotally whenever I hear a SF resident say the "crime
| problem is overblown", they almost always live in the nicer
| areas where there's virtually no crime. I lived on the
| border of the Tenderloin years ago, and saw things that
| I've never seen anywhere else. I knew a guy who was
| murdered in the Polk Gulch, I had my car broken into (and
| rummaged through multiple times after I started leaving the
| door unlocked), I had to physically assert myself with my
| friend to not seem like a target when a man brandishing a
| metal rod was eyeing us suspiciously, I stepped on a used
| hyperdermic needle which pierced my shoe but luckily did
| not prick me ... this is only what comes to mind at the
| moment as a write this, but I'm sure there's more incidents
| I experienced that I could conjure after some reflection.
| Is my experience anecdotal? Sure, but I lived it. Your
| experience with the city has likely been a much better one,
| free from such disturbing experiences. Does that mean I
| didn't experience this though? Or that it is "overblown"?
|
| tldr; I lived in SF but now happily live in New York.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _Anecdotally whenever I hear a SF resident say the "crime
| problem is overblown", they almost always live in the
| nicer areas where there's virtually no crime._
|
| As someone who has lived in moderate-to-high crime areas
| for more of my life than not, most people who express a
| fear of crime are even less willing to listen to data-
| informed analyses supplemented with first hand
| experience, often behaving as if they're worried it might
| be contagious.
|
| _tldr; I lived in SF but now happily live in New York._
|
| It seems like it might be instructive to compare your
| current happiness with the rhetoric of Marjorie Taylor
| Greene who visited recently to show support for Donal
| Trump and followed up with an online tirade about how
| 'repulsive' she found NYC.
| confidantlake wrote:
| Yes I believe all these things, but that would be true in
| any other big city in the US. Try living in the bad areas
| of Saint Louis, Baltimore, New Orleans, Detroit, or
| Cleaveland. When San Francisco has article after article
| saying crime is "out of control" yet no one is writing
| articles about Alabama or Louisiana which objectively
| have higher murder rates, I would say, yes it is
| "overblown".
| JimDabell wrote:
| > Every major city has a crime problem and always has.
|
| This isn't true.
|
| The idea that cities must inherently have crime problems is
| a form of learned helplessness. You think they _must_ have
| crime problems because it's all you've ever experienced.
| Try visiting a city that has low crime, like Singapore or
| Tokyo.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I think you should read the username of the person you're
| replying to.
| rodgerd wrote:
| Ah yes, low-crime Tokyo, where there are definitely no
| problems with organised crime, standover tactics in bars,
| construction companies using thugs to drive people out of
| homes, or a plethora of other well-documented problems.
| bink wrote:
| You're comparing two vastly different cultures. I think
| it's more apt to evaluate crime levels in relation to
| poverty.
| smsm42 wrote:
| So, the lesson here is not to jump to global far-reaching
| conclusion based on one single case, and the reason why it is
| so important is because of this one single case from which we
| can totally make a global far-reaching conclusions...
| dpedu wrote:
| This is a bad take and itself an emotional narrative. For one,
| the person arrested is a suspect and not in any way proven or
| admitted to be the killer. Putting that aside, it's still a bad
| take because you're ignoring the many other incidents that took
| place on the same day, such as the SF Fire Commissioner who was
| beaten with a metal pipe by random drug users outside his
| house.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _the SF Fire Commissioner who was beaten with a metal pipe by
| random drug users outside his house_
|
| Former fire commissioner, not outside his house (actually a
| parent's home), and what makes you so sure it was random? A
| man was arrested for that, who alleges that the victim
| initiated the confrontation by pepper spraying him. I'm quite
| interested in that case as I have relevant personal knowledge
| about people involved, but for that reason I'm reluctant to
| draw any conclusions about it for now.
| kornhole wrote:
| I never believed the original assumption in stories. I am
| skeptical of what I read. Random murders are very rare. He was
| running a crypto company. Crypto space has plenty of shady
| things and people.
| throitallaway wrote:
| > Crypto space has plenty of shady things and people.
|
| Oh the irony of your conjecture here...
| Jackpillar wrote:
| Same. The minute I read he was wandering about at 230am on a
| weekday I knew something was fishy. Despite how much
| reactionary tough-on-crime dorks want you to feel - homeless
| people rarely commit random murders _of non homeless people_.
|
| Then like you said - the minute I found out he was in crypto
| I was 100% convinced he was murdered by someone he knew. Not
| in any conspiracy view like the feds did it because his
| company was "too dangerous" to FedNow or something. But
| because a significant portion of people in crypto are
| unhinged.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| You would think the mass shootings of Asians would have
| taught us a lesson. But we all continue to jump the gun.
|
| I think more generally, people are mob parrots at heart. We
| go with the crowd. If we see a guy killed and someone yells,
| "Crime Wave!!!" Well, then we all start chanting "Crime
| Wave!!!" The average person, even on HN as we saw, can really
| not be trusted to give dispassionate analysis. In the vast
| majority of instances, we just parrot whatever narrative or
| world view we feel most emotionally comfortable with.
|
| I struggle mightily against it and still fall into that
| cesspool of intellectual laziness from time to time. It's
| just human. But you're right. We need to do better.
|
| Much better.
| tootie wrote:
| I got downvoted at the time, but Bob was heavily involved in
| launching Cash app which was exposed a few weeks ago as
| having inflated numbers to investors and been grossly
| negligent in policing their users many of whom were using the
| platform for crime. It's entirely possible that Lee was
| either mixed up with bad actors and/or pissed off some bad
| actors by providing details for the story. Obviously this is
| speculation too but it seems at least as plausible as it
| being truly random.
| Convolutional wrote:
| After the murder, I had to read scores of comments like this (
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35456168 ) about the
| homeless, need for more law enforcement (although the US
| already incarcerates more of its population than any
| industrialized country) etc.
|
| I had to read scores of tech bros in the professional-
| managerial class whinge about the poor, about black lives
| matter and how this was due to "progressivism".
|
| Turns out the suspected murderer is a guy who describes himself
| as an "entrepreneur" on Linkedin and has a Crunchbase listing
| where he is described as being in executive management. Maybe
| we should have law enforcement target entrepreneurs as opposed
| to people made homeless by the enormous wealth disparity on
| display in San Francisco.
| aborsy wrote:
| That doesn't change the facts (some of which stated in the
| post you linked) about the well known problems with homeless
| in SF.
| random314 wrote:
| That also doesn't the change the facts about the well known
| problems with the cold in SF during spring time and the
| very frequent fogs.
| tonymillion wrote:
| "Well known problems" - really? how well known? Unless you
| can provide good sources you are simply showing selection
| bias.
| kelnos wrote:
| I don't think anyone is claiming it does. But what's your
| point, really? It sounds like a conversation that goes like
| this:
|
| "Wow, Lee was likely killed by someone who knew him,
| another tech entrepreneur."
|
| "Yeah, and San Francisco sure has a lot of problems with
| homeless people."
|
| Huh? Discussions about SF's homeless problem are pretty
| irrelevant to the case at hand. And it's really showing of
| people's biases that, when we first heard of Lee's death,
| the evidence-free, go-to narrative was that he _obviously_
| was killed by a random mentally-ill homeless person.
| justizin wrote:
| I saw a reply to a thread on twitter where a woman said to
| one of his friends, something like, "sorry to burst your
| bubble but bob was a champion of 'diversity'" and if that
| isn't saying that quiet part out loud, hoof.
| briantakita wrote:
| I'm personally not into incarcerating mass amounts of people,
| as it only centralizes a prison industrial complex. Rather,
| one glaring issue is dangerous drugs showing up on our
| streets & the conditions that lead to this usage. In the
| comment you linked to, I noted Kensington Ave in
| Philadelphia, where there are videos of many people on hard
| drugs stooped over. Many people, who would otherwise have
| happier lives are now dealing with addiction & living on the
| streets. Note that the reason why drugs are showing up on the
| streets are not random acts of mere petty criminals but
| involve people in domestic government & foreign governments.
| Rick Ross & the crack epidemic detail the history of how
| intelligence agencies create the conditions of mass
| addiction.
|
| While some, including me, think this drug problem is an
| example of the hypocrisy of NeoLiberalism...I also think it's
| a centuries old playbook of wreaking havoc on whole
| populations of people by introducing vices such as drugs. The
| Opium Wars & what lead to the Opium Wars is an example.
|
| Side note, I would like there to be a graph based form of
| communication that can better express the context of
| statements. It's too easy to take a couple of sentences on a
| forum out of context.
| thethethethe wrote:
| > Many people, who would otherwise have happier lives are
| now dealing with addiction & living on the streets.
|
| I don't know about you but I don't know anyone who fell
| into drug use and homelessness who had happy lives. I think
| people who are homeless and or addicted to drugs are
| addicted to drugs because there lives are not good. If you
| improve economic and social conditions for people, drug
| abuse becomes less of a problem because people do not need
| to cope with difficulty in their life in the same way.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| I suspect a lot of our problems are caused by high-
| functioning addicts who are unhappy/dysfunctional and use
| addictions of all kinds to compensate - and who also
| happen to hold positions of real power and influence.
| randomdata wrote:
| [flagged]
| hintymad wrote:
| I can get why people blame the SF politics but I also don't
| get why people blamed the homeless. Both in my experience and
| by statistics, homeless are not particularly aggressive or
| violent. It's unfortunately enough that they became homeless,
| and violent or aggressive people wouldn't stay homeless for
| long.
| misssocrates wrote:
| What percentage are entrepreneurs and what percentage are
| people with mental health problems and or drug addiction?
| shadowgovt wrote:
| What percentage of what?
|
| If you mean "What percentage of crimes are committed by,"
| it's probably the second population. Probably. I'm actually
| pretty weak on that narrative right now.
|
| If you mean "What percentage of the population described is
| committing violent crimes that should result in jail time,"
| I'm even weaker on it. Because the homeless population is
| way, way larger than the tech-entrepreneur population, so
| by percentage of population I think it's a toss-up without
| hard numbers.
|
| It doesn't take many dead executives on a yacht or
| strangled estranged wives to tilt the numbers when the
| population is small.
| Maursault wrote:
| > What percentage are entrepreneurs and what percentage are
| people with mental health problems and or drug addiction?
|
| Not for nothing, the mentally ill and/or drug addicts are
| no more likely to commit violent crime than you, i.e. the
| general population. It's amazing how with every suspect of
| violent crime, the first thing everyone wonders is about
| their mental health. Here's something to consider:
| _everyone_ is mentally ill, and the majority of everyone is
| addicted to something or other. Let 's stop demonizing
| mental illness and drug addiction, which are both medical
| conditions; stop looking for explanations there, and focus
| on one thing: the actual crime, the actual behavior, what
| happened, not what they where thinking and not if they were
| high. And fuck all else, especially the Goddamn bigotry. If
| you want a reason for violent crime, money's usually got
| everything to do with it. Use money as a lens, not personal
| biases. Because in my experience, the greatest individuals
| that have ever lived, that have contributed the most to
| humanity, were severely mentally ill, and the greatest
| artists, that contributed the most and most amazing pieces,
| paintings, music, film, that have survived the test of
| time, were drug addicts.
| digitaltrees wrote:
| Umm. Lots of entrepreneurs have both mental health problems
| and use drugs. Especially use drugs.
| quantified wrote:
| Use the drugs that make you violent or so in need that
| they need to rob to get their next fix? Or the ones that
| make you think a lot and eat lots of tacos?
| mock-possum wrote:
| Nah it's more of a "it's easy to find a stick if you want
| to beat a dog" situation - drugs don't _make_ you do much
| of anything, aside from provide an excuse to do the thing
| you were too scared to do while sober. Drugs are the
| excuse, not the reason.
|
| I'm not a violent guy, and I've never had a drug
| encourage me to act violently. Yes, even 'those' drugs.
|
| I am however a lazy guy, and I've often had drugs
| encourage me to indulge my laziness.
| tedivm wrote:
| Funny how questions like this were completely ignored in
| the previous conversation where people were shitting on the
| homeless, but suddenly are important now that the homeless
| aren't the target anymore.
| throwntoday wrote:
| [flagged]
| shadowgovt wrote:
| The citizens of a city are the citizens, not a drain.
|
| A city that considers its citizens a "drain" has
| optimized for something other than being a city.
| soundsabout wrote:
| The cognitive dissonance here is becoming farcical
| quickly. Careful, people _really_ don 't like it when you
| point it out!
|
| I was really hoping the grandparent was being tongue-in-
| cheek but, the lie-to-myself kind of hope.
| __pache__ wrote:
| I'm confused, what's your point? It's a "win" that this
| killing was by a certain person?
|
| Has nothing to do with shit on the streets, etc. etc.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| No, it's a win that poor people (most of whom are not
| violent criminals) are not being unfairly proxy-blamed
| for _this_ murder any more.
| fghsqwads wrote:
| [flagged]
| tshaddox wrote:
| A reasonable question, but barely relevant to the emotional
| reaction to this specific tragedy, which involved a single
| victim and presumably a single killer and is unlikely to
| have much effect on the overall percentages.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| More than you'd think. You're more likely to be murdered by
| someone you know than a stranger. iirc it's something like
| ~55% chance of someone you know, ~25% chance of a family
| member, ~45% chance of a stranger (which could be anything
| from drug deals gone bad to serial killers).
|
| You can delve into the data but but the format isn't the
| same for every year so it might be some work to normalize:
| https://www.fbi.gov/how-we-can-help-you/more-fbi-services-
| an...
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| Yeah, this is something that frustrates me in every
| discussion about crime. People take a murder rate of X
| per hundred people and use that to argue that you have an
| X% chance of being murdered walking down the street.
| Except that's not true, because like you point out, your
| odds of being murdered by a rando are way lower than the
| murder rate as a whole!
|
| This is exactly why the reactionary push for police in
| response to the murder spike in 2020 and 2021 made no
| sense. The issue wasn't that people were going out and
| murdering more -- it was that _they were locked down in
| their homes with the people most likely to murder them_.
| You can 't fix that by adding more beat cops.
| random314 wrote:
| If you want to get all numerical. Let's say an extremely
| generous 1% of SF population are tech entrepreneurs. 1 out
| of every 12 murders in SF this year was committed by a tech
| entrepreneur.
|
| This would imply that Tech entrepreneurs were 12 times more
| likely to kill you than any other SF local, an astonishing
| 1100% higher murder likelihood than average!
|
| Given that this is a forum frequented by a lot of SF Tech
| entrepreneurs, the FBI should monitor this forum or perhaps
| shut it down all together.
| Retr0id wrote:
| There's a lot of overlap in that venn diagram.
| palijer wrote:
| >After the murder, I had to read scores of comments like
| this[...]
|
| >I had to read scores of tech bros [...]
|
| Did you though? I can't recommend enough cutting out reading
| people's comments that you don't want to read. If other
| people's comments stress you out and make you angry, there
| are typically actions you can take to expose yourself less to
| them.
| ikiris wrote:
| Yeah, ignoring the problem does a lot to make it go away
| _for you_.
|
| It doesn't help to make it stop being a problem though.
| This is basically the definition of privilege.
| dbfx wrote:
| You're not solving anything by reading comments you
| dislike either, what's your point.
| fghsqwads wrote:
| [flagged]
| nerdix wrote:
| Comments on the internet reflect public attitudes and
| public attitudes shape policy.
|
| For people who maybe affected by the resulting policy,
| it's a lot more than just "comments on the internet".
| bryananderson wrote:
| The problem is that these reality-deficient narratives
| spill out into the real world where they have real
| consequences.
|
| For example, the pitchforks came out to recall the "soft
| on crime" DA and replace him with a "tough on crime" one.
| Why didn't that fix anything? And why was the DA ever the
| problem when crime was actually down during his tenure,
| but had simply shifted neighborhoods as a result of covid
| emptying out the previous high-property-crime areas
| (downtown and fisherman's wharf)? People in other
| neighborhoods had every right to be upset that crime
| shifted to their area, but alleged city-wide policy
| changes never made any sense as an explanation for that.
|
| Every time there's a crime panic, a bunch of "no more mr.
| nice guy" politicians throw a few thousand more people in
| prison for minor crimes in this country, which already
| imprisons more people per capita than any other country
| except this very short list of places: El Salvador,
| Rwanda, Turkmenistan, Cuba. Think we can beat them?
| random314 wrote:
| I had my comment on my family's experience of not
| experiencing any crime in the bay area in 10+ years
| downvoted. I was also called a boiling frog.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35451394
|
| Another reply - "I'll have you know, my ivory tower is devoid
| of any riffraff!"
| kyleblarson wrote:
| Two things can be true at the same time: SF has declined
| immensely and the killer in this case was not a criminal
| homeless addict.
| danso wrote:
| People were so quick to assume the nature of the crime even when
| no info about a possible suspect had been publicly released.
| Check the quote tweets to Bob's 2019 tweet about "recognize that
| your black friends face challenges you don't"
|
| https://www.twitter.com/crazybob/status/1181668744247930880/...
| dawatchusay wrote:
| This made my heart sink
| kenjackson wrote:
| The comments on that tweet are sickening. And people will say
| with a straight face that there are no more race problems in
| this country except wokeism.
| geebee wrote:
| Yes, there are a lot of people who will say that. They
| provide a living, walking straw man, and there are enough of
| them that I can't say you're cherry picking. As for the
| tweet, I can't see any reason I'd start reading twitter now,
| I've been long disgusted with the quality of discourse on
| twitter.
|
| But if you decide to dismiss the concerns about the excesses
| of the far left by pointing to racist responses to a tweet
| somewhere, you aren't being honest about a real problem.
|
| I avoid the term "woke", but when James Carville (famous
| democratic strategist) said "wokeness is a problem and
| everyone knows it" (in regards to the far left harming
| mainstream democrats in elections), I'm not sitting around
| scratching my head bewildered as to what he's talking about.
| macNchz wrote:
| Once again thankful to Elon Musk for giving me the push I
| needed to stop logging on to Twitter.
| nolawi89 wrote:
| do you see all the racist replies..
| ipaddr wrote:
| [flagged]
| MPlus88 wrote:
| [dead]
| carrja99 wrote:
| Shit, I wish I hadn't read those. I didn't need that today.
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| I would recommend just never going on Twitter, for any
| reason. People are less racist on 4chan these days.
| dontwearitout wrote:
| The AI research community on twitter is absolutely great,
| that's the only reason I have an account.
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| Come hang with us refugees at sigmoid. :)
|
| https://sigmoid.social/public/local
| IndoorPatio wrote:
| +1
| anigbrowl wrote:
| That's because the 4chan/pol/ crowd are actively pushing
| into Twitter; for all practical purposes it's the biggest
| chan raid of all time, except that it's largely at the
| invitation of Twitter's owner. Once again linking this
| excellent paper on the dynamics of intergroup aggression in
| virtual spaces: https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.03697
| joering2 wrote:
| "Help!" he shouted, according to a local report. "Someone stabbed
| me." [1]
|
| He was in the car with suspect yet he says "someone stabbed me"
| ??
|
| https://www.foxnews.com/us/cash-app-founder-bob-lee-died-ple...
|
| edit: it still doesn't make sense to me. If someone I know stabs
| me and I assume I have few minutes to live and call 911, I would
| say "help, Joe Doe stabbed me". I wouldn't say "someone", because
| that implies a stranger.
| sangnoir wrote:
| Perhaps communicating that they _were_ stabbed was much more
| critical at the time than _who_ stabbed them as it was a
| medical emergency.
| sowbug wrote:
| Your assumption is wrong. He assumed he was going to live, not
| die.
| deanCommie wrote:
| Hes not saying "I would like to report a murder and tell you
| who did it, their full name, and social security number"
|
| He's reporting his status and begging for help. He's thinking
| about survival.
|
| What do you expect to have said in his situation?
| joering2 wrote:
| I was screaming the name of person that shot me, thinking if
| its the last thing I say, at least this son of a bitch will
| spend life in prison for it.
| deanCommie wrote:
| People like you confuse me.
|
| I would be thinking about my family, my legacy.
|
| Not some biblical sense of justice.
| bombcar wrote:
| People writing the name of their murderer in blood on the floor
| is a murder-mystery staple; it is not real life.
|
| In real life you're in shock and what you do is completely
| disconnected from what you think you would do. The "watch
| people die" video collections show that, someone can be
| obviously dying (massive gunshot wounds, etc) and they carry on
| like nothing happened until they fall over dead.
| joering2 wrote:
| I don't think you ever been shot at, had you? I had, and
| being in shock first thing I did when called 911 was shouting
| the name of perpetrator for close to a minute, before I
| realized they already know who may have killed me, and now
| its actually time to tell them what's happening with me.
|
| Again, it doesn't seem normal to say "someone shot me", if
| you know WHO shot you.
| sangnoir wrote:
| Were you shot, or where you shot _at?_
| dbg31415 wrote:
| It did strike me as really odd a 43 year-old man would be out
| walking around at 2:30 AM...
|
| It'll be interesting when more details come out.
|
| All the "SF is going downhill!" stuff that came out... seems
| pretty irrelevant given this wasn't a random act of violence.
| danso wrote:
| The SF-is-a-hellhole narrative is compelling, but the report that
| Lee was not the victim of a random crime shouldn't have been
| surprising. The FBI says 40+% of murders are committed by a
| family member or acquaintance, and 10% by total strangers:
|
| https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-...
| emaginniss wrote:
| That leaves 50% in the unknown category. Who knows whether
| those other 50% have the same distribution as the knowns? It's
| also possible that most of the unknowns are stranger murders
| since the offender might be harder to identify in those cases.
|
| So, the ratio is somewhere between 10% stranger to 90% family
| and acquaintance and 60% stranger to 40% family and
| acquaintance.
| solarpunk wrote:
| I assume gang related violence kinda skews the concept of the
| victims and perpetrators knowing each other.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Indeed. Homicide spreads like a disease among people who
| are in connected social graphs.
| https://www.chicagomag.com/city-life/december-2013/the-
| small...
| dkn775 wrote:
| This is fascinating. I live in Baltimore and follow a lot
| of street connected profiles as sort of an OSINT
| information gathering hobby. I've always seen on
| instagram where said population has RIP in their bios
| sometimes for 6-7 people. Really puts it in perspective
| that in a high homicide rate area, if you're in the
| network, your risk is almost Warzone (or higher) on a per
| capita basis
| w3454 wrote:
| [dead]
| jeffbee wrote:
| The most fascinating thing to me is that the biggest
| indicator that you are going to be murdered is that you
| have been arrested in association with someone else who
| did get murdered. Police can address homicide rates by
| intervening in the lives of these future victims. When
| some low-level neighborhood criminal gets shot, go find
| all that guy's friends and offer them jobs in other
| cities.
| elgenie wrote:
| That makes complete sense to me. Being involved in any
| sort of business where the underlying activity is
| criminal in nature means that contract disputes and even
| competition for market share have to be underwritten by
| violence and the willingness to resort to violence with
| no legal system to turn to for redress.
|
| In the same way that being served with a lawsuit means
| likely to spending some time with lawyers or in court, a
| low-level criminal being shot indicates that his
| coworkers in the enterprise are likely to spend some time
| in shootouts.
| dkn775 wrote:
| They do this in Baltimore, it's called GVRS. They find
| and assign risk scores (related to arrest but also some
| other stuff) and go seek out the person, offer them help
| or threaten to come down hard on them if they commit
| crimes
|
| The pilot had a homicide reduction of 30% iirc but we
| will see over time as it expands to whole city how it
| plays out
| danso wrote:
| Here's a 1977 NYT story [0] during a time in which there were
| many more murders and the stranger-rate nationwide was
| estimated at 20%:
|
| - 1,622 homicides
|
| - 1,246 where (known vs. stranger) relationships were
| established
|
| - 354 of that 1,246 attributed to strangers
|
| Today's clearance rate is lower [1], but it's not really
| apples-to-apples comparison for a lot of reasons relating to
| recordkeeping conventions. But clearance rate for white
| homicide victims in NYC is still around ~85%. The past few
| years, the % of overall victims that were killed by strangers
| is around 5% [2].
|
| So yes, there is still some uncertainty in the exact ratio of
| stranger/friend/unknown suspects. But still not rational to
| automatically assume that Lee was the victim of random crime.
|
| [0] https://www.nytimes.com/1977/04/20/archives/murders-by-
| stran...
|
| [1] https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/crime-without-
| punishmen...
|
| [2] https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/ny-
| stranger-o...
| patcon wrote:
| fwiw, there are two SF-is-a-hellhole narratives, and this turn
| of events reflects differently through the prism of each:
|
| - narrative A (looking "up"): where the upper-class
| technologists are the reason for the social precarity-based
| hellscape experienced by the lower-class residents
|
| - narrative B (looking "down"): where the crime of the lower-
| class is the cause of the fearful crime-based hellscape
| experienced by the upper-class technologists
|
| The reality is probably a little bit of both. But in typing
| this, I'm realizing that I should probably try to avoid
| sensationalizing the topic with references to "hell" (though I
| realize you were using that phrase to dismantle the
| sensationalism, not escalate it)
| dmix wrote:
| Everyone is a victim of this stuff, not just the upper class.
| Poor people getting to work having their car windows smashed
| multiple times is a serious issue. But the constant drumbeat
| of property crime, dirtiness, and leud acts in public it gets
| downplayed because the murder rate is less than it was during
| some prior horrible time in the city's history and people
| feel some need to defend their own city (and the particular
| sort of politics it's famous for).
| threatofrain wrote:
| SF's homicide rate is below the national average.
| billiam wrote:
| A lot of it is about the unique culture of this city, which
| has been both gleaming boomtown and garbage-strewn opium den
| since, oh 1848. It's always been a place where you do your
| own thing on the street and no one bothers you, which is why
| thousands die of overdoses while people walk around them
| without getting their Allbirds dirty. We need to take better
| care of each other.
| [deleted]
| RoyGBivCap wrote:
| It's not SF specific, but nationally violence peaked in the
| early '90s in America:
| https://www.statista.com/graphic/1/191219/reported-violent-c...
|
| IIRC it was at least partly getting lead out of gasoline in the
| '70s: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2017/06/01/new-
| evide...
| seizethecheese wrote:
| Yep. Classic error of not starting with the correct base rate
| when reasoning about an event, but instead going with what was
| most emotionally salient.
| AraceliHarker wrote:
| Wasn't it a common perception among San Francisco residents that
| the security in San Francisco was getting worse, as shown by the
| testimony of Jake Shields, a friend of Bob Lee, who said that his
| girlfriend was attacked by a robber, even though it was a
| coincidence that the one who killed Bob Lee was an acquaintance?
| Besides, didn't Bob Lee himself move to Miami because of the bad
| security in San Francisco?
| sonotathrowaway wrote:
| I wouldn't count on a hardcore maga ideologue to give truthful
| testimony about anything, much less the crime in a liberal
| city.
|
| He's more likely to say this was a coverup by the deep state
| than admit it wasn't a random crime.
| jjulius wrote:
| >Besides, didn't Bob Lee himself move to Miami because of the
| bad security in San Francisco?
|
| No:
|
| >But Krista Lee emphasized that her ex-husband, with whom they
| have two children, loved San Francisco and moved to Florida to
| live with his father after his mom died, not because he was
| scared to live in the city.
|
| https://www.ktvu.com/news/emeryville-man-arrested-in-connect...
| antidaily wrote:
| RIP crazybob. And condolences to his family.
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| Another Vim versus Emacs dispute?
| medellin wrote:
| SF out here trying to cosplay gotham
| sct202 wrote:
| [deleted]
| kranke155 wrote:
| Investigating ?
| h2odragon wrote:
| It does seem a little off that a perpetrator of such a crime
| wouldn't run, either. Either go straight to the police with "it
| was self defense" or get the hell out of the country.
| GravitasFailure wrote:
| Crossing "T"s, dotting the "I"s. For a case this high profile
| it definitely pays to be diligent. It'll be interesting to see
| exactly what the evidence is and how the investigation
| unfolded.
| etc-hosts wrote:
| https://www.linkedin.com/in/nmomeni
| pxeger1 wrote:
| I've never seen a comment on HN _redacted_ before. What does
| this mean?
| dang wrote:
| Mods sometimes put "[redacted]" in a comment when we're
| taking out personally identifiable information, such as
| doxing or when a user asks us to edit out their name or email
| address after the fact.
|
| In this case the GP contained a link to the suspect's
| linkedin page.
|
| Edit: after thinking about it, I think we probably don't need
| to redact. If it were a random person caught up in the story
| it would be different, but once a person has been arrested
| for a crime they arguably become a public figure, even though
| innocent-until-proven-guilty is fortunately a thing.
|
| It's a borderline case and I'm not sure, but anyway have
| restored the original comment for now.
|
| Edit 2: plus the same link appears in the article itself.
| [deleted]
| yardie wrote:
| Watch how fast this falls out of the news cycle because it
| doesn't align with America's view of San Francisco. So far I've
| heard it was: a homeless person, a junkie, mentally ill, violent
| criminal common to San Francisco.
|
| Part of me felt this was personal. A stabbing you have to get
| fairly close. Bob Lee could know his killer. And I don't know him
| well enough to know who he hung out with.
| sharemywin wrote:
| just to be fair "mentally ill" and "in tech" don't have to be
| mutually exclusive.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| I have no evidence beyond gut feel, but I think the tech
| population is probably above average in mental illness.
| Noughmad wrote:
| Above average in _diagnosed and treated_ mental illness.
| You know, the kind that is way less violent than the other
| kind.
| DoughnutHole wrote:
| If you're a techie then you're not mentally ill, you're
| _eccentric_.
| jstarfish wrote:
| I've seen the same euphemism used to pave over outright
| criminality.
|
| Remember: If it smells like fraud, it's just
| _eccentricity_!
| jstarfish wrote:
| Someone on Metafilter(?) once suggested a high overlap
| between IT personnel and libertarians.
|
| It has been interesting to consider but after decades of
| observation I don't think it's a political thing-- I think
| tech attracts a disproportionate number of textbook
| Narcissists.
|
| Those fuckers crave _power._ We have absolute control over
| entire ecosystems. At first it 's freedom for all, but then
| we turn into dictators regarding our governance of it.
|
| In the end it becomes Domain Admin rights for me, principle
| of least privilege for thee.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Writing software is spending all day literally giving
| commands to be obeyed.
|
| I suspect there is a subset of us that really enjoys that
| in a not completely healthy way.
| zapdrive wrote:
| Unless a pic comes out of Momeni (the alleged stabber) dressed
| in drag, then this news will drag out for a long time, pun
| intended.
| [deleted]
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads into ideological flamewar hell.
| It's the opposite of what this site is supposed to be for.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| IndoorPatio wrote:
| Statistically, it was always more likely someone he knew.
| bombcar wrote:
| There were 40k suicides in the USA in 2020, and about 20k
| murders. So statistically, if you die by violence, you killed
| yourself.
| lesuorac wrote:
| Idk about these numbers.
|
| ~38k people died in USA [1] from car crashes. Thats pretty
| violent but doesn't necessarily count as murder or suicide.
|
| [1]: https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/Publicatio
| n/8132....
| ryanwaggoner wrote:
| Car crashes aren't typically included in "violent
| deaths", because the definition of "violence" typically
| includes intent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence
| bombcar wrote:
| I thought about specifying some form of "human induced
| killing" but couldn't figure out how to word-lawyer it to
| be the group consisting of "murder + suicide".
| dkn775 wrote:
| Violent deaths are murder suicide and overdose per CDC
| programs in place at medical examiners
| yardie wrote:
| If you saw last weeks comments you would think it was a
| homeless, drug crazed, criminal. One of the tops comments
| stated, with authority, it was someone homeless. And how the
| cops were not going to do anything about it.
| spacemadness wrote:
| HN really has a solid case of amnesia today regarding this.
| rasengan wrote:
| Did they confirm their relationship? Could he have been an Uber
| driver?
| fortran77 wrote:
| [flagged]
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| I don't mean to politicise this, but I wonder if all the many
| commenters who had preemptively blamed homeless or poor people
| for this would change their mind in the light of this, and call
| for, say, all tech executives to be forcibly housed in a palace
| against their will.
| xwdv wrote:
| No.
|
| The point isn't that homeless kill people, it's that homeless
| and drug addicts create environments where people are more
| likely to be killed, by anyone.
| kevinventullo wrote:
| One tech executive stabs another one to death, and this is
| somehow homeless people's fault?
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| [flagged]
| haswell wrote:
| Setting aside for a moment that this incident did not involve
| homeless people, we need to bring systems thinking to this
| problem, and ask what created the environment of homelessness
| to begin with.
|
| Focusing only on the symptom here is similar to focusing on
| error logs and system crashes as if they are self contained
| phenomena and lamenting the impact they have on operations
| teams.
|
| These issues are signs of upstream problems, and either there
| are poor coding practices somewhere in the org, or
| infrastructure that hasn't been properly scaled/optimized
| (among a myriad of other possible causes).
|
| This community in particular is well positioned to understand
| this broader mindset.
| Fauntleroy wrote:
| Then we'd better start thinking of quick fixes instead of
| dreaming up ways to refactor all of society to fix the
| downstream issue.
| pm_me_your_quan wrote:
| That's clearly not enough. Tech executives are doing too many
| drugs and it's leading to this kind of behavior, it's a
| cultural problem. They need fewer broken families and more time
| spent in church. And these rotten ones they need to be under
| constant watch by strict, controlling wardens.
| whalesalad wrote:
| One of the reasons tech executives are successful is because
| they do drugs and don't go to church.
| actionablefiber wrote:
| Indeed. I mean, once they couldn't get their hands on ZIRP
| anymore the withdrawal symptoms were pretty violent.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Flawless.
|
| Maybe throw in "tech-on-tech crime".
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| If people keep insisting on tabs instead of spaces then
| they'll get what they get.
| sdfghswe wrote:
| The root cause of the issue here is that Bob didn't have a
| gun.
| hyperhello wrote:
| Have you considered that the media has jumped to a framing of
| tech-on-tech crime at the behest of the powerful Big Homeless
| lobby? When was the last time you saw anyone but a homeless
| person sleeping in newspapers.
| frgtpsswrdlame wrote:
| Politicization is a ratchet. The conversation has already been
| politicized, I don't think there's any avoiding it.
|
| Second, the discussion for all intents and purposes isn't even
| about Bob Lee, it's about crime in SF. That's why even when it
| turns out that Bob Lee wasn't killed by a homeless drug addict,
| the conversation is still about the homeless, drug addicts,
| petty crime, etc. I think it's illustrative of how wrong it is
| to use his death this way, even if he had actually been
| murdered by a vagrant, it would still be wrong.
| yinser wrote:
| In a word, no
| cameronfraser wrote:
| no because there isn't a pattern of tech execs doing this
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| First there was Hans Reiser, then there's Zuckerberg killing
| all those prostitutes, and now this.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| How do you know? What's the general rate of murderers, and
| what's the rate of tech exec murderers?
| dangerboysteve wrote:
| This point was also raised in the mission local article from
| the previous HS post.
|
| https://missionlocal.org/2023/04/bob-lee-killing-arrest-made...
| pickledish wrote:
| If you check out the "similar discussion" linked in a sibling
| comment to yours, you'll find quite a lot of talking about that
| topic, if it interests you, for example the current top
| comment:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35555583
| silisili wrote:
| I made that assumption, but kept my mouth shut, because it
| wasn't proven. And until there's released video evidence, an
| admission, or a guilty verdict, I'll do the same here. I think
| the initial people were too quick to blame druggies, and I
| think we'll just as well have people too quick to blame the
| people who blamed the druggies.
|
| Let justice run its course, as they say.
| Fauntleroy wrote:
| The assumptions were incorrect, but the problem is still there.
| Just removes one data point.
|
| I walk around SoMa and it's a common occurence to walk past
| someone (loudly) muttering to themselves that they're going to
| kill or attack someone. It's not a "political" thing anymore,
| the city desperately, desperately needs help.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| I just got back from SF including soma... I don't know who
| these people are that say there isn't an issue.
|
| On "political" thing or not. I have no idea how the people in
| charge of it are going to change it. Is it even rock bottom
| bad yet?
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| > I walk around SoMa and it's a common occurence to walk past
| someone (loudly) muttering to themselves that they're going
| to kill or attack someone.
|
| I'm not saying that they all have a tic disorder or OCD, but
| utterances such as this can be linked to them. Tourette's is
| not all people saying sexually explicit things, sexually
| explicit utterances are only about 10% of Tourette's cases.
| comte7092 wrote:
| It's interesting that you feel the need to say you don't mean
| to politicize this, when the topic is already quite clearly
| political in nature, you're simply addressing a point in an
| ongoing political discussion.
| wootland wrote:
| Why is one tech exec killing another tech exec "political by
| nature"? Seems the definition of personal or business
| related, not political.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| I believe the point is that peoples alternative theories of
| the issue being due to homelessness are the political ones.
| So by calling those people out, the commenter is opening
| themself up to political discussion.
| wootland wrote:
| I don't think there's anything political about saying
| "those people were wrong, I wonder if they'll change
| their views when presented with evidence that they were
| wrong". I also wonder if the people that jumped to
| conclusions will examine why they did that, but that's
| not a political statement.
| comte7092 wrote:
| What do you think politics is exactly?
| wootland wrote:
| Not one executive murdering another executive.
| comte7092 wrote:
| Those are the facts of the case, however what they were
| commenting on was the conversation that arose and has been
| ongoing since the event, which is out of line with the
| facts as we have come to know them. That conversation
| exists and is already political, there is no "making it
| political" at this point.
| y-curious wrote:
| [flagged]
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| Just because a person was arrested doesn't mean that they did
| it. Let's wait for the trial and verdict.
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| As opposed to the status quo before, when we had no suspects,
| yet there were many many comments immediately rushing to
| blame homeless people?
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads into flamewar hell. We ban
| accounts that do that, and have had to ask you more than once
| before.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27723540 (July 2021)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27692859 (June 2021)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20282471 (June 2019)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17352039 (June 2018)
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| It is not "starting a flame war" to point out the masses of
| comments that rushed to draw racist and xenophobic
| conclusions about the killers identity before this
| information was revealed. If you as moderators of HN do not
| moderate such behaviour in the first place, then don't be
| surprised to find that users might take it into their own
| hands.
| jmull wrote:
| > I wonder if all the many commenters who had preemptively
| blamed homeless or poor people for this would change their mind
| in the light of this,
|
| You should understand that San Fransisco has serious problems
| with homelessness and crime. While some people may have been
| mistaken about the root cause in this particular case, that
| doesn't invalidate their very real concerns.
|
| > all tech executives to be forcibly housed in a palace against
| their will
|
| I think sidetracking this with charged political comments and
| silly hypotheticals trivializes a serious issue.
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| >You should understand that San Fransisco has serious
| problems with homelessness and crime. While some people may
| have been mistaken about the root cause in this particular
| case, that doesn't invalidate their very real concerns.
|
| It's true that the perfidious Other did not commit this
| particular crime even though I speculated immediately that
| They did. However, keep in mind that they are still a big
| problem! Me being wrong doesn't mean they're not!
| smsm42 wrote:
| You think you're being clever but you're just unwittingly
| being true. SF problems existed well before the case of Bob
| Lee and will persist - with the help of people like you -
| well after. Whether or not this particular case is part of
| them we'll soon see, but either way the problems are
| absolutely real and obvious to anyone not working very hard
| to not see them.
| BenSahar wrote:
| >You should understand that San Fransisco has serious
| problems with homelessness and crime. While some people may
| have been mistaken about the root cause in this particular
| case, that doesn't invalidate their very real concerns.
|
| I don't doubt they have concerns. I doubt their ability to
| reason.
| smsm42 wrote:
| Using a single case as if it defines whether or not a
| massive systemic problem exists is not "ability to reason".
| It's ability to score gotchas on the internet. It's not the
| same thing.
| say_it_as_it_is wrote:
| Allegedly killed someone, but let's share his identity with
| everyone anyway! Who cares if we're wrong in the end, right? What
| kind of impact could that possibly have?
| dmode wrote:
| Am I the only one who does NOT feel unsafe in SF at all ? I mean,
| I choose not to walk in TL and SOMA at night. But why would
| anyone feel unsafe in North Beach, Marina, Russian Hill,
| Richmond, Sunset, GG park, Lower Haight, Valencia etc. I have
| spent many nights walking in Valencia and took Uber home at 2am.
| Doesn't feel remotely unsafe.
| blue_dragon wrote:
| I wouldn't walk in Valencia late at night. It's not a safe
| area. As evidence, a Twitter employee was shot and killed there
| in 2020; he was caught in the crossfire of a shootout.
|
| > Brousseau was walking home from Dolores Park at 8:22 p.m.
| Friday when 50 to 60 shots were fired at the intersection of
| Rosa Parks Lane and Guerrero Street, according to San Francisco
| police. The gunfire left him critically wounded and caused non-
| life-threatening injuries to an 18-year-old victim
| https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/Twitter-employee-t...
|
| And if you'd rather have the tl;dr version:
| https://www.sfgate.com/news/bayarea/article/22-Year-Old-Suff...
|
| Rosa Parks Lane & Guerrero Street is one block away from
| Valencia Street.
|
| I used to live in the area around the same time. I walked
| Guerrero frequently to go grocery shopping and get to my gym,
| usually between 7:00pm and 10:00pm. That easily could have been
| me. Needless to say I don't live there anymore.
| el_benhameen wrote:
| I don't live in SF, but I live nearby and take my kids there
| for outings pretty frequently. The news reports and anecdotes
| have made me a little wary of these outings, but our actual
| experiences never have. I don't doubt that others have very
| different, equally valid experiences of the city, and I do hate
| to see the abject misery that's on full display in some
| neighborhoods. But I've never felt unsafe there in the 30+
| years I've been exploring the city, including while walking at
| night with little kids.
| dekhn wrote:
| [flagged]
| dmode wrote:
| I take my kids there all the time as well. There are so
| many fun kids things to do - Exploratorium, GG Park, Cal
| Academy, Tunnel Tops park, Presidio, Crissy Field, GG
| bridge, Ocean Beach etc. etc. Stop falling for nonsense
| tropes
| mikysco wrote:
| I grew up in "safe suburbs" and moved here 5 years ago. Saw a
| lot of sad changes with COVID... but in terms of safety, I'm
| 100% with you. On rare occasion, I'll cross a street if an
| individual is behaving particularly weirdly but I've never
| witnessed/experienced a "random act of violence". Broadly
| speaking, SF is safe from violent crime unless you're looking
| for trouble.
|
| I'm sure parents with young children or elderly have a
| different experience but that's not different for any other
| larger US city.
|
| With this said, the topic of the city turning a blind eye to
| property crime and "extreme", visible destitution is a whole
| different story.
| CTmystery wrote:
| My mailman quit because he was robbed at gunpoint two blocks
| from my house, in broad daylight, in one of the neighborhoods
| you mention. https://sfstandard.com/criminal-justice/mail-
| carrier-robbed-...
|
| I don't understand why it has to be "SF is perfectly safe" or
| "SF is a dystopian hellhole". Why not pick a middle ground?
| pb7 wrote:
| Nowhere on the planet is "perfectly safe" so no one is saying
| about that SF. Positive sentiment is probably in the middle
| ground you're asking for, whereas negative sentiment
| literally uses "dystopian hellhole".
| asdfman123 wrote:
| Maybe if you live there.
|
| I'm very comfortable with cities, but as a visitor to SF seeing
| someone break into a vehicle on a busy street, 8 pm on a
| Saturday night is pretty bad.
|
| That sort of crime matters too.
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| I wouldn't walk _alone_ in the TL or SOMA at night, but if you
| skip those neighborhoods entirely after 5pm you 're going to
| miss some of the best bars and venues in the city!
|
| Black Cat, Emperor Norton's, Zombie Village, Bar 888, Tempest,
| the EndUp...Maybe one reason the "SF is a hellhole" crowd are
| so negative about this town are because they shut themselves
| out of so many great places!
| Insanity wrote:
| Depends on what your baseline is though. You are perhaps
| feeling safe because you're used to SF.
| NoImmatureAdHom wrote:
| Yeah, I agree with this. Visiting SF from other American
| cities that have nothing like the scale of its problems...is
| jarring. I'm sure you can get used to it.
|
| Also, we should differentiate between the _feeling_ of
| comfort / safety (which is what most people care about), and
| actual crime statistics (which are themselves fraught, I
| don't think people in SF even report car break-ins these days
| since the police and justice systems don't work any more).
| thethethethe wrote:
| People absolutely report car break ins because they want
| insurance payouts, people just don't expect the police to
| do anything about it.
| zenkat wrote:
| I've lived in SF for almost 30 years. I agree 100%. Sure,
| there's a lot more sad/ugly homelessness in the post-covid era.
| The shantytowns out by Candlestick are depressing. The
| Tenderloin continues to be a mess.
|
| But do I feel less safe? Absolutely not! The neighborhoods
| (where most people live) are just fine. I regularly walk home
| from the bars at midnight without a care. It's simply not a
| problem.
|
| Compare back to the mid-90's, when there was active gun/gang
| violence in the Mission corridor ... quite frankly, I feel far
| safer today than I used to.
| Jackpillar wrote:
| Beautifully put. I've noticed a lot of the barometer (if you
| will) for gauging peoples "feelings" of safety is if you're
| personally scared and/or uncomfortable with just the
| existence of homeless people. I live DTLA - 4 blocks off skid
| row - and I've never felt unsafe. Uncomfortable? Sure
| sometimes. Disheartened by the state of one of the richest
| cities in the world? Absolutely. But unsafe? never.
|
| But if you equate homeless people near me = unsafe, then
| that's a different discussion.
| tinglymintyfrsh wrote:
| Unsafe was 80's-90's Compton crack gang wars with machine
| gun drive-bys.
|
| Unsafe is the current Baltimore or south side of Chicago.
|
| The Tenderloin isn't anything remotely like that. Sure
| there are dealers on the street and people hawking stolen
| goods at the bus stops, but there doesn't seem to be
| violent unsafety.
| j-krieger wrote:
| So you only feel safe because you have the means / are
| affluent enough to avoid crime ridden areas?
|
| That's not entirely fair.
| zenkat wrote:
| Sorry if it came across that way, wasn't my intent.
|
| I live in the city, and travel through all parts --
| including the less desirable parts. I ride down Market
| every day. I go to the central library at Civic Center. I
| do bike loops through Candlestick. I frequent bars in the
| Tenderloin.
|
| So no, it's not just because I can avoid "crime-ridden
| areas". It's because I don't find those areas fundamentally
| unsafe.
| emodendroket wrote:
| It seems to me like a lot of the people claiming to feel
| unsafe are equally affluent.
| lantry wrote:
| Thanks for calling out privilege, but I think we should
| assume good faith. I don't think they were trying to say
| that everything is good, they're just saying the narrative
| isn't as simple as the media is making it look.
| j-krieger wrote:
| Affluence is not always privilege. It can be hard earned.
| ng12 wrote:
| Depends on what media you're reading I suppose. Quite a
| lot of it paints SF is a city of haves and have-nots
| which fits nicely into the above poster's experience.
| soundsabout wrote:
| I've lived in a lot of places with, in many states, in
| many countries, all with different population densities
| and economic diversity... and that statement holds true
| for all of them.
|
| One of these days the sheer weight and remaining shelter
| of class consciousness will break through the cognitive
| dissonance. One of these days.
| confidantlake wrote:
| For real. Avoid tenderloin and SOMA and everything else is
| fine.
| hnav wrote:
| In other words avoid density and transit. Best way to avoid
| bs in one of the densest cities in the US is to hang in the
| burbs.
| confidantlake wrote:
| The tenderloin is a tiny part of the city that is easily
| avoided. Plenty of dense places that are nice too.
| hnav wrote:
| I would disagree. I walk, drive and ride all over SF,
| including TL/SOMA because I'm not too squeamish and it's
| on the way between a lot of pairs of destinations.
|
| I can tell you that if you took these 3 maps and overlaid
| them you'd have an SF sketchiness map.
|
| Flat-land -> easy walking, access for transients
|
| Transit -> access for transients
|
| Zoned for density -> lower civic engagement, more likely
| to end up losing out and getting navigation centers and
| needle exchanges.
|
| https://sites.google.com/site/sloanestopolesson/_/rsrc/14
| 449... https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/i
| mumv8YZu7u... https://uploads-
| ssl.webflow.com/5eaf1365b8d39c82c3777a8b/5eb...
| confidantlake wrote:
| Which part do you disagree with? That it is not the only
| dense area or that it is easily avoided?
|
| Cool maps btw.
| zenlikethat wrote:
| No, you're not the only one. While I don't like the depressing
| level of homelessness, mental illness, and drug addiction, I
| generally haven't felt nearly as unsafe as people always play
| up. If there's a volatile situation around, GTFO, and don't
| walk in dark neighborhoods at night, de-escalate, that kind of
| thing helps a lot of course.
|
| Also, why do we never factor gun violence into these
| conversations about safety? In SF there are relatively few
| people walking around strapped. I looked it up, and in my
| hometown of Louisville, KY (which is no Detroit or Baltimore),
| there were about 130 gun injuries/deaths per 100k in a recent
| year -- in SF, about 30! Which is worse, getting shot, or
| avoiding poop on the sidewalk?
|
| But also, for what it's worth, I'm a reasonably tall white guy.
| I think that affects how many unsafe situations I'm likely to
| encounter A LOT.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > there were about 130 gun injuries/deaths per 100k in a
| recent year -- in SF, about 30! Which is worse, getting shot,
| or avoiding poop on the sidewalk
|
| San Francisco is number 23 for violent crime in the list of
| cities on wikipedia.
|
| Your options are not "get shot in another city Vs avoiding
| poop on the sidewalk in San Francisco", it's "don't get hurt
| or killed in the average city Vs get hurt or killed in San
| Francisco".
|
| You're equivocating "lack of gun crime" to safety, which is
| as incorrect as you can get while still misleading the
| audience
| mlyle wrote:
| > San Francisco is number 23 for violent crime in the list
| of cities on wikipedia.
|
| No. It's number 37. It's number 23 with the default sort,
| which is alphabetical order. (California is early in the
| alphabet).
|
| It's number 66 when you sort by homicides per 100k.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > No. It's number 37. It's number 23 with the default
| sort, which is alphabetical order. (California is early
| in the alphabet).
|
| I checked, you're correct, but my point that it is more
| dangerous than the average city is still correct, even at
| #37.
|
| > It's number 66 when you sort by homicides per 100k.
|
| So? We're talking about safety here, not fatality. When
| people talk about safety, which is what I was responding
| to[1], they literally talking about violence, not "only
| violence that results in death".
|
| I specifically addressed the posters dishonest
| equivocation that in other cities he is likely to be
| shot, while in SF all he has to do is step over poop.
|
| The clear fact is that you're, on average, less safe in
| San Francisco than elsewhere; the gun argument doesn't
| factor into this so using it to show how "safe" SF is, is
| pointless ideology that is both irrelevant and dishonest.
|
| [1] This is verbatim from the post I responded to:
|
| > I generally haven't felt nearly as unsafe as people
| always play up.
| mlyle wrote:
| > So? We're talking about safety here, not fatality.
|
| So? Not all violent crime is equally severe. Being forced
| to hand over your money is not the same as being killed.
|
| > I specifically addressed the posters dishonest
| equivocation that in other cities he is likely to be
| shot,
|
| Your odds of being shot seems to be significantly less in
| SF.
| lelanthran wrote:
| >> while in SF all he has to do is step over poop.while
|
| > Your odds of being shot seems to be significantly less
| in SF.
|
| Irrelevant to _his_ point that all he has to worry about
| in a less-safe-than-average city is to step over poop.
|
| If you're living in a city that has more violent crime
| than average, it's dishonest to claim that all you have
| to worry about is non-violent crime because "guns bad,
| m'kay?"
| mlyle wrote:
| > If you're living in a city that has more violent crime
| than average
|
| It's not really clear to me this is the case. The average
| violent crime rate for the top 25 cities, excluding
| Charlotte (because they don't report most crimes to the
| feds) is 702/100,000; SF's is 715, which is a statistical
| tie. And then, the murder rate is way below the average.
|
| You also need to consider demographics; e.g. a young city
| with an active club scene probably has a higher incidence
| of robberies.
|
| I'd also appreciate you to cut the aggressive language in
| talking about this. If we're talking about fallacies,
| ranking cities in alphabetical order to determine their
| crime rates is not awesome. People in glass houses
| shouldn't throw stones, so perhaps reduce the amount of
| scorn you're piling on other people?
|
| There's plenty to complain about in SF. My considered
| opinion is:
|
| * SF is somewhat safer than the average large US city
| (violent crime rate is comparable; severe crimes are at a
| lower rate)
|
| * Quality of life crime is _really bad_ ; #4 in your list
| of 100 for property crime, at a rate that is a high
| multiple of the average.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| > I checked, you're correct, but my point that it is more
| dangerous than the average city is still correct, even at
| #37.
|
| It's actually probably 41st, but Durham, Toledo,
| Greensboro and Charlotte don't report rape numbers, but
| their murder, and aggravated assault numbers are notably
| higher than SF's, and their burglary numbers are similar.
|
| > The clear fact is that you're, on average, less safe in
| San Francisco than elsewhere;
|
| Among the top 20 cities, SF is basically smack dab in the
| middle in terms of safety, I didn't want to spend the
| time normalizing by crime rate and population (and that
| gives the opportunity to debate what to do with NYC, who
| is both a massive outlier by crime and size), but I think
| a reasonable summary is that SF is about average in terms
| of violence on a city by city basis or resident-by-
| resident basis. And is probably safer than average on a
| resident-by-resident basis if you exclude NYC.
|
| That's a different conclusion than what you're coming to.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > That's a different conclusion than what you're coming
| to.
|
| All I'm doing is contending the OP's claim that he is
| safer in SF _while at the same time_ he is _not_ living
| in a city that is noticeably less violent.
|
| Even if you do the legwork to find that SF has average
| violence, the OP's delusional assertion is _still
| incorrect_ , because he is _not safer_ than the average
| person in the average city.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| You know, when you make a statistical fail, the polite
| thing to do is take the correction in good heart and then
| sit it out for the day, instead of battling through the
| thread and tagging the person you originally disagreed
| with as 'delusional.'
| stonogo wrote:
| Speaking of equivocation, no it isn't. It's number 23 for
| _crime_.
|
| If you sort by total in the violent crime section, it's
| well out of the top fifty.
|
| It's number four in _property_ crime, which is awful, but
| not a measure of safety.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > If you sort by total in the violent crime section, it's
| well out of the top fifty.
|
| As the other poster said, it's #37.
| paulddraper wrote:
| > why do we never factor gun violence into these
| conversations about safety
|
| Because it doesn't particularly matter if you are robbed,
| hurt, or killed by a gun, knife, bat, or fists.
|
| (And when looking at stats, remember: over half of gun deaths
| in the U.S. are self-inflicted. Which is still tragic, but
| different than assault.)
| tjsnyder wrote:
| It does matter as guns are obviously far more deadly than
| the others
| paulddraper wrote:
| Disease is even deadlier.
| NoImmatureAdHom wrote:
| I don't know where you got your gun injuries / death stats,
| but there are two things to be careful of here:
|
| 1) substitution effects. As a hypothetical example, we could
| have one city that has 30 gun murders per 100k and another
| that has 130 per 100k, but both have the same murder rate
| (because you can murder with things other than guns). IMHO
| the important rate is the murder rate, and how much of it is
| with guns vs. other stuff is an aside.
|
| 2) Make sure your numbers don't include suicides. If they
| include suicides, they're not informative.
| mochomocha wrote:
| I've also lived in San Francisco for many years, in different
| neighborhoods. Now with my family including 2 young kids. The
| usual media narrative around SF is also very foreign to me and
| doesn't match my personal experience. Living in SoMa has very
| little in common with living anywhere west of Twin Peaks.
|
| Therefore the need to rely on data to find more objectivity
| when debating public policies. Yes data can be twisted and most
| of the time is poorly reported and interpreted by people, but
| it's better than relying on personal anecdotes.
| acchow wrote:
| I imagine SF feels probably fine coming from another American
| city. But if you moved here from Seoul, it would be terrifying
| kylestlb wrote:
| I'd wager this is the case for most American cities if you
| are coming here from Seoul
| dmode wrote:
| 100% agree with you. Asian cities feel much much safer. But
| there is a lot more context and history behind why it is.
| emodendroket wrote:
| American cities are more violent, yes. But it doesn't make a
| lot of sense to pin that on San Francisco politicians, which
| usually seems to be the endgame with these warnings about how
| dangerous it is.
| pb7 wrote:
| You're probably right. Similarly, the tolerated racism in
| South Korea would also be terrifying to people here.
| gcheong wrote:
| Interestingly, during my one bar night out in Seoul on an
| overnight visit to change visas for Japan, some dude started
| a fight with someone and tried to grab a knife sitting on a
| table while being escorted out. The people around me didn't
| seem particularly horrified by that spectacle though. I lived
| in Tokyo for 6 years, SF feels fine coming from there.
| ng12 wrote:
| Was it in Itaewon?
| bparsons wrote:
| This article contains stats that are pretty shocking and contrary
| to the overwhelming narrative coming out of the SF tech
| community.
|
| https://missionlocal.org/2023/04/bob-lee-killing-arrest-made...
|
| The murder rate in San Francisco is preposterously low.
| JeremyNT wrote:
| SF is safer than many of its peers, but some people seem to
| really want to paint the city as a failure. "Rampant crime" is
| one obvious way to do that. Over time the narrative leaks into
| the broader consciousness.
|
| Chicago deals with the same.
|
| I feel pretty confident that some of this is astroturfing from
| people with political ideologies trying to score points on blue
| states, but it seems to be quite effective however it is
| accomplished. People can be quick to scare, and appeals to
| their sense of personal safety are quite powerful.
| bparsons wrote:
| People are conflating street homelessness with crime. Seeing
| homeless people in their neighborhood makes people feel
| guilty and uncomfortable, so they demand that the police
| remove them from public view.
|
| Because there is no coherent strategy to deal with housing in
| North America, this will continue to get worse. For whatever
| reason, reactionary public opinion is fine spending
| inordinate sums of money on policing, but freaks out when it
| is directed toward public housing, which in the long term is
| a much cheaper solution.
| jb3689 wrote:
| It's pretty incredible to me that the whole community on the last
| thread was fixated on the fact that it must've been the
| homeless/drug addicts. What kind of place is it where you
| immediately dismiss premeditated murder, or even throw it up as
| 50-50?
| zenkat wrote:
| I think that says more about Hacker News than SF. There's a
| level of hate for the city here that I don't understand. Feels
| a bit like a vendetta sometimes.
| whateveracct wrote:
| I wonder how many of the negative comments are by people who
| are actually living or have actually lived in SF? And not,
| say, down in SV.
|
| I wonder the same about Seattle. How many commenters are
| speaking from Redmond or Kirkland or Bellevue etc instead of
| the city?
| golf1052 wrote:
| I'm coming up on 6 years in Seattle. Lived in SLU or Denny
| Triangle (parts some people consider "downtown") the entire
| time. I've learned to just largely ignore the incredibly
| negative comments because my experience and the experience
| of all the people I know who live here are vastly
| different. While the city still has its problems I would
| like for people to approach solving them from a realistic
| point of view.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| I lived in Seattle proper for over two years (2012-2015)
| and it absolutely was awful, at least in many parts of the
| city. Anywhere near Pioneer Square, for example.
| yadaeno wrote:
| It completely depends on where you live in SF. The people in
| the wealthy hyper gentrified areas are baffled that people
| would think the city is unsafe.
|
| Meanwhile people with less income are exposed daily to an
| epidemic of drug addiction, homeless, theft, mental illness,
| all problems with straightforward solutions that the
| residents are screaming for.
|
| Its not one or the other, its both. Just because you live in
| a safe neighborhood does not mean that everyone that doesn't
| isn't being "data driven" or "logical" enough.
| nemothekid wrote:
| What are the unsafe neighborhoods in SF?
| zenkat wrote:
| So the Outer Richmond is a "wealthy hyper-gentrifed
| neighborhood" now? Or the Mission? The Sunset? SOMA?
| Dogpatch?
|
| Sure, I mean if you're able to afford to live in those
| neighborhoods, then you're doing OK. But it's a bit rich to
| call them "hyper-gentrifed".
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Not so. I've mostly lived in a comparatively high crime
| neighborhoods in SF, though I live in Oakland now. I'm
| married to someone who grew up in the Tenderloin. Your
| argument that attitudes are correlated with residential
| wealth rather than experience may accurately capture a
| general trend but it is far from the cast-iron rule you
| suggest.
|
| _straightforward solutions_
|
| Hmm
| anigbrowl wrote:
| A lot of people on HN came to SF from elsewhere for
| money/career reasons, and were upset to discover that the
| city is not an extension of the Moscone Center (ironically
| enough named after a former mayor who was murdered - by one
| of the city supervisors who thought he was too 'woke':
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Moscone).
| thethethethe wrote:
| There is def a vendetta but you see the same things in
| r/sanfrancisco and other places as well so it's not limited
| to HN
| rodgerd wrote:
| A lot of city (and country) subs on reddit are overrun with
| people who don't live in the place commenting on what a
| hell-hole it is. We see this in New Zealand every time
| something gets international attention, and it's very
| obvious given time zones and posting volumes.
| [deleted]
| tthhrroowwaway wrote:
| Not surprising. Hacker news is made up of a lot of people who
| worship billionaires and have a contempt for the poor
| 93po wrote:
| No one had a problem dismissing Seth Rich as a random murder.
| People just believe what fits their narrative.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Nobody ever produced any evidence to the contrary. I've read
| hundreds of blog posts saying he 'must have' been murdered by
| powerful political figures on the basis that powerful figures
| have means, motives, and opportunities that are not available
| to most ordinary folk, and therefore that mere possibility is
| sufficient to be considered a probability. The absence of
| evidence is thrown back as 'proof' of a cover-up.
| ashwagary wrote:
| >It's pretty incredible to me that the whole community on the
| last thread was fixated on the fact that it must've been the
| homeless/drug addicts.
|
| Completely agree, I was downvoted into oblivion last week for
| claiming it was possibly somebody in his circle rather than a
| random stanger. The assumptions made about the inhumanity of
| the homeless/poor is worrying.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35455096
| [deleted]
| nullc wrote:
| One of the first things I said when I heard about this was: "Gee,
| there certainly has been an unexpected number of stabbings around
| mobilecoin. I wonder if this has something to do with the billion
| dollars stolen from FTX by someone seemingly connected with
| mobilecoin." -- but at a glance I'm not seeing a connection with
| the person they arrested. Interesting.
|
| I had family ask me about it, concerned for my welfare, and I
| told them I was confused why _this_ was getting national media
| coverage other violent crimes in SF hadn 't received, and
| mentioned my initial thoughts that it might have been motivate by
| sketchy cryptocurrency crap.
|
| Yet when I saw the popular narrative that it was some random
| stabbing in SF I didn't really have a reason to doubt it: I've
| personally been chased by a crazy person with a knife in the
| city.
| olalonde wrote:
| Which other stabbings are you referring to?
| nullc wrote:
| Ah, apparently it was a strangulation rather than a stabbing!
| I'll refrain from repeating the accused's name here because I
| see now that the charges were dropped -- but it was on HN
| before and left an impression on me: maybe I'm old fashioned
| but I usually expect the number of assaults, attempted
| murders, or murders connected with a project team to be zero.
| olalonde wrote:
| Could you link to the story without naming the accused? I
| find that curious as well.
| graderjs wrote:
| [dead]
| Teever wrote:
| [flagged]
| eclipxe wrote:
| Except the alleged perpetrator doesn't live job SF, so your
| argument falls apart. They're from Emeryville.
| Teever wrote:
| Look all I'm saying is that maybe instead of assuming the
| problems in the streets of SF are caused by degenerate hobos
| that maybe, just maybe, they're caused by degenerate tech
| bros.
|
| Like who has the real power in this situation? the hobos or
| the techbros?
|
| I don't expect hobos to be able to fix their situation, but I
| expect the people with money and resources to be able to. The
| fact that they don't shows that they don't want to.
| astrange wrote:
| Tech bros don't have political power, they're too busy
| working. California political power is held by rich retired
| people, children of upper class families, and landlords.
| clsec wrote:
| >Tech bros don't have political power, they're too busy
| working.
|
| What?!
|
| https://sfstandard.com/politics/tech-families-abundant-
| sf-mi...
| astrange wrote:
| This article is literally about a group that hopes to
| exist but doesn't exist yet?
|
| YIMBY is doing great things at the state level but has
| the support of most statewide voters and unions (except
| for the building trades union.)
| clsec wrote:
| Did you happen to not read the part where the people
| involved have already worked to shape SF politics?
|
| Also, do people get titles (Political Director Abundant
| SF) for entities that don't exist?
| https://www.linkedin.com/in/todd-david-7998473
| 5040 wrote:
| Why not blame the politicians?
| YourDadVPN wrote:
| This seems like a bit of a reach. "Move fast and break things"
| to me means take risks, don't get bogged down in process or do
| the same thing everyone else is doing. I don't see how you get
| from that to stabbing people. Your other quote is nice but it's
| a bit silly to apply it to a literal stabbing.
| vimax wrote:
| When the person stabbed was the CTO of a company just accused
| a week earlier of fraud and facilitating illegal
| transactions, it may not be that silly.
|
| https://hindenburgresearch.com/block/
| volkk wrote:
| i'm not sure what you call the situation where someone just
| says something with 0 basis but wants to sound like they
| are making some kind of critical point. it's akin to
| journalism where they ask a question in the title, and
| because it's a question, they're legally allowed to post it
| even if it's completely incorrect and has a 99% chance that
| the answer is "No"
| hn_20591249 wrote:
| This is extremely unhelpful speculation, Bob Lee had not
| been a part of Square/Block for many years before the
| incident, if this was truly connected to the facilitation
| of money laundering and fraud, why target an ex-CTO of all
| people?
| vimax wrote:
| Thank you, I'll need to look into it more.
|
| The report is about the use of user number fraud and
| illegal transactions to enable key early insiders to cash
| out and leave the company in decline. That said, it looks
| like most of the accusations in the report are after he
| left the company.
| CatWChainsaw wrote:
| _Move fast and break things_ can also mean "undermine
| political systems, enable genocide, and damage the psychology
| of all generations that grow up in the digital era, for
| profit." So it's not as far of a reach to stabbing people as
| you want to believe.
| [deleted]
| graderjs wrote:
| Nah, there's something to this: "move fast and break things"
| sure. Like, the tech bubble hasn't been kind to everyone. There
| is a sort of "bubble up and push everyone else" type of
| unrestrained competitiveness--sort of like (in analogy or
| simile, not hi-fi) the "sociopathic corporate culture" of the
| 80s that Bret Easton Ellis tries to skewer in American Psycho.
|
| Capitalism and corporatism has always been violent, in many
| senses of the word (not just American, consider the various
| colonial "East India" companies). So while that's not new,
| there's something to the idea that particularly effusive
| emanations of corporate splendor or their nexes are coupled to
| physical violence, destruction and moral collapsism pragmas.
| zht wrote:
| do people that work in tech commit murder and violent crime at
| higher rates than the general population?
| spankalee wrote:
| Have you been to the street where this happened? It's not a
| "the streets of SF are the way they are" thing. At all.
| awb wrote:
| Those are two broad classifications.
|
| Any two broad classifications will have some overlap. I don't
| think you've demonstrated that this overlap is any bigger than
| with any other random classification (hair color, height, type
| of car they drive , etc.).
| francisofascii wrote:
| Really? I would have to at least assume that people who have
| committed murders have, on average, a higher propensity for
| risk taking than the average person.
| awb wrote:
| I'd guess higher rates of mental illness, trauma, exposure
| to violence, overwhelming emotional responses,
| impulsiveness and a greater value on short-term instead of
| long-term goals.
|
| I know plenty of business/sports risk takers that have no
| criminal history. I really don't think it's in the top 10
| most important factors.
| SaintSeiya wrote:
| And everyone (especially here) blaming the homeless and mentally
| ill people abandoned by the system. The homeless-phobia of white
| collar individuals is the problem.
| xivzgrev wrote:
| I wondered if the killer knew him. That area of city is not a
| sketchy one, and while random violence can happen anywhere it
| just seemed unlikely, esp given descriptions that he would be
| unlikely to resist a mugging (and provoke an escalation).
|
| Glad they got their man!
| kaycebasques wrote:
| He is not their man yet. Innocent until proven guilty. The word
| "alleged" is important here. In Journalism 101 they teach you
| to be very careful when talking about suspected criminals. You
| don't want to portray someone as guilty until that has been
| proven in court.
| honkycat wrote:
| While true, often they won't arrest you unless they have
| something to charge you with and some amount of evidence.
| clint wrote:
| They literally have video of the dude stabbing him
| azinman2 wrote:
| Where did you see that?
| [deleted]
| graderjs wrote:
| The article says they were driving together in the same car,
| before a dispute ensued, which resulted in Lee being stabbed by
| Momeni.
| eclipxe wrote:
| From the article - they were driving together and Lee got out
| after an argument.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| People don't talk often about it, but there's quite a bit of
| crime (including violent crime) that goes on in the Bay's big-
| money sector. I guess this shouldn't be surprising (power
| corrupts), but it sure does seem like people feel uncomfortable
| talking about how many tech execs end up poisoned by heroin from
| a prostitute or under investigation for a 30-year-old murder or
| dead in a workplace shooting.
| okdood64 wrote:
| > sure does seem like people feel uncomfortable talking about
| how many tech execs end up poisoned by heroin from a prostitute
|
| Source?
| faanghacker wrote:
| https://www.ksbw.com/article/alix-tichelman-indicted-
| for-2nd...
| formvoltron wrote:
| Wow this is crazy. Now I feel like I don't need to know anything
| more. He was an awesome programmer and an awesome guy. I think we
| can just leave it there, no?
| vegancap wrote:
| As if they posted a link to his LinkedIn...
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Further reading:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/13/us/bob-lee-cash-app-killi...
|
| https://www.ktvu.com/news/what-we-know-about-nima-momeni-sus...
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/sarahemerson/2023/04/13/bob-lee...
|
| https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/bob-lee-san-francisco...
|
| https://www.thedailybeast.com/bob-lee-murder-san-francisco-p...
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianbushard/2023/04/13/who-is-...
|
| https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/nima-momeni-san-fr...
|
| https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/crime/nima...
|
| https://abc7news.com/bob-lee-arrest-nima-momeni-cash-app-fou...
|
| https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/arrest-in-bob-le...
|
| https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11969477/San-Franci...
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/apr/13/bob-lee-kill...
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/04/13/bob-lee-m...
|
| https://nytimas.com/nima-momeni-5-quick-facts-you-need-to-kn...
|
| https://fortune.com/2023/04/13/san-francisco-police-reported...
|
| More on Block/Cash App:
|
| https://hindenburgresearch.com/block/
|
| More on MobileCoin:
|
| https://www.wired.com/story/signal-mobilecoin-payments-messa...
|
| https://www.wired.com/story/mobilecoin-cryptocurrency/
| squokko wrote:
| I was suspicious of the "homeless killer" narrative because I
| worked in that neighbhorhood for a long time and there were no
| homeless people anywhere near there. Also, I've walked past many
| of the SF drug-addled homeless and none of them seemed physically
| robust enough to stab anyone other than another drug-addled
| homeless person. (the non-drug homeless around the Haight and
| those areas are completely different and extremely scary
| sometimes)
| Aeroi wrote:
| [flagged]
| sgt wrote:
| Great work Columbo
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _were both gay men_
|
| Bob wasn't gay. (EDIT: Never mind!) A man can have hooked up
| with guys and not be gay as much as a gay man can have hooked
| up with women and not be straight or bi.
|
| More importantly, we don't have any evidence they were lovers.
| dougmwne wrote:
| https://www.gaysonoma.com/2023/04/gay-cash-app-founder-
| bob-l...
|
| Setting aside the label, this does appear to potentially have
| been a crime of passion, which has specific legal
| consequences.
|
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/crime_of_passion
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Oh, didn't know. I never heard him use that label, and
| remember him pushing back on it, but that wasn't super
| recent.
| SilasX wrote:
| You probably should have led with the basis your belief:
| that would have made your original comment useful, even
| if you turned out to be confidently wrong (yet again).
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _probably should have led with the basis your belief_
|
| That I knew him, and that he said as much? Yes.
| SilasX wrote:
| Yes, that is what you should have led with. What's
| confusing you here?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Yes, that is what you should have led with. What 's
| the question?_
|
| No question to you. What I shared was personal and
| irrelevant. It's a bit snotty to turn a dead man into a
| football because you're upset my views on crypto.
| SilasX wrote:
| No. You have a very persistent, easily fixable habit of
| being confidently wrong. I'm suggesting a way to fight
| that habit and make your comments useful, even for those
| cases where you turn out to be wrong. You can benefit
| from that advice, or you can double down. I know what the
| responsible option is.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _even for those cases where you turn out to be wrong_
|
| I'm not going to litigate a dead man's personal life on a
| forum. But I'm not totally sold on that article. There
| are contemporaneous public quotes, too, where Bob
| identified as straight while acknowledging sleeping with
| men. It's not an important issue, so I'm not going to
| fight it. But I will defend saying it, as well as my
| right to not say how I know.
|
| On the crypto thread, I maintain that counterparty risk
| for _e.g._ LedgerX is significant in the event Bitcoin
| zeroes out. You disagree. So do a lot of people
| confidently placing leveraged bets there. This will
| almost certainly require court intervention, so it will
| be interesting to see.
|
| Nevertheless, it was an interesting discussion from which
| I learned. I also appreciate this feedback, even though I
| disagree on speaking unequivocally or being required to
| breach one's privacy to make a low-key point.
| sgt wrote:
| Society doesn't see it that way. I quote Sopranos (I think);
| "If you cut down a hundred trees, you are not a lumberjack.
| But if you suck one dick, you're a cocksucker."
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Society doesn 't see it that way_
|
| I was wrong, he did identify as a gay man. But we're
| talking about biology and identity. What society thinks is
| separate from what is.
| pbj1968 wrote:
| But you fuck one sheep...
| nperrier wrote:
| This seems to me to be the most likely case, but waiting to
| hear facts first. Random homeless person killing seems less
| plausible.
| jzellis wrote:
| When I moved to SF in 1996, the murder count that year was 86.
| Last year it was 56. I haven't been back in a very long time, but
| I guarantee you it's a far safer city than it was back then. I
| lived on Market between 6th and 7th and had knives pulled on me,
| and watched a car get blown up across the street underneath
| Hollywood Billiards, which is long gone now - according to Google
| Maps, they're building new apartments there.
|
| I loved the Tenderloin back then, even though it was terrifying.
| It was full of weirdos and loonies and junkies and poverty
| stricken artsy types like me, who had no power or desire in
| gentrification - we were just poor too. But we embraced where we
| were and didn't try to change it. The loin changed me far more
| than my presence changed it - for the better. It taught me
| compassion and empathy and how to avoid getting knifed by a
| junkie in the alleyway.
|
| Y'all colonized the poorest parts of the city and gave the
| poorest folks nowhere to go, and you still complain when they
| dare to pop up where you are. I hope all that authenticity and
| exposed brick in your offices and apartments are worth it.
| raldi wrote:
| For decades, San Francisco hasn't been building enough new
| units to house even just the children of natives[1], to say
| nothing of those like you and I who were born elsewhere and
| dreamed of moving here.
|
| The people who "gave the poorest folks nowhere to go" were the
| ones who voted to prohibit the construction of anything but
| single-family houses[2] in 76% of the city[3].
|
| [1] https://www.sfdph.org/dph/files/MCHdocs/Epi/Birth-Data-
| Summa...
|
| [2] https://sbuss.substack.com/p/when-did-things-go-wrong-in-
| san....
|
| [3] https://sfzoning.deapthoughts.com/
| ggambetta wrote:
| Out of curiosity, how does one avoid getting knifed by a junkie
| in the alleyway?
| btheshoe wrote:
| I've never felt unsafe in an alleyway in sf. but probably the
| same as any other city - don't be a dumbass, avoid the
| alleyways in shady parts of the city, esp at night.
| tedunangst wrote:
| Don't know the junkie.
| narrator wrote:
| I once was walking in downtown with a lady I was dating and a
| guy who looked homeless and was obviously very high snuck up
| on me and wrapped his arm around mine and started talking to
| me. I did not get scared, I just talked to him like he was my
| best friend. He said, your girlfriend is really pretty, and I
| said, "Yes, she is is!" and I asked whether he was having a
| nice day and wasn't the weather great and made small talk
| about various things. He released his grip on me eventually
| and walked away and my date didn't even realize, until I told
| her what happened later that there was any sort of danger.
| Street people are so used to people being utterly horrified
| of them that if you treat them like they are a normal human
| being, they'll be less likely to want to act violent toward
| you.
| squokko wrote:
| Jesus Christ, why would I want to have to do this to stay
| safe. Consider my approach: moving to a suburb where people
| like that don't come, and if they do, are harassed by
| police until they leave.
| Klonoar wrote:
| Then you live in the suburbs, warts and all.
|
| Give me the risk any day.
| didip wrote:
| This is the street-smart way of handling this type of
| danger. Growing up in a dangerous neighborhood in Jakarta,
| I've used similar tactics many times.
| [deleted]
| olalonde wrote:
| Your approach may have been more cautious but out of
| principle, I probably would have asked him to release his
| grip, followed by shoving him away if necessary.
| Normalizing those kinds of intimidation tactics is not in
| the interest of anyone. If more individuals were to stand
| up for themselves, it's likely that the person in question
| would reconsider employing such tactics.
| nicenewtemp84 wrote:
| I don't want to be contrarian for the sake of it, but the
| fact that by luck the guy physically stalking you and
| immobilizing you happened to back down isn't really
| convincing me of the safety of SF or alleys. If being
| street smart means "try to stay calm when possibly about to
| be stabbed and killed", I think I'll skip that lecture. I'd
| prefer if street smarts included how not to let a drugged
| up guy not get behind you and near you. And how to get out
| of a bear hug by a drugged up guy. Because "hoping he is
| nice" doesn't sound like a plan to me.
| lanstin wrote:
| Being calm and always treating people as humans give you
| a super power of being able to defuse situations and
| achieve tactical supremacy. Anger meets anger. True in
| actually scary east coast cities and true in the noble if
| slightly flawed gem of San Francisco.
|
| But the article here is how this was some conflict
| between friends, so the city doesn't really matter. All
| the fearful people should be reassured by this outcome.
| Manage your domestic life well for good safety outcomes.
| nicenewtemp84 wrote:
| If you've already got a drugged up person with their arms
| around you, I don't think "kind words" will help you
| unless you got lucky and met a kind stranger of ecstacy.
| By pure luck this worked. Most times, when you have a
| druggy grabbing you from the back, it won't go so nicely
| IMO.
| narrator wrote:
| The way things work in "ghetto logic" is a guy from the
| ghetto will kill you for "disrespecting." So instead you
| act friendly, unafraid, and respectful and that's good
| enough for them to want to go mug someone else.
|
| If you want to get a good feel for San Francisco ghetto
| logic, or ghetto logic in general, I recommend the
| excellent, but hard to get a hold of documentary,
| "Straight Outta Hunter's Point" (2003).
| bradlys wrote:
| > Y'all colonized the poorest parts of the city and gave the
| poorest folks nowhere to go
|
| I think part of this is not realizing that a lot of the locals
| (the previous colonizers) are part of the problem. I can
| guarantee that the colonizers would love for more housing to be
| built in SF because they don't want to pay $2m for a 2bd
| townhouse either.
|
| A huge portion of the SF "colonizer" demographic can't even
| fucking vote. They're all on visas.
| dmix wrote:
| People love to invent boogiemen where they dehumaize groups
| of people as uncaring caricatures. It's much easier than
| confronting the hard problems and feels good.
| kragen wrote:
| so how do you avoid getting knifed by a junkie in the alleyway?
| this is important information to me
| carapace wrote:
| I lived in the Tenderloin for a bit after high school.
|
| First and foremost, _avoid alleyways, avoid junkies_. It
| seems like simple advice and it is.
|
| What I learned as a nerdy white kid living in TL was that
| there is a largely non-verbal communication system, a kind of
| _thieves ' cant_ (although, as I mentioned, it's largely non-
| verbal, almost like a sign language but with subtle facial
| expressions and body postures rather than specific signs.
| (Actual gangs do use specific hand signs to recognize each
| other.))
|
| If you "know the score" you can just tell someone, e.g. "Hey,
| don't mug me." using this communication system and they will
| leave you alone. This happened to me. I was walking through
| the 'loin when a dude comes up off the wall and starts to
| fall in behind me. I caught the motion out of the corner of
| my eye, and I gave him the slightest shake of my head, "nah",
| and that was it. He fell back and posted up on the wall
| again, and it was over.
|
| Just being aware of what's going on differentiates you from
| the clueless "mark". That's the main thing: you're part of
| the "in-group". You have heard of "woke"? This level of
| awareness of the nature of life on the street is part of what
| one is _woke to_ , or not, eh? This _cant_ would seem like
| telepathy to an unaware outsider.
|
| So, I was able to tell my would-be mugger that, although I
| look and walk like a clueless tech nerd, I'm actually a
| resident who knows what's up, so please mug someone else?
| And, as neighbors do, he kindly preferred to look for someone
| wandering in from the nicer parts of downtown. A tech worker
| or tourist, eh?
|
| (I saw those interactions too: Three "gentlemen" corner a
| fellow up against a wall, one of them displays an empty 40oz
| bottle, and an agreement of sorts quickly emerges to the
| effect that it would be much preferable for the victim to
| give up his wallet rather than receive the bottle to the
| head. They even gave him his wallet back afterwards. The
| whole thing took thirty seconds.)
|
| There's also an element of _stotting_ involved in what I 'm
| saying, "an honest signal to predators that the stotting
| animal would be difficult to catch" (
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stotting ) Since I "know the
| score" I'm not going to panic or freeze up if this guy tries
| to rob me. There's a way to say with your body language, "I'm
| not going to be easy to rob."
|
| If you don't have that naturally, for whatever reason, there
| is something called "adrenaline re-imprinting" self-defense
| courses. Without going into a long tangent about it, the
| essence is to re-program your adrenaline response to be
| coherent and defensive. If you haven't seen it, it's hard to
| imagine the intensity of a controlled adrenaline response.
| Even small, weak people can be extremely dangerous under the
| influence of adrenaline. _Adrenaline is a hellofa drug._ (I
| mean, in the course I took the instructor at one point has on
| one of those bear-proof suits, and it still seems like he 's
| gonna get hurt. And the other people in my class were small
| women! They were _destroying_ this guy.) Basically, the
| attacker would have to be literally psychotic to continue
| trying to attack someone in the throes of a controlled
| adrenaline response. Trying to approach someone in that
| state... it 's like a _force-field_. There 's something deep
| within you that is like "nope" when confronted with such a
| fury, and the effect gets stronger as you try to approach. It
| literally feels like a _force-field_. I have only had to use
| the training once, Thank God, and it stopped three guys in
| their tracks, literally. They were running up behind me, and
| I stopped and the adrenaline triggered and I spun around and
| did the thing (there 's a posture and you shout "back off!")
| and they stopped in their tracks. I started a conversation
| with them and they were scared of me. As in I made a gesture
| and one of them jumped back a little. Anyway, the thing to
| search for is "adrenaline re-imprinting".
|
| I like you Kragen, I hope it's not too weird to say that, so
| I hope this was helpful or at least interesting. Cheers!
| kragen wrote:
| thank you very much! it was very interesting indeed
| firmnoodle wrote:
| "The loin changed me far more than my presence changed it - for
| the better. It taught me compassion and empathy and how to
| avoid getting knifed by a junkie in the alleyway."
|
| I 100% agree. I lived 5 blocks uphill from the Tenderloin and
| would walk though the loin to go to Bourbon & Branch or while
| coming back from the theater late at night. I learned all three
| of those lessons as well. It was rare that I was scared but I
| was always hyper alert.
| yadaeno wrote:
| How safe you are mostly depends on your gender, size and
| frankly race. If you are a tall male your experience is
| simply not comparable to someone that is less able to fend
| off a physical confrontation.
|
| Its great nothing traumatic happened to you, but I've seen
| how much more of a target for harassment some of my friends
| are and I don't blame them for being afraid.
| vasilipupkin wrote:
| I don't understand this mentality.
|
| https://www.numbeo.com/crime/compare_cities.jsp?country1=Uni...
|
| there is no reason that SF has to be a lot less safe than
| Zurich. Zurich is not populated by aliens, people live in both
| places
|
| It's political choices that make it the way it is.
| Arkhaine_kupo wrote:
| > there is no reason that SF has to be a lot less safe than
| Zurich.
|
| Lack of Nazi gold to prop up a social net, which can later be
| defended tooth and nail with strong anti immigration policies
| while newer streams of illegal money such as mexican cartels
| are adquiered.
|
| Maybe SF does not want money laundering for some of the worst
| people on the planet, to be its identity. But hey I guess the
| rolex watches and chocolate are pretty good.
| vasilipupkin wrote:
| this comment makes no sense, what does Nazi gold have to do
| with safety? San Francisco is just as wealthy as Zurich if
| not more so.
| Arkhaine_kupo wrote:
| > what does Nazi gold have to do with safety?
|
| It provided the original funding for many fo Zurich's
| public services.
|
| > San Francisco is just as wealthy as Zurich
|
| Kinda, but in a very different way. It requieres way more
| people, so it imports way more people. This makes the
| city more dynamic but also makes it harder to do sensible
| long term urban planning for example.
|
| Also many services grew organically and are disfunctional
| such as the healthcare system in the US. That alone could
| fix many of SF problems, related to drug abuse (which is
| a healthcare problem not a crime one), medical related
| poverty and homelessness and mental illeness. With that
| alone, ignoring other solutions you would see a massive
| improvement in QoL in SF.
| vasilipupkin wrote:
| healthcare system in the US is dysfunctional everywhere
| but safety varies quite a bit across the country.
| [deleted]
| wpietri wrote:
| It is political choices, but it's not primarily on a city
| level, or a year-to-year level. The problems in San Francisco
| are generations in the making and often national in cause.
| You might read Loewen's "Sundown Towns" for a good look at a
| key factor to understanding American cities.
|
| The "mentality" here is one appropriate for the person and
| the circumstance. As you say, his neighbors weren't aliens,
| they were people. Compassion and understanding were
| worthwhile efforts. And they remain so.
| vasilipupkin wrote:
| I did not say this mentality is not appropriate for one
| person. And I didn't say that compassion is not a
| worthwhile effort, so I am not sure what you are responding
| to.
| xwkd wrote:
| I agreed with the parent's sentiments initially. But then I
| saw your comment before the edit, where you had called this
| "uneducated loser mentality." I'm sad that you edited it,
| because you're also right.
|
| >I loved the Tenderloin back then, even though it was
| terrifying. It was full of weirdos and loonies and junkies
| and poverty stricken artsy types like me, who had no power or
| desire in gentrification - we were just poor too. But we
| embraced where we were and didn't try to change it. The loin
| changed me far more than my presence changed it - for the
| better. It taught me compassion and empathy and how to avoid
| getting knifed by a junkie in the alleyway.
|
| >But we embraced where we were and didn't try to change it.
|
| Poor is fine. It's a hard life, but it's a state of being.
| Even being artsy and a little crazy; that's great. The rest
| of it though...? Why romanticize this? It's bad. We shouldn't
| romanticize bad. Learn your lessons, but let's want something
| better.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _we shouldn 't romanticize bad_
|
| San Francisco's old guard in a nutshell.
| cmh89 wrote:
| >Poor is fine. It's a hard life, but it's a state of being.
| Even being artsy and a little crazy; that's great. The rest
| of it though...? Why romanticize this? It's bad. We
| shouldn't romanticize bad. Learn your lessons, but let's
| want something better.
|
| The OC has either survivor ship bias or a bad memory. I've
| never lived in SF but I've lived in Portland and work
| adjacent to mental health professionals and the stories
| that they have of people being victimized in the camps and
| shanty towns are tragic.
|
| For everyone who learned to 'not get stabbed' (whatever
| that means), there are people who DO get stabbed, or
| sexually assaulted, or robbed of the little money they had.
| pavlov wrote:
| For the past hundred years or so, a lot of people moved to SF
| because it was nothing like Zurich.
|
| It's not reasonable even for the nouveaux riches of tech to
| expect to flip a city's character in a decade.
| vasilipupkin wrote:
| this comment completely misses the point. I did not suggest
| San Francisco needs to be like Zurich. With respect, I
| think it is idiotic to suggest that the only option for the
| city to be as safe as Zurich is to become literally exactly
| like Zurich.
|
| I also didn't say anything about flipping a city's
| character in a decade. Whether it takes 1 decade, 2, 3 or 4
| -- there is no reason to accept the idea that city just has
| to be unsafe and nothing can be done about it
| [deleted]
| boringuser2 wrote:
| >Y'all colonized the poorest parts of the city and gave the
| poorest folks nowhere to go, and you still complain when they
| dare to pop up where you are. I hope all that authenticity and
| exposed brick in your offices and apartments are worth it.
|
| I'm curious who you think you're referring to when you make a
| statement like this. (Hint: You're probably wrong).
| ipaddr wrote:
| Sounds like someone is trying to put themselves in a category
| and everyone else in another. You were part of a wave of
| colonizers, taking spaces from poorer people. You can't hide
| behind being artsy.. those tend to be the biggest colonizers
| nicenewtemp84 wrote:
| There is a difference in who is getting attacked these days vs
| past. In the past, the crime was more amongst the people taking
| part in obviously dangerous things.
|
| Now it feels more like it can happen to anyone. I spent a few
| years in SF as a child 89-92. Have visited several times a
| year, every year, since 1992. It's definitely the most run
| down, dirty, and unpleasant it has ever been IMO. I have
| luckily never had anything stolen, but I for sure see more
| broken glass and more broken car windows too.
| dehrmann wrote:
| > The loin changed me far more than my presence changed it -
| for the better. It taught me compassion and empathy
|
| I worked in the Warfield building from 2014 to 2017. It wasn't
| deep in the TL, but it still numbed me to things. Crossing
| police tape to get into the office? NBD. Coworkers getting
| assaulted? Happens every few months.
|
| > Y'all colonized the poorest parts of the city and gave the
| poorest folks nowhere to go
|
| If you said something like this about The Mission, I'd agree,
| but the TL wasn't even close to gentrifying. People tried to
| make it happen, but it never got to a point where people
| _wanted_ to be there, and that was only at its periphery.
| JPKab wrote:
| "Y'all colonized the poorest parts of the city and gave the
| poorest folks nowhere to go"
|
| 1.) I grew up in the rural South, and was literally harassed
| for most of my career for saying "y'all" and "folks" but glad
| to see it's trendy to speak that way amongst the exact kind of
| people who used to assume I was ignorant for speaking that way.
|
| 2.) Your statement could just as easily be, on a different day:
| "Y'all abandoned the city for the suburbs and deprived the city
| of a tax base to help the poor." Between "white flight" and
| "colonizer/gentrifier", you're damned if you do and damned if
| you don't. Same applies to livability: If you demand quality of
| life crimes be dealt with to make a city cleaner, you are
| guilty of not "embracing where we were and not trying to change
| it".
|
| Your entire statement to me seems driven by emotion and
| nostalgia without thinking about the fact that there are low
| income children who have to grow up in these places. Maybe
| parents aren't thrilled with having their 10 year olds learn
| the valuable life lessons of "how to not get knifed by a junkie
| in an alleyway".
|
| Sorry, but the whole comment reeks of luxury beliefs. I've
| personally (in DC) been mugged at gunpoint (they threw me onto
| the pavement in the process) and had a random guy jump out of
| his car to assault me because I walked in front of his car in
| heavy traffic (all cars stopped) to cross a street, and he
| viewed it as "disrespecting him".
|
| Real, actual victims of violent crime don't think it's cute or
| have this nostalgia for squalor. Beliefs like that are luxuries
| for certain kinds of people who are insulated from the worst of
| it, one way or another. It's easy for a childless bohemian to
| have no problem with needles in parks, but for those of us
| raising future citizens, it's not fun.
| wpietri wrote:
| > Between "white flight" and "colonizer/gentrifier", you're
| damned if you do and damned if you don't.
|
| So you think that "flee the black people" and "drive the
| black people out" are the only two options here? There are
| more things, Horatio.
| ToDougie wrote:
| Such as...?
| pnathan wrote:
| One major aspect I want to touch on that bother me in the
| perspective you criticize.
|
| Poverty and crime are not married.
|
| My wife and I both grew up poor and working class. Living in
| trailers are in our life stories. You can be dog poor and
| still not be a junkie, still not mug others, still not
| assault people. This was understood widely in our upbringing
| and those we dealt with. People _did_ misbehave, but it was
| not "just what happens".
|
| Presumption that poor areas must mean getting to deal with
| junkies, means dealing with violence, well, that is a morally
| bankrupt view. People don't have to do that. That is their
| choice. Improvement is possible.
| brookst wrote:
| > Presumption that poor areas must mean getting to deal
| with junkies, means dealing with violence, well, that is a
| morally bankrupt view.
|
| Very disagree. It is not immoral or prejudicial to note the
| simple reality that, in aggregate, poverty and crime are
| correlated[0], and in part because poverty creates
| conditions where crime is more likely[1].
|
| That doesn't mean that any particular person is doomed to
| crime because they're poor, or can't improve. Of course
| they can, and of course nobody should assume that a
| particular person is a criminal based on membership in a
| socioeconomic class (or any other class).
|
| But it's just true that poverty and crime are correlated.
| There are confounding factors (police are more likely to
| arrest a poor person, and more likely to merely warn a rich
| person), but nothing suggests that crime is merely equally
| prevalent among poor and non-poor _populations_.
|
| I applaud the compassion, and I agree that individuals bear
| the moral weight of doing the right thing, but let's not
| deny facts in service of those principles.
|
| 0. https://academic.oup.com/edited-
| volume/28019/chapter/2118222... 1.
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-80897-8
| Arkhaine_kupo wrote:
| > Poverty and crime are not married.
|
| They 100% are.
|
| The plural of anecdote is not data. Your story is nice, but
| the reality is poverty is heavily correlated with crime.
| And social nets address both at once.
|
| letting poor people suffer because some poor people can
| improve their station in life through luck, hard work and a
| number of other extrenous factors is unethical.
| vasilipupkin wrote:
| this is really not true. Poverty is correlated with
| crime, but the magnitude of this correlation is quite
| small. Portugal is very safe and very poor compared to
| most of the US
| Arkhaine_kupo wrote:
| > Portugal is very safe and very poor compared to most of
| the US
|
| Portugal has lower gdp than the US but it isn't poor
| internally. People spend less % on housing food etc than
| in the US.
|
| Also having no guns means a lot of crime is less violent,
| not that there is less of it.
| vasilipupkin wrote:
| what does it mean "not poor internally"? I've been to
| Portugal, compared to US it's just poor. Source for
| "spend less % on housing, food" ? very much doubt this.
| Poor in the US get food stamps, etc.
| Pils wrote:
| > _It 's easy for a childless bohemian to have no problem
| with needles in parks, but for those of us raising future
| citizens, it's not fun._
|
| > _Your entire statement to me seems driven by emotion_
|
| > _Sorry, but the whole comment reeks of luxury beliefs._
|
| C'mon man. You don't know the person you are responding to
| and included multiple personal attacks in your response.
| There's a way to make your argument without making the person
| you are responding to your own personal hate-object.
| magicalist wrote:
| > _Your statement could just as easily be, on a different
| day: "Y'all abandoned the city for the suburbs and deprived
| the city of a tax base to help the poor."_
|
| That's a different situation from this one, so, sure, if
| that's something that happened and then you're complaining
| about the place you don't live anymore, sure, that's also a
| statement that could be made.
|
| > _Between "white flight" and "colonizer/gentrifier", you're
| damned if you do and damned if you don't_
|
| Not surprisingly, those aren't the only two options.
|
| > _Real, actual victims of violent crime don 't think it's
| cute or have this nostalgia for squalor_
|
| I think you're confused if you think the GP's comment "It
| taught me compassion and empathy and how to avoid getting
| knifed by a junkie in the alleyway" was nostalgic for the
| getting knifed part.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| > > Between "white flight" and "colonizer/gentrifier",
| you're damned if you do and damned if you don't
|
| > Not surprisingly, those aren't the only two options.
|
| "white flight" == moving out of the area
|
| "colonizer/gentrifier" == moving in to the area
|
| The only remaining option is to never move.
| [deleted]
| ipaddr wrote:
| The other option is to accept you have been deemed evil
| by mainstream media and ignore them and judge people who
| listen to them the problem
| magicalist wrote:
| Neighborhoods always change but if SF were to actually
| build housing then people could have a place where they
| could still live.
| clsec wrote:
| Don't agree.
|
| white flight = moving out of city because of fear, cost,
| crappy schools, etc. is flight. A white person moving to
| the boondocks because they want to homestead or live off
| grid is not "flight".
|
| gentrifier = higher income person/family moving into a
| city or _neighborhood,_ raising the housing costs by
| doing so, causing the long time residents to leave
| because of said costs and changing the culture of said
| area because the old families don 't live there anymore.
| taeric wrote:
| I also grew up in the south. Interestingly, I always got more
| harassment for that sort of phrasing from other southerners.
| Most folks just don't give a shit, oddly. And those that do
| are often holding themselves back by trying to hold down
| others.
|
| Sadly, I think there is enough evidence that the game plan is
| to build classes of people that are constantly holding each
| other down. That is literally the point. :(
| simplotek wrote:
| > Y'all colonized the poorest parts of the city and gave the
| poorest folks nowhere to go, and you still complain when they
| dare to pop up where you are.
|
| What leads you to conflate poverty with criminal activity, and
| proceed to victim-blame those who dare complain about criminal
| activity?
| trollerator23 wrote:
| Oh please. I'm sure they are totally unrelated.
| [deleted]
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Equating poor people with criminals is indeed quite
| discriminatory. It's ironic to see that used in a statement
| from someone who believes themselves to be taking the moral
| high ground.
| TheKarateKid wrote:
| The equation he made isn't wrong, but it contradicts the
| fact that OP is criticizing people who agree with what they
| said themselves.
|
| Data clearly shows a correlation between crime levels and
| average income in an area. Are we not mostly engineers used
| to working with data here? In fact, needing to "survive" is
| a common excuse used to justify the crimes committed in
| impoverished areas. Note that I said correlation, not
| causation. If someone has data that says otherwise, please
| provide it because I would be genuinely intrigued.
| simplotek wrote:
| > Data clearly shows a correlation between crime levels
| and average income in an area.
|
| Isn't "correlation does not imply causality" already a
| household expression? If we are engineers why are we
| insisting in specious reasoning?
| [deleted]
| nostromo wrote:
| Your comment borders on defending violent crime and murder. As
| if stabbings are part of San Francisco's quirky, artsy past,
| and the people that live here should think of violent crime as
| character-building.
| zamnos wrote:
| I mean, if you want to go that route, the SFist has you
| covered, with this article on "The 10 Most Infamous San
| Francisco Murders Of The 20th Century"
|
| https://sfist.com/2017/02/28/the_10_most_infamous_san_franci.
| ..
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads into ideological flamewar hell.
| Your comment was great until the last paragraph, which swerved
| dramatically for the worse and basically drove the subthread
| off a cliff.
|
| Comments demonizing other people and/or other groups of people
| are the scourge of internet forums. If you make it "y'all",
| that's worse yet, as now the demonized group gets to select
| itself and feel personally attacked.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| tga_d wrote:
| I can't help but wonder why it's prudent to sweep in for a
| comment like that, but not any of the comments that have been
| associating homelessness with murder rates on an article
| apparently about a dispute between two tech workers. It's
| almost like the guidelines are catered not towards high-
| quality discussion so much as an aesthetic of high-quality
| discussion by protecting the emotions of a specific class of
| people who would get offended by that comment. Or should I be
| flagging comments that euphemistically mention the "homeless
| problem"?
| confidantlake wrote:
| The last thread was full of people advocating a violent
| police response to the homeless and this is the comment you
| choose to take a stand over?
| marco_yolo wrote:
| pretty sure the mentally ill and "poorest folks",as you say,
| have "colonized" every part of the city. this logic is a two
| way street.
| mort96 wrote:
| You're saying mentally ill and poor people have been moving
| from somewhere else in to SF in large numbers? Where do you
| get that idea from?
| bobobob420 wrote:
| " Y'all colonized the poorest parts of the city and gave the
| poorest folks nowhere to go, and you still complain when they
| dare to pop up where you are."
|
| Nope. One of the wealthiest cities in the world fails to look
| after its inhabitants. A failure of government
| JieJie wrote:
| Y'all could both be a little bit right on this, you know.
| criddell wrote:
| I think you're saying the same thing with different words.
|
| The government isn't some distant third party. It's people
| from the community who are elected by their neighbors to run
| things in a certain way.
| platinumrad wrote:
| People who moved to SF in 96 like GP are much more
| politically influential than the "colonizers" who arrived
| more recently. And yes, someone who arrived in the late 90s
| calling other people "colonizers" is hilarious.
| hinkley wrote:
| Especially local government. It's literally downtown.
| geebee wrote:
| I think you're using the term "inhabitants" loosely here. The
| US doesn't have much of a social safety net, which means that
| any city that attempts to build one may suddenly find that
| "its inhabitants" include the 330 million people living in
| other parts of the country who need help. Or who would just
| like some money and an opportunity to do meth and fentanyl
| and shoplift and commit property crime in a place with very
| little law enforcement. I personally would include that in
| the definition of "needing help." Any version of "help" that
| will help in SF will have to be coercive, which is another
| thing SF's political culture is having tremendous difficulty
| accepting.
|
| But really, if you took Stockholm out of Sweden and plunked
| it down into the middle of the US, how long do you think the
| social safety net would last before it went bankrupt? And
| this is assuming you retain the european willingness to be
| coercive about mandatory rehab and confinement (something US
| based progressives are reluctant to note is a feature of the
| european social safety programs they otherwise praise).
| jjulius wrote:
| >Y'all colonized the poorest parts of the city and gave the
| poorest folks nowhere to go...
|
| >One of the wealthiest cities in the world fails to look
| after its inhabitants...
|
| These are the same thing.
| PaulWaldman wrote:
| It sounds like this information wasn't released publicly by the
| local authorities.
|
| The article has a link to a LinkedIn profile. The writer
| indicates that the name and city of the LI profile matches the
| information on the person they were "told" was arrested this
| morning. Even the name of the company of the person indicated is
| explicitly referenced in the article.
|
| My professional world doesn't allow for ambiguity. As a
| journalist, how sure do you need to be about the accuracy of this
| information before going public?
| magicmicah85 wrote:
| Generally a source isn't somebody you don't know, a journalist
| should know who the source is, their relationship to the
| subject and have developed some type of trust with them.
| Without that trust, a journalist opens themselves up to libel
| if it turns out this person was not the person arrested.
| avrionov wrote:
| Here is another report:
| https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/articleComments/bob-lee-san-f...
| inconceivable wrote:
| > _As a journalist, how sure do you need to be about the
| accuracy of this information before going public?_
|
| you're living in the past, my friend. no such professional
| standard exists today.
| chaps wrote:
| You'd be surprised what information is released to the public.
| I'd be willing to bet that the reporter has access to dispatch
| logs from over-the-air radio [1] and cross-references that with
| incident reports at [2] and then does a lookup on [3]. Entirely
| speculation, but it's not implausible.
|
| [1] https://somafm.com/scanner/ [2]
| https://data.sfgov.org/Public-Safety/Police-Department-Incid...
| [3] https://www.sfsheriff.com/find-person-jail
| PaulWaldman wrote:
| Absolutely, there are many data sources available so piece
| some of this together.
|
| What I find interesting is indicating a LinkedIn profile,
| unless of course this reporter has access to investigation
| documents that also identify the LinkedIn profile.
|
| It could very well be a different person with the same name
| in the same town. Why take the risk? Just so you can have the
| juicy headline "alleged killer also worked in tech."
| chaps wrote:
| Yeah, that was a bit much.
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| Dispatch radio is encrypted, as is made clear in your own
| link.
| chaps wrote:
| Some, but not all of it as per my own link ;)
|
| Definitely has dispatch audio on:
| https://somafm.com/player/#/now-playing/scanner
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Some is, some is not.
| [deleted]
| rising-sky wrote:
| > San Francisco is home to much in the way of visible public
| misery, unnerving street behavior and overt drug-use. Its
| property crime rate has long been high, and the police clearance
| rate for property crimes has long been minimal. But the city's
| violent crime rate is at a near-historic low and is lower than
| that in most mid-to-large-sized cities.
| xwdv wrote:
| [flagged]
| dietsprite wrote:
| This reply is either a troll post or you're severely
| disconnected from reality.
| xwdv wrote:
| Ah yea you're right. San Francisco is actually a wonderful
| place to raise a family and live a good life where nothing
| bad happens.
| jjulius wrote:
| Do you live in San Francisco?
| dang wrote:
| You've been breaking the site guidelines by posting
| flamebait and/or unsubstantive comments repeatedly. We've
| warned you before not to do this. If you keep it up, we're
| going to have to ban you, so could you please review
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick
| to the rules from now on? We'd appreciate it.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34632592 (Feb 2023)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27160890 (May 2021)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26767586 (April 2021)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23506140 (June 2020)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22362031 (Feb 2020)
| jjulius wrote:
| >The fact is if he wasn't in San Francisco, he wouldn't have
| been killed.
|
| He knew the alleged assailant. There's nothing precluding them
| from getting into the same exact argument, with the same exact
| outcome, in any other locale.
| kashunstva wrote:
| > The fact is if he wasn't in San Francisco, he wouldn't have
| been killed.
|
| Does this hypothesis apply only to Bob Lee or to anyone?
| Because if it applies to any human, then it's so readily
| falsifiable that I'm surprised anyone would propose it.
| dmode wrote:
| There have been only 12 murders this year in SF and none of
| them have been random. And you are literally commenting on an
| article where the murderer was apprehended within days. And
| SFPD has over 60% clearance rate on homicides. So your facts
| and conclusion are so hilariously wrong I would ashamed to hang
| out on these boards after this.
| djdudbdbbdbd wrote:
| [flagged]
| nova22033 wrote:
| Both things can be true.
|
| Bob Lee's murder wasn't a random crime. Crime is out of control
| in SF
| praveen9920 wrote:
| [flagged]
| graderjs wrote:
| Well, not _right now_ as the police just arrested them.
| [deleted]
| johnea wrote:
| Yep, just more proof that San Fransisco is overrun with the
| criminal wealthy...
| DueDilligence wrote:
| [dead]
| drewcoo wrote:
| I was really betting that HN comments would all be Mission
| homeless complaining about how dangerous the city is with all of
| those ultraviolent tech bros in it.
|
| Terrible prediction. This is why I never gamble.
| curo wrote:
| Is the "Expand IT, Inc" on the LinkedIn profile the only evidence
| that the "alleged killer also works in tech and is a man Lee
| purportedly knew."
|
| There's comments is this thread of amazing journalism but the LLC
| shows as inactive on the Division of CA website (entity
| 201008110204) and the Expand IT website itself is dead. For all
| we know, this is a Lyft or Uber driver. Unless I'm missing some
| SFPD statement known to the journalist?
|
| _EDIT_ : got an old filling; see njstraub608's comment. My
| mistake
| kayge wrote:
| The website is possibly down from all the other amateur
| internet sleuth traffic out there -- there are fairly recent
| snapshots on the Internet Archive.
| [deleted]
| rhaway84773 wrote:
| It's pretty obviously not. The answers are in the article. The
| police claims they were driving together. You don't usually
| drive together with someone you don't know late at night.
| v0idzer0 wrote:
| I mean Uber?
| sbelskie wrote:
| Reading the article is always an option.
|
| > Rather, Lee and Momeni were portrayed by police as being
| familiar with one another. In the wee hours of April 4,
| they were purportedly driving together through downtown San
| Francisco in a car registered to the suspect.
| ryanwaggoner wrote:
| Two quick things:
|
| First, you apparently missed this paragraph:
|
| _Rather, Lee and Momeni were portrayed by police as being
| familiar with one another. In the wee hours of April 4, they
| were purportedly driving together through downtown San
| Francisco in a car registered to the suspect._
|
| Doesn't sound to me like the reporter is just speculating based
| on the LinkedIn profile.
|
| Secondly, I'm pretty sure you have the wrong filing. The
| LinkedIn profile says "Inc", not "LLC", so I think it's
| probably file #4776106, which is still active, _and_ registered
| with an address in Emeryville, which is where police were
| headed to arrest Momeni.
| curo wrote:
| I was going off the 2010 date but you could be right. I
| didn't mean to jump to conclusions; just seems like I'm
| missing some details that leads to the author's convictions.
| Probably I'm missing the police portrayals mentioned in the
| article.
| dkn775 wrote:
| The 911 call data was for an address, he likely linked said
| address to tax data to get the property owner then did
| LinkedIn search. Additionally could have used arrest data.
| 911 and arrest in my city don't have names but by linkage
| via methods named it's possible.
|
| At most he used a radius for the 911 call to check possible
| names, and had a contact at SFPD or the courts to confirm
| once he had a name.
| njstraub608 wrote:
| The LLC isn't inactive, you just found the wrong one. EXPAND IT
| INC (4776106) is registered to the proper address. Guessing the
| website is down from traffic.
| curo wrote:
| Good find. My mistake
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Doing a little research myself shows that he was test savey
| enough to know to get privacy on his, expired, website, was
| endorsed on LinkedIn for Cloud Computing, Virtualization by
| other Tech CEOs and Staff Architects, gave recommendations on
| LinkedIn for architects (including one at AWS) who display
| those recommendations on LI and say that they were clients of
| his, at one point was hiring for hiring for front end
| engineers, was keeping up to date on OS updates as far back as
| windows 8/9, and he clearly knows the lingo of IT.
|
| Could it be an uber driver or lyft driver? Sure. But it seems
| like someone who has run a consulting business for many years
| in the tech space.
| curiousbean wrote:
| First off-- Nima is a person of interest. It doesn't mean he's
| guilty of anything. Even if they were in a car together, argued
| and Bob left the car and walked it doesn't mean Nima killed the
| man.
|
| I assume (and hope) the police have more solid evidence like a
| fingerprint on that knife or Nima's own blood/DNA at the scene or
| on the knife as is common with stabbings.
| rafram wrote:
| He is in SF county jail, booked on suspicion of murder:
| https://www.sfsheriff.com/find-person-jail
|
| You cease to be "a person of interest" and become the suspect
| right about when the cops drive across the Bay Bridge to pick
| you up and bring you to jail.
| yellow_lead wrote:
| Person of interest? There is a difference between that and
| having a warrant out. He is wanted for arrest - he's the
| alleged killer, not just a POI.
|
| > We are told that police today were dispatched to Emeryville
| with a warrant to arrest a man named Nima Momeni.
| jmacd wrote:
| I have a family member who is a police officer (investigator) in
| another country. I was telling them about this killing and how
| crazy things seemed in San Francisco during my last visit.
|
| His first and only response was "well, how do you know that's
| even related? Most people get killed by somebody they know." and
| I was like "well, yeah, but San Francisco is bad right now" and
| the conversation moved on.
| azinman2 wrote:
| It's unclear from your anecdote if you either learned anything
| or came back to the conversation saying your family member's
| hunch was right.
| orsenthil wrote:
| The implication here seems 'an expert' had a right intuition
| and disputed a widely believed initial claim.
| azinman2 wrote:
| Would have been helpful to be explicit here about it, as it
| otherwise just seems to end.
| jmacd wrote:
| I guess I left it that way because I was relating how it
| felt at the time.
|
| I mostly thought he was just... wrong. In retrospect it's
| interesting that his intuition was completely different
| than mine (and a lot of ours here).
| ChadNYC wrote:
| His intuition is supported by sober experience and
| understanding of the data. Equating that to your
| intuition is exactly why so many folks here(and on
| twitter) got this wrong.
| azinman2 wrote:
| What's meaningful is how what feels like wide spread
| petty theft gives a real sense of lawlessness to the
| point where something like this feels inevitable. MANY of
| us assumed the worst, which is a sad state of affairs. I
| guess it's good that it wasn't seemingly random (although
| obviously horrific it happened at all), but I hope there
| is pressure on the city to clean up the other bits.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Bear in mind that there are people who dedicate their
| efforts toward making others feel that way, for fun and
| profit. There is a whole industry of 'crime porn'
| dedicated to telling people what they want to hear.
|
| https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/cocaine-buffets-and-meth-
| poo...
| smoldesu wrote:
| > but I hope there is pressure on the city to clean up
| the other bits.
|
| Enough to displace the lobbying pressure imposed by the
| affluent side of it's population? I wouldn't hold my
| breath...
| asdff wrote:
| Mosts stats are like this when you start understanding
| the nuance. For example, the bike fatality rate. Its 36
| people on average a year for LA county. You can't draw
| anything meaningful from that data at all. The county is
| 10 million people. What is even the variance year to
| year? It could be like the bulk of that number. That's
| just considering the statistics of the number and how
| rare these sort of incidents really are.
|
| Now consider yourself versus the average bike rider you
| see. Are they wearing a helmet? Following traffic rules?
| Using lights? Taking the entire lane? Signalling? Making
| left turns from the perpendicular street instead of
| merging into the turn lane for cars? Chances are they
| might only be doing one or two of those things, but
| probably none of those things on average based on my own
| anecdata of what I see cyclists looking like in my city.
| If you consider riders who do all of these things, whats
| the fatality rate then? I'd bet its effectively zero a
| year.
|
| Crime works accordingly. We hear people say how they
| think the murder rate is a good proxy for crime you'd
| experience in a city, since you can't really hide a body
| and fudge the stats like other crimes that might go
| unreported. However, the murder rate is also a case of a
| small number of occurances happening over a massive
| population, and probably subject to a lot of variation.
| Likewise, it probably disproportionately affects people
| in domestic violence altercations who already own a gun
| that they keep in the home and know their victim, then
| secondly people involved with organized crime. Avoiding
| these factors that put you at outsized risk might make
| the murder rate effectively zero for someone like you.
| curiousbean wrote:
| [flagged]
| bagacrap wrote:
| But apparently it was, technically speaking, a wrong
| assumption.
| nicenewtemp84 wrote:
| Being out at 230am, when you're a husband and father, do
| imply you've succumb a bit to the nature of the city IMO.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _being out at 230am, when you 're a husband and father_
|
| Being out late shouldn't be, and isn't for most people, a
| life-and-death decision.
| nicenewtemp84 wrote:
| It definitely shouldn't be if we lived in a perfect
| world. But stats prove otherwise.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _stats prove otherwise_
|
| Stats show some areas are unsafe. Not that being out
| late, in a car no less, is unsafe _per se_.
| nicenewtemp84 wrote:
| Being out at night is basically always less safe than
| during the day. No question, any area in the county
| probably safe or not. Your car example is the funniest
| one because a car is a lot less safe at night, from
| people being tired or drunk.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _night is basically always less safe than during the
| day_
|
| But not always to the degree that it makes it
| irresponsible.
| jakeinspace wrote:
| I haven't been to SF in 10+ years, but I grew up in a (more)
| dangerous American city. I'm curious how much of the panic over
| public safety in the Bay Area is massively skewed by upper middle
| class immigrants (from safer suburban America, or from other
| countries) getting their first taste of American urban life. I
| don't want to sound too dismissive, American cities are really
| dangerous and impoverished compared to what they should be, but
| is SF really that bad compared to comparable American cities?
| juliusgeo wrote:
| I have only lived for extensive periods of time in two cities:
| SF (2 years about) and Philadelphia (4 years). The biggest
| difference between them is that even in some of the worst areas
| of Philadelphia in terms of drug crime, there were far fewer
| people actively dealing or doing drugs on the streets in large
| groups. It was more spread out--there were issues in all areas
| of the city, but there was no area with the sheer concentration
| of say the Tenderloin or SOMA. There were basically no
| differences in terms of the transit systems--I don't think BART
| or MUNI are any worse than SEPTA.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| hintymad wrote:
| [dead]
| cemerick wrote:
| This news really highlights the confirmation bias that was in
| full bloom throughout the "discourse" around the initial reports
| of Lee's murder (e.g.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35448899). Everyone is so
| quick to jump on negative news about the rare violent crime in
| e.g. SF thanks to feelings about petty property crime that it's
| obviously impossible to have any kind of fact-based dialogue
| about policy.
|
| Worth keeping in mind next time something comes along that might
| confirm your priors.
|
| (Edit: notable that the thread linked above had _2600+_ comments
| on it, most of them hysterical about SF crime [of course,
| completely divorced from actual stats, i.e. that SF has fewer
| homicides per capita than almost every other American city,
| including current faves Austin and Miami]. I wonder how likely it
| is that the same population will comment here to say, "I was
| wrong"? )
| tempsy wrote:
| What was more incredible was being accused of being a
| conspiracy theorist because I had commented in the SF subreddit
| and on twitter that I personally didn't think it was random.
| hinkley wrote:
| There was a woman in Portland I believe who poisoned her
| husband and made it look like a drug tampering serial killer
| situation.
|
| They caught her because they found traces of fish tank
| algaecide in the pill bottles. She reused the same mortar and
| pestle to do both. The local fish supply store had records of
| her buying the same algaecide.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| [flagged]
| azinman2 wrote:
| Shithole city is a bit extreme, don't you think?
|
| I'd reserve that for very, very different places in the
| world.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| There are plenty of so-called shithole countries where I'd
| rather live than SF.
| azinman2 wrote:
| Good news is no one is forcing you to live there.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| Correct, I live in a much less shitty place. But I used
| to like SF, and now it's... intolerable.
|
| It's sad.
| carapace wrote:
| Not really, SF is a shithole for a wealthy North American
| city. And I say that as someone who grew up here and still
| loves this place.
|
| Story time. We literally had squatters break into and
| occupy a house two doors down from us, on Sunday (Easter).
| I was gardening in the front yard and seven people came and
| went over the course of the day. The police came in the
| afternoon but missed them, and they came back that night.
| It took until Tuesday to get them out and lock down the
| building so they couldn't get back in. A similar incident
| happened across the street a few months ago, the squatters
| even changed the lock on the front door.
|
| I've lived here nearly half a century and I've never seen
| anything like this. Oh, also, last month, a guy came
| through and busted into several cars one morning. He got
| five or six of us.
|
| - - - -
|
| The thing is, SF has always been a crazy shitty town. It's
| also beautiful and fun, but this is the town that grew from
| the Gold Rush. It was built by 49ers and the folks who sold
| them shovels and booze and women. It's always been crazy
| here.
|
| So when people point to SF as the paragon of Left-wing
| politics, they are ignoring that it's not really a
| functional city and never has been. The port is in the East
| Bay where the train tracks run, eh? No trains on the Golden
| Gate Bridge, eh? There's no economic center here (except
| the artifical banking nexus, but that doesn't need to stay
| here, SV bank was in SV.) And the weather never gets
| better. The entire rest of the state has better weather.
| The people who think SF has nice weather typically stay in
| one of the tiny microclimates that avoid the worst of the
| wind and fog.
|
| Seriously, go look at the trees in Mission Rock. They are
| all at 45 degree angles because the damn wind _never
| stops_. They should have put wind turbines on the roofs of
| those nifty new condos (the ones with the sidewalks
| breaking away from the buildings.)
|
| Oh man, I could go on and on about this town.
|
| All I'm really getting at is that, if you know the history
| of San Francisco, you know that it's not really a left-wing
| exemplar, it's just a nuthouse, and always has been since
| the USA kicked out the Spanish. (What the Spanish did is
| the stuff of nightmares. Before that it was the Ohlone
| people here, and I don't know what they were like. There
| are still a few Ohlone people around but everybody is real
| careful not to mention them except in the past tense
| because it breaks the illusion of inclusive progressive
| politics. We still want to e.g. build apartment buildings
| on their old cemeteries and such.)
| foooorsyth wrote:
| It's not extreme when you compare it to most other Western
| cities. If you want to get into undeveloped nations and
| dilapidated ghost cities, you're just entering a different
| arena.
|
| The endless tent encampments, open drug use, human feces on
| the street, glass/needles/trash everywhere, and rampant
| vehicle theft make the place unbearable. It is a shithole.
| azinman2 wrote:
| Western cities like Portland, LA, Eugene, or Seattle? Or
| is that just west coast and you also mean to include
| Baltimore, Detroit or St Louis? Many of those are worst.
| Or I could go to Miami or Austin where their states are
| trying to legislate me out of existence.
|
| I don't disagree things have gotten worse, but a wide
| variety of factors are contributing to this beyond
| politics. They're also mainly occur in certain areas - I
| don't come across all the things very often living in SF
| because I'm not in SoMA/civic center/mission where it's
| all the most acute.
| [deleted]
| Kiro wrote:
| You're doing the same thing now. We don't even know if this is
| actually the perpetrator yet, and even if it is it doesn't
| matter. Anything bad (or good) that was written about SF can
| still be true.
| nemo44x wrote:
| > I wonder how likely it is that the same population will
| comment here to say, "I was wrong"?
|
| Sure, people were wrong in their assumption that the murder was
| random. At least that's how it looks now. We haven't heard the
| suspects side, but....
|
| But wrong that SF has become a dangerous and mismanaged city?
| Murder isn't the only violent crime and a lot of crime goes
| unreported. People don't feel safe walking around and you can't
| just dismiss that. It's their "lived experience". The fact that
| everyone assumed that Bob Lee was murdered randomly says
| something about the state of the city.
|
| SF has a lot of issues and it has a lot of crime and other
| issues. It has been mismanaged for years now and things need to
| change.
| throw4736495 wrote:
| > People don't feel safe walking around and you can't just
| dismiss that. It's their "lived experience".
|
| When I first visited Shanghai I was surprised how safe it
| felt.
|
| Walking around at 3 AM and I didn't feel nervous at all.
| freejazz wrote:
| >People don't feel safe walking around and you can't just
| dismiss that. It's their "lived experience". The fact that
| everyone assumed that Bob Lee was murdered randomly says
| something about the state of the city.
|
| It definitely says something about the people that made that
| assumption. But this is just tautologic - it's unsafe because
| I feel unsafe, and I feel unsafe because it is unsafe. As a
| NY'er, this seems like a ton of whining by people that never
| actually encountered any actual threatening, so they make
| these whiny, dramatic, histrionic arguments about how the
| city is "beyond" saving, using all sorts of overhyped
| rhetoric.
| cemerick wrote:
| People see homelessness and open drug use and petty property
| crime, filter it through their ideological lens, and amplify
| that into feeling that they are themselves somehow less safe.
| You can assert that that is rational, but it's as connected
| to reality as someone feeling afraid when e.g. a black person
| is walking behind them.
|
| Saying stuff like "a lot of [violent] crime goes unreported"
| is straight up fanciful thinking, and leads one to make
| claims that aren't falsifiable. People aren't reporting
| assaults? Sounds completely absurd.
| scarmig wrote:
| > People aren't reporting assaults? Sounds completely
| absurd.
|
| One reason this explanation falls flat is that reported and
| recorded property crimes have risen more. If the city were
| exceptionally underreporting crimes compared to the past or
| other cities, you'd see those disappear from the statistics
| more than e.g. homicides; it's much easier to ignore a
| stolen phone than it is a dead body.
| joncrocks wrote:
| Could that not be that you need to report/record a crime
| for insurance purposes?
|
| There might be a good reason people would report some
| crimes over others for reasons over and above simply for
| the sake of reporting them/having them solved.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| I have personally witnessed a few assaults in NYC that I am
| sure went unreported. I don't think it's the same kind of
| thing you're thinking of: these are things like fights that
| happen in bars, which are usually handled without police
| involvement, not random attacks on the street. And claims
| about unreported crime are falsifiable - see studies like
| this one https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/vnrp0610.pdf
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| I was assaulted twice and didn't report.
|
| https://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/San-Francisco-crime-
| Che...
|
| > Rapes, robberies and assaults are still well below pre-
| pandemic levels, and because violent crime is generally
| less likely to go unreported than property crimes, it would
| not be inaccurate to say that general levels of violent
| crime are lower now than they were a few years ago.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Very privileged take there. My wife justifiably feels
| unsafe in our similar city:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35531439
|
| In that comment I didn't even get to the new stories about
| a brick being thrown, creeps following her, or last night's
| gun falling out of the pants of a meth head at the bus
| stop. I would feel unsafe as well, not like I'm immune to
| bullets.
|
| Minimizing this stuff just because it was mentioned in the
| wrong thread is ignoring real problems. Two things can be
| true at once.
| bigtex88 wrote:
| That IS a less safe space. What are you actually talking
| about? An area with homeless, open drug use, and petty
| property crime is 100% a more dangerous area. No one would
| allow their children to go walking through an area like.
|
| Seriously what sort of weird ideological rant are you on in
| this thread? You have some really bizarre thinking
| regarding this issue.
| circlefavshape wrote:
| > People don't feel safe walking around and you can't just
| dismiss that. It's their "lived experience".
|
| Hmmm. This is kind of an interesting question. If people
| _are_ safe, but don 't _feel_ safe, is it the city government
| 's responsibility to fix that?
| hbrn wrote:
| People vote based on how they feel, so I'd say it is
| government's responsibility.
|
| Especially since feeling safe is not the only thing
| government gets evaluated on. I don't feel threatened by
| feces on the street, and yet I'd want government to fix
| that too.
| whack wrote:
| I agree with you that we shouldn't be using anecdotal evidence
| to drive outrage and public policy. There are a whole host of
| biases and errors that pop up when using anecdotal evidence as
| you pointed out.
|
| The flip side is that people have zero interest in statistics-
| based discussions. Even supposedly data-driven engineers. If
| you find that property-crime has increased by X%, of which Y%
| can be attributed to specific public policy decisions, you will
| get zero traction if you frame this as a data-driven
| discussion. People grok stories. They may somewhat understand
| statistics and numbers, but they don't grok it. Hence why
| almost all discussions revolve around anecdotes with some
| statistics provided as supporting evidence.
|
| Ironically, for-profit companies are far better at having data-
| driven discussions and decisions. I have little hope that this
| will ever be the case in public discourse.
| david38 wrote:
| You must think you're quite clever with that slight of hand
| comparing homicides in SF with other cities when people are
| talking about crime in general.
| [deleted]
| refurb wrote:
| I don't exactly blame people, who live in SF and have seen
| crime get worse, from latching onto a high profile murder as
| more evidence of crime out of control.
|
| So this particular murder was a personal thing, ok.
|
| But that doesnt change the fact crime has gotten worse in SF.
| argc wrote:
| I was definitely guilty of thinking this. Confirmation bias is
| a helluva drug.
| dabluecaboose wrote:
| I remember as a teen going to my dad with some outrage bait
| news I'd heard on the internet that totally fit into my
| preconceived notions, and he just said "Now think about that
| for a second. Does that sound like something that's fully
| true, or is it something that someone thinks you want to
| hear?"
|
| I try to keep that tidbit in mind.
| aaomidi wrote:
| I honestly thought the perp was gonna be someone who was hurt
| by this CEO on a personal level.
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| >I wonder how likely it is that the same population will
| comment here to say, "I was wrong"?
|
| From the looks of your replies, more than a few are back to
| comment here to say "Actually I am still right."
|
| Which, frankly, seems to me more evidence I should just not
| bother to browse threads about this kind of inflammatory
| subject. Even on HN where discussion quality tends to be
| better, there's plenty of people who just show up to shout, and
| not listen.
| suzzer99 wrote:
| First thing I thought of was HackerNews.
| 0zemp1c wrote:
| [flagged]
| cashsterling wrote:
| There is some relief in learning that a homeless person didn't
| commit this crime. However, the overall crime situation in SF,
| and other parts of the Bay, is still crazy... and I think that
| is the genesis of the 2600+ comment thread on the crime and
| homeless situation. SF crime IS A PROBLEM that is not being
| adequately addressed. So much so that folks assumed Bob was
| probably killed by a crazy drug addict or something. While
| wrong in this case, it was a reasonable first guess. And the
| conversation and flood of comment on the topic of crime flooded
| in from there.
| cpufry wrote:
| yep, went right to poverty and crime panic
| hindsightbias wrote:
| Exhibit A in how irrational a "rationalist" community is.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Thanks for that. I admit to buying the narrative. Part of that
| is because my nearest city of any substance is Portland, and
| it's not especially violent. SF does look more violent compared
| to Portland, but objectively SF is actually just average or
| less. Lots of big cities are more violent[0].
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
| ecshafer wrote:
| I went to Portland for a week last year. I saw 6 different
| instances of a violent, obviously mentally ill, presumably
| homeless person physically attack a random person (once at a
| restaurant, twice at a tram station, thrice on the street,
| all broad daylight). That was more instances that I had seen
| in 5 years in Philadelphia, a city jokingly referred to as
| Killadelphia.
|
| Portland might not have a lot of gang violence (which is what
| really gets numbers up), but not violent isn't how I would
| describe the city.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I've lived in the vicinity of Portland for almost 50 years
| and haven't seen as much violence as you did in one week.
| You must have been hanging in really rough area of town, or
| just got very unlucky.
| KarlKemp wrote:
| No, they're just making stuff up.
| runjake wrote:
| I spent 1.5 days in downtown PDX (roughly around the
| Portland City Grill) recently and my experiences roughly
| match the OP.
|
| It was shockingly bad. Crazy, violent people
| "everywhere". Tents covering the sidewalks. There wasn't
| a parking garage around where there weren't piles of
| human excrement.
| cmh89 wrote:
| >Portland might not have a lot of gang violence
|
| Portland has a ton of gang violence.
|
| >but not violent isn't how I would describe the city.
|
| It depends on where you are in the city. I live in Portland
| and I don't think I've someone get attacked in the entire
| time I've lived here. But I also live in an area that is
| less popular with the mentally ill and drug addicted
| nightski wrote:
| This data is from 2019, pre-pandemic and almost 5 years ago.
| Things have changed.
| CalChris wrote:
| Has it? 2019 is the latest aggregation the FBI publishes.
| Looking at the SFPD Dashboard, homicide hasn't changed from
| last year at 13.
|
| https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/stay-safe/crime-
| data/crim...
| tequilatex wrote:
| Homicides has gone up during the pandemic--56 in 2022 vs
| 41 in 2019. I think NYC also went up, but NYC is still
| safer than SF (5 deaths per 100k vs 6.9 per 100k for SF).
| dahfizz wrote:
| > but objectively SF is actually just average or less.
|
| Did you look at your own source? SF is 37 out of 100 for
| violent crime. That's comfortably above average, not "average
| or less"
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| So sorting by Violent Crime (Total), we see San Francisco is
| 37th out of the 100 listed.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Citing murder rates (and ignoring other crimes) is one of
| the preferred tactics of people who want to say that big
| cities have low crime rates.
|
| Police in big cities go after big crimes like murders, but
| tend to ignore "lesser" crimes, so as a result, gangsters
| and other career criminals stick to those lesser crimes,
| and generally do a lot more of them.
| jascii wrote:
| OP isn't citing murder rates, they're citing "violent
| crime (total)" as mentioned in the linked article.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| The linked article cites murder rates.
| jwagenet wrote:
| It's the same in SF, where the most visible crimes by far
| are not murder, but smash and grabs and shoplifting.
| busterarm wrote:
| Assault and battery and armed robbery are also violent
| crimes that are significantly under-reported.
|
| /s lived in NYC for almost 40 years.
| rubyn00bie wrote:
| Provide a link to an empirical source or you're literally
| just making this up based on feels and shit you see on
| TV...
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| A useful source was literally cited in the comment I
| replied to. Look at rankings of cities by crime. You will
| find SF and NYC close to the bottom of the pack on
| murders, but toward the top on property crimes and low-
| level violent crimes.
|
| As to the ignoring crimes, here you go:
| https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/06/us/alvin-bragg-manhattan-
| dist...
| rubyn00bie wrote:
| You completely misrepresented what they would prosecute,
| literally from the article you linked to:
|
| > marijuana misdemeanors, including selling more than
| three ounces; not paying public transportation fare;
| trespassing except a fourth degree stalking charge,
| resisting arrest, obstructing governmental administration
| in certain cases, and prostitution
|
| Literally nothing you insinuated. Please stop peddling
| lazy lies and ideas.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| You might want to read the primary source before accusing
| someone of lying. Misdemeanor assault and petty theft are
| also on the list. I admit that I chose a left-leaning
| article to cite so that people like you would read
| _something_ rather than dismissing it outright as biased,
| but the primary source is linked there. CNN, apparently
| peddlers of "lazy lies" themselves, chose not to put the
| full list down.
| rubyn00bie wrote:
| You didn't link anything to prove your point. And you're
| literally blaming CNN for how you spun the article? I'll
| stop here because it's clear you're irrational.
| jascii wrote:
| So, "gangsters and other career criminals" stick to
| marijuana possession? That doesn't sound like a bad
| deal...
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| It's not a bad deal at all, if that's what they stick to.
| It's really mostly non-violent thefts these days. That
| still doesn't make the area "low-crime" or "safe."
| piva00 wrote:
| > Citing murder rates (and ignoring other crimes) is one
| of the preferred tactics of people who want to say that
| big cities have low crime rates.
|
| People in this thread are specifically talking about
| violent crimes, not all crimes, which murder rate seems
| to be one of the good metrics to use, no?
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| No, because they don't correlate with violent crime
| rates, which are also tracked. Murder is actually a
| really weird crime: if basically never happens between
| people who don't know each other.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Yep, and when we sort cities by population density, it's a
| good bit higher than 37th. SF has plenty of problems, but
| apparently violent crime isn't the most noteworthy of them.
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| I grew up in a violent town (high murder rate - even
| blatant). The difference between that and SF is that you
| don't personally experience that violence in my home town.
| It's really quite rare it affects someone you know. It's even
| rarer for it to be direct.
|
| SF is different. Within my first year there i had already
| seen someone shot in front my building (i didn't witness it
| but the aftermath). An asian friend was slapped and her phone
| taken - she'd have given the phone anyway so the slap felt
| unnecessary. You fear parking your car - not trembling in
| your pants fear but a dread that you'll have to deal with
| that shit again (now the breakins happen while you're still
| in the car). You don't know when someone is yelling on the
| street whether they are harmless or gonna attack you -
| doesn't have to be a weapon just yelling at your face with
| saliva splattering all over you would traumatise you enough -
| yup, that happened too. My girlfriend and I used to try to
| help them. We'd give them leftover food - bakery items
| mostly. We'd see that all tossed on sidewalk when we walk
| that way again. There was always glass on the sidewalk.
| There'd be random tents you'll have to get around. This is
| daily and adds up.
|
| Like I said, I grew up in a violent town. So avoiding travel
| at night or going around the house locking windows or being
| aware of the approaching blind dark spot is something I'm
| used to. Most everyone around me was not. Even those from the
| Bay Area haven't seen. I used to think they were weak but the
| truth is no one has to put up with it and I think people have
| the right to "feel" safe as well.
|
| (Again, none if this will show up in a statistic and I'm not
| saying these people should be locked up in the name of tough
| on crime either. These are absolutely property crimes and
| quality of life crimes but you do feel fear and dread almost
| everyday)
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I grew up in a violent town (high murder rate - even
| blatant). The difference between that and SF is that you
| don't personally experience that violence in my home town.
| It's really quite rare it affects someone you know.
|
| If it has a high murder rate, that obviously is not true
| for all values of "you".
| chelical wrote:
| It's true for an overwhelming percentage of people even
| in the most violent cities since most violent crime is
| confined to a small subset of the city.
| jakemcgraw wrote:
| I grew up outside of one of the most violent cities in New
| York State[1]. My high school was right in the middle of
| Newburgh, NY, and being a teenager, I spent a lot of time
| driving around the downtown area at night. There were a
| handful of blocks you stayed away from and you were good.
| Granted, this is with the benefit of a car, rather than
| walking around.
|
| Ultimately, random acts of violence are scary but even in
| the "most dangerous cities" statistically rare. The
| politicization of city violence "What about Chicago? What
| about SF?" is an instant red flag that whomever you're
| speaking with is making a bad faith argument.
|
| [1]: https://hudsonvalleypost.com/hudson-valley-city-among-
| most-d...
| edgyquant wrote:
| Maybe because people like you constantly make underhanded
| comments about how "rare" violent crime is and so the crime
| problem is now partisan. It's not rare
| https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/ca/san-francisco/crime
| cemerick wrote:
| "People like me." Nice.
|
| The subject is violent crime. Don't cite a page that lumps
| property crimes in. Might want to look at some relevant data;
| https://abc7news.com/san-francisco-crime-rate-bob-lee-sf-
| vio... has a handy chart halfway down, if you're not
| interested in reading.
| dang wrote:
| I understand (believe me, it's in my bones) how hard it is
| not to lash back at people who resort to snark and swipes
| when they don't like what you're arguing on the internet--
| and how it's a thousand times harder when an impromptu mob
| is ganging up on you (or it feels like one is). But please
| don't cross the line yourself.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| dang wrote:
| Crossing into personal attack is not ok and we ban accounts
| that do it repeatedly, so please don't.
|
| If you'd please review
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to
| the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it. Note this
| one: " _Edit out swipes._ "
| rootusrootus wrote:
| This says 37th on the list, ordered by total violent crime.
| That's fairly low, considering how big a city SF is.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b.
| ..
| pookha wrote:
| I'm not a Maoist so I can admit when I was wrong. Looks like it
| was a personal beef.
|
| But that in no way changes the point that SF is a toxic
| environment. Here's the SF fire commissioner being brained by a
| violent homeless man this past week...
|
| https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/video-shows-ex-sf-fire-c...
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| On the contrary, I think Mao would be quite impressed with
| your staunch commitment to a cause!
|
| Here is another article, just so everyone stays informed.
|
| https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/fire-commissioner-
| ass...
| giantrobot wrote:
| I was wrong, but let me justify jumping to my previous
| preconceived notions! Amazing humility.
| matt-attack wrote:
| [flagged]
| robertoandred wrote:
| Why wouldn't a homeless guy take his wallet?
| matt-attack wrote:
| Your comment indicates you do not understand the mental
| state of many homeless people. I have a good friend, who
| has beaten by a homeless man in Los Angeles. None of his
| wallet, phone, or cash was taken. It was not a robbery. It
| was a senseless beating.
| confidantlake wrote:
| Seems far more likely that it was someone he knew rather than
| a stranger. Turns out that was in fact the case.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| That neighborhood isn't really known for homelessness unlike
| other areas of SF.
| dahfizz wrote:
| SF still has above average violent crime[1]. Its top 7 in terms
| of overall crime, so being "just" above average for violent
| crime seems not so bad in comparison. But the objective reality
| is that BOTH property crime and violent crime is worse in SF
| than in most other cities.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
| donohoe wrote:
| Maybe. That data is 4 years old (from 2019)
| dahfizz wrote:
| The violent crime rate hasn't changed much. The total
| number of incidents[1] and population[2] have both
| decreased around 10% since 2019.
|
| Do you have evidence to the contrary? You can't just claim
| everything is fine and discard all evidence you disagree
| with.
|
| [1] https://sfgov.org/scorecards/public-safety/violent-
| crime-rat...
|
| [2] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/sanfranciscocountycal
| iforn...
| gadders wrote:
| This is amazing. Bob Lee gets killed by an acquaintance and
| suddenly all the antisocial behaviour in SF has magically
| vanished.
| [deleted]
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| I get sick to my stomach reading that thread. It was close to
| the last straw for me with regards to leaving this community
| completely, or at least trying to fight my HN habit.
|
| I get a lot out of the things shared here and the discourse,
| but sometimes we get those threads and I just can't believe so
| many otherwise smart, intelligent people would believe and say
| such horrible things.
| 5040 wrote:
| Empathy gets displaced when victimization becomes
| commonplace.
| realworldperson wrote:
| [dead]
| photochemsyn wrote:
| It's certainly true that people should never jump on a story to
| promote their own ideological concerns (e.g. San Francisco is
| pretty unsafe at night in many places), when the details of the
| story are unknown.
|
| However, homicide stats don't tell the whole story about a
| city. There are many areas in SF where a resident would never
| go at night (or often during the day) because of the large
| numbers of drug addicts and homeless people. This means
| businesses in those areas have a hard time surviving. In terms
| of property crimes (in which violent assault is not involved)
| SF is leading the pack, at least in the top five. The lower
| rate of homicide is probably also linked to California's
| stricter gun laws compared to Texas and Florida, and also, many
| homicide victims are homeless, see LA:
|
| https://xtown.la/2022/06/08/murders-people-experiencing-home...
|
| The only plausible long-term solution is improved housing, more
| jobs, public health care, better education etc. This would
| require expenditure of public funds on a national scale (you
| can't fix this city by city, or state by state, because people
| migrate), i.e. increased taxes on the wealthy and a
| redistribution of military-industrial spending to domestic
| infrastructure of various sorts.
| [deleted]
| pc86 wrote:
| [flagged]
| interactivecode wrote:
| Perhaps in SF the victims of violent crime are in a higher
| social bracket than in other cities?
|
| Aka more rich people are the target in SF compared to other
| cities where mostly lower class people are effected?
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| That's exactly what it is. White collar upper middle class
| types are more exposed to it relatively (not necessarily
| absolutely) in SF than in other cities. Even if the actual
| odds of being victim of a violent crime are lower overall
| they're still higher per crime and people still feel more
| exposed because the market shares of the various things
| that make up the crime pie are very different in SF than in
| other cities.
|
| In Chicago, Baltimore, all those other cities techies turn
| up their nose at for their crime rates you _might_ get shot
| in a convenience store robbery, you _might_ get knifed by a
| mugger but the overwhelming majority of the violence is
| drug dealers and users and distributors settling scores
| amongst themselves (because they can 't use the courts to
| do it for them).
|
| Contrast with SF where the overall amount (overall or per
| capita) of violent crime is lower but it is much, much more
| concentrated toward the randomly targeted crime affecting
| people not already involved in activity beyond the law
| types of creimes meaning that your odds of getting shot in
| a convenience store robbery or knifed by a mugger are
| higher in SF than a city of equivalent violent crime rates
| per capita that has a more normal looking crime pie chart.
| kaycebasques wrote:
| > objectively one of the most violent cities in the country
|
| The news article (and many comments in this thread) says the
| exact opposite:
|
| > San Francisco is home to much in the way of visible public
| misery, unnerving street behavior and overt drug-use. Its
| property crime rate has long been high, and the police
| clearance rate for property crimes has long been minimal. But
| the city's violent crime rate is at a near-historic low and
| is lower than that in most mid-to-large-sized cities.
|
| Property crime is sky-high, sure. Violent crime is a totally
| different category. It is important not to mix them up.
|
| 2021 homicide rate across comparable cities:
|
| St Louis 66.5 Detroit 47.9 Phila 34.8 Milwaukee 33.9 ...
| Austin 8.2 SF 6.9 ... NY 5.5
|
| https://abc7news.com/amp/san-francisco-crime-rate-bob-lee-
| sf...
|
| We can talk about other types of violent crime (maybe the
| other ones are higher, I haven't looked into them recently)
| but let's at least stick to the well-defined categories and
| since you said it's "objectively one of the most violent"
| then we should be able to back that up with stats in each
| category: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-
| the-u.s.-...
| lisasays wrote:
| Based on what?
|
| It's murder rate is well below the median among cities larger
| than 200k.
| cemerick wrote:
| What words _would_ you use to describe a city with fewer
| homicides per capita than almost all other major US cities?
|
| Might want to look at some relevant data;
| https://abc7news.com/san-francisco-crime-rate-bob-lee-sf-
| vio... has a handy chart halfway down, if you're not
| interested in reading.
| kneebonian wrote:
| I got a page not found error going to that link.
|
| Also the parent said "violent crime" not just homicides. In
| addition it is known that homicides among the homeless, of
| which SF is known to have many, are underreported.
|
| Plus there is plenty of property crime as well.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >I got a page not found error going to that link.
|
| In that case, try this[0] one that another HNer posted.
| It even allows you to sort by type of crime.
|
| > In addition it is known that homicides among the
| homeless, of which SF is known to have many, are
| underreported.
|
| Uhhh...Have you ever been around a decomposing corpse?
| They're not so easy to hide or dispose of, and the
| population you're talking about isn't likely to have the
| resources to do so.
|
| As such, you might want to check the "source" of
| information you're relying on for that assertion. That
| said, I _could_ be completely wrong and SF 's homeless
| community has a bustling trade in disposing of bodies.
| But that seems pretty unlikely, don't you think?
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_c
| ities_b...
|
| Edit: Added the _missing link_.
| tedivm wrote:
| Where is that known? Known by who? Do you have any actual
| evidence of this claim?
| mjg59 wrote:
| Which numbers are you using for that?
| tedivm wrote:
| You're objectively wrong.
|
| > San Francisco recorded 56 homicides each in 2022 and 2021,
| up over 36% from 2019, when there were 41 homicides,
| according to police department data. Despite the increase,
| the number of homicides in San Francisco is well below that
| of other cities of a similar size, data from the Major Cities
| Police Chiefs Association shows.
|
| > Indianapolis, for example, witnessed 271 homicides in 2021
| and 226 in 2022. Jacksonville, Florida, meanwhile, saw 129
| homicides in 2021 and 154 in 2022, while 204 homicides took
| place in Columbus, Ohio, in 2021 and 140 in 2022.
|
| > Violent crimes in San Francisco, including murder, rape,
| robbery and aggravated assault, reached a high in 2013 with
| 7,164 violent crimes, according to California Department of
| Justice data. But they have tapered off significantly in the
| past couple of years. San Francisco now falls in the lower
| middle of the pack when compared with several cities of a
| similar population, according to data from the Major Cities
| Police Chiefs Association.
|
| San Francisco is just "average", and possibly "below
| average", for violent crime. Claiming it is one of the most
| violent cities in the country is just hysterics with no basis
| in reality.
|
| Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/06/us/san-francisco-
| crime-bob-le...
| tsunamifury wrote:
| Thanks for the numbers. On the street except for murder
| cops won't even take your report anymore. The numbers
| reflect nothing in SF and residents know it.
| BenSahar wrote:
| "Even when I'm factually wrong, I'm right"
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| I was just laughing about this position the other day: if
| the the stats confirm your position they're accurate and
| can't be ignored. If they're not then the bookkeeping is
| wrong. A win/win situation!
| tedivm wrote:
| So what you're saying is your feelings don't care about
| the facts?
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| Isn't it this way in almost every major urban US area? I
| was in St. Louis for a conference and got robbed, after I
| reported it to police and told them I had the current
| location of the suspects because they stole my phone and
| location services was still on, the police laughed at me
| and told me "what do you want us to do, go bust some
| doors down?", then instructed me to file a report but
| explained it might not be worth it to even bother doing
| so because there was almost a 0% chance of my stolen
| goods being returned.
| jjulius wrote:
| >The numbers reflect nothing in SF and residents know it.
|
| Former, recent resident with a penchant for late-night
| dancing (read: frequently ended up in "seedy" areas in
| the middle of the night) chiming in. Never felt as though
| I was in danger while out and about, day or night, and
| never felt that SF was a more violent city than others.
|
| But thank you for speaking for everyone.
| lisasays wrote:
| When you live in a violent area - you usually don't
| "feel" it until the night you get whacked.
|
| Source: been there, got whacked.
| tedivm wrote:
| If you're dead how are you posting?
| lisasays wrote:
| The verb can mean either you get rubbed off - or just hit
| really heard.
| mbgerring wrote:
| Did you miss the fact that we had two entire elections to
| install a new reactionary pro-cop DA, specifically so
| that people who use this excuse to make things up about
| SF crime could can it?
| gcheong wrote:
| "On the street except for murder cops won't even take
| your report anymore."
|
| Completely false and you only have to look at the police
| crime dashboard to know that. I'm a resident and can say
| that the numbers track pretty closely with my experience
| here anyway.
| IndoorPatio wrote:
| Police work stoppages should be fireable offenses.
| psanford wrote:
| Current resident. I walked 1 mile home late last night,
| through two neighborhoods that people call sketchy. The
| only thing that felt unsafe was the cars.
| foobarian wrote:
| > Claiming it is one of the most violent cities in the
| country
|
| To be fair the phrasing "one of the most XXX" has a LOT of
| wiggle room at best, and is technically a tautology at
| worst.
| dwater wrote:
| I was surprised to see in the article that SF has only had
| 12 murders so far this year. My city is less than 1/3 the
| size and has 14 murders so far, and it doesn't feel like a
| lawless hell hole to me. Every murder is tragic, but almost
| all of them involve parties known to each other.
| Varqu wrote:
| It's quite high for overall crime though.
|
| Crime Rate(per 1,000 residents):
|
| https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/fl/jacksonville/crime -
| 33.76
|
| https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/in/indianapolis/crime -
| 42.52
|
| https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/ca/san-francisco/crime -
| 54.33
|
| as a reference point:
|
| https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/mi/detroit/crime - 59.01
| tedivm wrote:
| "Overall crime" and "violent crime" are not the same
| thing. No one is arguing against there being a lot of
| property crime.
| hhgf5yhbd wrote:
| [flagged]
| Aloha wrote:
| High Property Crime is not the same as lots of violent crime.
| SF does seem to have a problem with property crimes - but not
| violent ones.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| The thing that's so weird about that confirmation bias is that
| some folks held these inconsistent views _even within a single
| HN comment_.
|
| There was a comment that was on that initial thread where the
| commenter said that they heard from "very well placed sources
| in the US Intelligence community this is probably a hit", and
| the commenter _still_ went on to blame San Francisco for being
| a "crime ridden shithole". I responded with this,
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35456746 , it was just
| bizarre to me.
| rajup wrote:
| I don't understand, is it that hard for both to be true?
| tedunangst wrote:
| If it was a hit, it would have happened anywhere, so why
| are they blaming SF specifically?
| Jackpillar wrote:
| The guy in his comment responded that murder is a regular
| occurrence in SF. This is just a lie.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| That's not what the comment I was replying to was saying.
| It's possible for both to be true, but it's definitely
| cognitive dissonance to on one hand think "it was a hit"
| and then at the same time _blame_ the general crime
| problems of San Francisco for Bob Lee 's death.
|
| That's what a lot of the replies here seem to be missing.
| Sure, I think SF has a pretty bad crime problem that needs
| to be addressed. What deserves opprobrium is all the tech
| elite who immediately spouted on Twitter and elsewhere that
| the government of SF had "blood on their hands", again
| specifically _blaming_ SF government and SF 's overall
| crime environment for Bob Lee's death.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| The Internet has made it virtually impossible for people to say
| "I just don't know yet." Everyone feels like if they don't
| immediately come to a conclusion they're like left out or
| something.
|
| I saw this most extremely during COVID, and I usually hate
| "both side-ing" things, but I did see this pretty extremely on
| both sides. "MASKS DON'T WORK!!", "YES THEY DO!!", "IT WAS A
| LAB LEAK!!", "IT WAS ANIMALS FROM THE WET MARKET!!", "KIDS ARE
| FINE!!", "KIDS ARE AT SERIOUS RISK!!". It's like at some point
| I just wanted to scream "Maybe we just don't know yet."
| Swizec wrote:
| The argument I made to all my friends in this debate (but not
| publicly) was along the lines of "tech exec found dead at
| 2:30am near his home in an upscale neighborhood with zero
| night-time activity ... that doesn't sound random"
|
| My guess was drug deal gone wrong. But tech deal gone wrong
| makes sense too, I guess.
|
| edit: my drug guess was before the person was named, not
| implying anything, just know drugs are a popular hobby in SF
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| It could still have been a drug deal - some companies have a
| guy who is the "hookup."
|
| The problem with the discourse was that everyone forgot that
| people basically never get randomly murdered. There's _almost
| always_ a reason for a murder - number 1 is domestic
| disputes, number 2 is gang-related, and the list goes on, but
| almost nobody gets murdered randomly. Assaults and thefts are
| a different story, and SF 's problem with those crimes got
| conflated with a murder (which is a rare crime in SF).
| [deleted]
| peter422 wrote:
| It's an upscale building but I wouldn't call it an upscale
| neighborhood, especially at night. It's only a couple blocks
| from the bay bridge overpass and the overpass attracted some
| non-upscale activity.
|
| At the same time though I've spent many late nights in the
| area and never had any negative encounters.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| Violent crime is rare everywhere, for some definition of rare.
| I can walk through the most dangerous part of Chicago tonight
| and I will almost certainly survive. However, if I do that
| every night for my entire life, the cumulative risk will be
| unacceptably high.
|
| It would be wrong to insist Chicago doesn't have a problem with
| violence just because I have much better than Vegas odds of not
| dying today. SF has different parameter inputs than Chicago,
| but my point applies.
| FanaHOVA wrote:
| > I can walk through the most dangerous part of Chicago
| tonight and I will almost certainly survive.
|
| Go walk through O Block / West Garfield tonight and report
| back.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| It's all relative. The safest parts of the U.S. still feel like
| too much for me. And I'm sure where I grew up in Canada would
| seem like a post-apocalyptic hellscape to some others around
| the world.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| > of course, completely divorced from actual stats, i.e. that
| SF has fewer homicides per capita than almost every other
| American city, including current faves Austin and Miami
|
| Many of us mentioned this (I did in my comment), which is why
| we are so surprised about this murder. Now it makes more sense,
| although still tragic. We still get to gripe about property
| crime, which has been higher than average for awhile now and
| only seems to be getting worse.
| tzs wrote:
| That thread had me checking a couple times to make sure I had
| not accidentally somehow ended up on NextDoor.
| jbullock35 wrote:
| > _2600+_ comments on it, most of them hysterical about SF
| crime [of course, completely divorced from actual stats, i.e.
| SF has fewer homicides per capita than almost every other
| American city, including current faves Austin and Miami]
|
| On this list of homicides per capita [1], San Francisco ranks
| far higher than Austin in incidents per capita of "Murder and
| nonnegligent manslaughter": 2.57 per 100,000 people in Austin,
| vs. 6.35 per 100,000 in SF.
|
| It also ranks higher than New York, Portland, San Diego, San
| Jose, and Seattle.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
| ozfive wrote:
| That's also from 2019. It's possible the OP looked at more
| recent information? Without knowing their source we won't
| know.
| p_j_w wrote:
| 2021 numbers show Austin having a higher murder rate with
| 7.7 per 100k. SF was 6.9.
|
| https://www.kxan.com/investigations/homicides-on-the-rise-
| ho...
| [deleted]
| robocat wrote:
| Off-topic: That particular HN discussion contains many users
| creating a political narrative, and even at the time it was
| obvious there were many bad comments. I wish we had a way to
| downrank users that derail conversions with crap.
|
| Are there forums with better user moderation systems that boost
| ranking of quality comments and decrease ranking of comment
| noise? Something where I can systematically increase the
| ranking of comments of users I respect (or I transitively
| respect), and decrease the ranking of comments for users that I
| see write crap. Ideally tagged (e.g. I want to uprank a
| particular users opinions on programming languages, but I want
| to strongly downrank their economic opinions)
| humanistbot wrote:
| > are there forums with better user moderation systems that
| boost ranking of quality comments and decrease ranking of
| comment noise? Something where I can systematically increase
| the ranking of comments of users I respect (or I transitively
| respect), and decrease the ranking of comments for users that
| I see write crap
|
| It seems like you want a personalized filter bubble to
| confirm your pre-existing views and hide comments from anyone
| who even votes the same way as someone who contradicts your
| views. This is generally considered an anti-feature in public
| discussions, especially on HN. Calling all posts that you
| disagree with "crap" and ignoring them does a disservice to
| the conversation and to yourself.
|
| The actual "crap" does get filtered out pretty well: the
| spam, slurs, trolling, low-effort jokes, and other things
| that derail the conversation. What you are calling "crap" are
| people's genuinely-held beliefs, some more coherently
| expressed than others, but which resonated with many others
| here. It is much better to engage than to ignore. I see that
| you didn't comment in that thread, which is a shame.
| Substantive disagreements are what move us all forward.
|
| You might want to try Facebook, they do a really good job at
| keeping you in your preferred group's information cocoon.
| robocat wrote:
| > personalized filter bubble to confirm your pre-existing
| views
|
| I seek learning through intelligent and insightful
| rebuttal. HN is a good forum to learn from others directly,
| and indirectly by reading other people's threads. I want a
| forum that does this better, via network effects of
| judgements about comment quality.
|
| Your comment contains many baseless assumptions about my
| motivations. Is there irony in that this thread is not on
| Facebook, that you are attempting to disagree with my point
| but I am engaging with you, and that your comment likely
| breaks multiple guidelines?
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| You are right that it's not the content of the views here
| that are really the problem, or principally shouldnt be.
|
| But the overriding, horrendous issue is how threads and
| discussions are hijacked for the sake of every other guy's
| soapbox, and this thread in question is particularly
| exemplary here.
|
| I have certainly accepted at this point that, e.g., some
| people see homeless people or drug addicted people as
| essentially subhuman. And the mechanics of free speech and
| discourse dictate that I see such views as having a place
| in _some_ discussions (especially on this particular
| website it seems), however much it contradicts what I see
| as fundamental humanity or whatever.
|
| But, to me, it didn't really feel like the right time or
| context in that thread. But I maybe I am wrong!
|
| Like, I definitely accept that I personally have to stomach
| a lot if I want to see the discourse on this site in
| general, and I agree I don't necessarily want the bubble.
| And indeed, this is just what "living in a society" is all
| about. But so much in that particular thread just really
| felt misplaced and fundamentally insensitive, however
| essentially valid they were themselves as views. And I
| think that thread is just a good example not a one off
| thing.
| squaresmile wrote:
| Avoid non-tech discussion here and you are almost all the way
| there. There's a chrome extension to block a user's comments.
| Probably not too hard to make one or modify it to highlight
| users you like.
| suzzer99 wrote:
| HackerNews is still better than just about every site out
| there with this high of a profile. Once the bad faith trolls
| take up residence, discourse goes into the toilet. At least
| 99% of HN posters are earnestly trying to make a point they
| believe in. HN just isn't sexy enough to pull in the trolls.
| kortilla wrote:
| >hysterical about SF crime [of course, completely divorced from
| actual stats, i.e. that SF has fewer homicides per capita than
| almost every other American city,
|
| You're doing the same thing in this thread, where the very
| article we are discussing shows that murders have been on the
| rise in the past 5 years.
|
| Your comment was good, then you used the edit to spew your
| confirmation bias.
| basisword wrote:
| The number of high profile tech bros on Twitter using the death
| to further their own views was disgraceful. SF may have big
| issues but using someone's murder to further your political
| beliefs is horrible. I'm sure we won't hear any retraction
| though.
| ajross wrote:
| Watching from outside, the whole "Tech Bros vs. Woke Hippies"
| framing is just nuts. It's _at most_ a local politics dispute
| over control over the SF city government. And yet it 's
| spilled over into all kinds of radicalized global thinking.
| People like pg and Garry are out there on twitter acting like
| the nutjobs trying to deny their startup workers housing and
| teach their kids about colonialism as a history paradigm are
| the Greatest Threat To Free Speech Worldwide.
|
| Is it time now to maybe take a deep breath and think about
| maybe calling a truce? The hippies can be rough to live with
| but really they aren't so bad. I know a bunch.
| [deleted]
| jeffbee wrote:
| Garry Tan used this murder to flog his political action
| committee on Twitter. Absolutely disgusting.
| ajross wrote:
| I guess, if viewed cynically. It seems more likely to me
| that he was sincere, just wrong. That's the "radicalized"
| bit I was talking about. The SF tech scene has a smell
| right now that seems to me _a lot_ like what we saw with
| the Gamergate incels a decade ago. And that... didn 't
| lead to good places.
|
| Radicalization happens to everyone, even the
| rationalists. Maybe it's just time to cool off.
| tqi wrote:
| > using someone's murder to further your political beliefs is
| horrible.
|
| Agree that it's gross but we do it all the time, and I think
| too often it only feels horrible to people when the political
| beliefs aren't align with one's own. If the loudest voices in
| this incident had been pushing for increased funding for
| supportive housing or mental health services, would Joe
| Eskenazi have written an article titled "Bob Lee deserved
| better than to be killed -- and then co-opted in death"? I
| kind of doubt it...
| Apocryphon wrote:
| To be fair, such an article isn't finger-pointing at a
| specific population of people, but at a systemic issue, so
| it's more acceptable either way.
| simplotek wrote:
| > SF may have big issues but using someone's murder to
| further your political beliefs is horrible.
|
| What political beliefs are you referring to? The one about
| SF's crime wave sounds precisely on topic, for example.
|
| Edit: those downvotes were very quick.
| vkou wrote:
| The piss on the homeless views always get aired whenever a
| homeless person does something bad, or is accused, without
| evidence of doing something bad.
|
| It's couched in 'the woke are ruining everything letting
| murderhobos run rampart' rhetoric. Sometimes with a helping
| of 'the police are completely unable to function if we
| subject them to any oversight, or hold them accountable to
| the rule of law.'
|
| You see this take very frequently on <your local city
| subreddit>.
| uoaei wrote:
| If you talk to actual cops, they're burnt out and quiet
| quitting like the rest of us. Scope creep has been
| marching steadily over the past decades: we're asking
| them to do too much; they're not trained for many of the
| kinds of interactions that they find so taxing. It would
| be better for everyone if they offloaded that work to
| others who are better qualified. This means giving police
| less money, and giving other services more money.
| [deleted]
| VirusNewbie wrote:
| whenever someone is shot, is talking about gun control using
| someone's murder to further political beliefs?
| dmix wrote:
| So a single anecdote of a crime is enough for you to counter an
| entire narrative... apparently also based on a single anecdote?
| For the HN thread it was merely a seed that started a wider
| conversation about a very real problem.
|
| Anyone who has lived in SF knows how uniquely bad it is there
| (even if most of it is mostly unreported property crime and
| petty theft where police don't even show up when someone robs
| you because it's so rampant they don't have the ability to
| care, as happened to me). That is a noncontroversial take to
| anyone without an agenda.
| Vervious wrote:
| A ton of people care about property crime and I don't think you
| should look down on them.
|
| SF has 3-5x the property crime of most major cities in the
| United States. I imagine most violent crime is targeted (i.e.
| the victim is not a random person walking down the street), but
| property crime is scary because it can happen to the best of
| us, our friends and our family, in even the "safest"
| neighborhoods. We all know friends whose cars have been broken
| into. And it's easy to imagine --- what if my kids were at home
| during one of these home break-ins? (Note that burglaries are
| not classified as violent crime in SF)
| cemerick wrote:
| That's great; in general, people should be, and I'm not
| looking down on them for doing so.
|
| However, property crime is _absolutely_ irrelevant when
| presented with the news of someone 's murder, yet so many
| people here are quick to conflate them as somehow equivalent
| vis a vis personal safety, etc.
|
| (Sidenote: I personally don't understand anyone thinking that
| property crime is "scary". Your car is not your kid. Your
| wallet is not your body. Your house is not your family. These
| things are not in the same class, and a loss in one category
| is not the same as a loss in the other. I'm not sure how one
| could argue otherwise, but it's apparently a widely-held
| worldview.)
| vkou wrote:
| A burglary is much scarier than someone stealing shit from
| your car, because someone invaded your living space in the
| latter. It's a much more serious invasion of your privacy
| than a broken window smash and grab.
|
| The point I made in the sibling point stands, though. At
| 55th in the nation, SF does not have a high burglary rate.
| It has a high _larceny_ (stealing from stores, cars, etc)
| rate.
| cemerick wrote:
| I'm not comparing e.g. burglaries to car thefts, but the
| category of property crimes to the category of violent
| crimes. The former range from unfortunate nuisances to
| unpleasant material losses (depending on how well you've
| scoped your insurances); the latter can be life-
| shattering tragedies.
| Vervious wrote:
| Btw, I think technically if the car is locked, it's also
| classified as a burglary
| bigtex88 wrote:
| [flagged]
| cemerick wrote:
| Your "legitimate question" is insulting to me and to
| those who actually _are_ autistic. Everyone on HN is so
| nice.
|
| No, I don't think being pickpocketed (or having my car
| stolen or whatever) is "equally as scary" as if my
| daughter were assaulted or kidnapped. I'd be ashamed to
| think they're equivalent, lest my daughter believe I view
| her as valuable as a hunk of steel or a wad of cash.
|
| > Property crimes lead to a generally dangerous living
| area and people don't like to live in dangerous areas
| because it necessarily leads to more violent crime.
|
| This is deeply incorrect. As has been repeated and cited
| over and over, violent crime in e.g. SF is not
| particularly high (lower than most other US cities),
| while its property crime rate is outrageously high.
| bigtex88 wrote:
| I really don't understand your viewpoint here. You seem
| to be implying that property crime is fine and dandy and
| no one should really be worried about it because "having
| a child assaulted is worse!". Again, a bizarre world-
| view, hence the autism question.
|
| Just because they're not emotionally equivalent doesn't
| mean that property crime isn't bad. SF has a massive
| issue regarding petty crime. It leads to a more dangerous
| city overall.
| jjulius wrote:
| >Just because they're not emotionally equivalent doesn't
| mean that property crime isn't bad.
|
| In sticking with the autism question - are _you_? OP has
| yet to state that "property crime isn't bad" yet you've
| commented repeatedly to imply that they have, among other
| things.
|
| "Not as bad as" != "Not bad"
| dang wrote:
| You've unfortunately been crossing into personal attack
| and name-calling repeatedly in your HN posts, as well as
| breaking the site guidelines in other ways. We ban
| accounts that do this kind of thing, so could you please
| stop?
|
| If you wouldn't mind reviewing
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and
| taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart,
| we'd be grateful.
| DharmaPolice wrote:
| People (on the whole) aren't afraid of losing stuff.
| They're afraid of someone coming into their home or
| grabbing them on the street and things going south. If you
| somehow had a device which 100% guaranteed your personal
| safety (but somehow still allowed theft) then (for most
| people) most of these crimes would merely be an
| inconvenience/irritation on the same level as low level
| credit card fraud (where you lose no money but have to get
| a new card).
| Jackpillar wrote:
| "They're afraid of someone coming into their home or
| grabbing them on the street and things going south"
|
| Luckily, this isn't a real thing that happens.
| vkou wrote:
| You're performing a sleight of hand. No city census or
| national crime analysis categorizes burglary as a violent
| crime, and I'm not sure why you called SF out on it.
|
| I don't look down on people complaining about property crime,
| I'd just like them to be honest about what they are
| complaining about.
|
| SF is _55_ out of the biggest 100 cities on burglary rates,
| by the way.
|
| (It's interesting how all this is apparently a controversial
| take.)
| [deleted]
| LawTalkingGuy wrote:
| > No city census or national crime analysis categorizes
| burglary as a violent crime, and I'm not sure why you
| called SF out on it.
|
| Most other cities aren't wallowing in it the same way, and
| aren't holier than thou despite their polices clearly
| having caused the issue. But you're right, it's not just
| SF. LA and Seattle are pretty much right there too.
|
| The crime cities like SF are worth calling out in a way
| that other violent cities aren't though because there's a
| giant epidemic of what we're pressured to call "non-violent
| crime" like shoplifting and car theft that _gets violent_
| instantly whenever the criminal doesn 't get their way.
| I've personally seen people get shoved out of the way of a
| fleeing thief, and videos of people being attacked when
| they come back at the wrong time and discover their car
| being robbed. To say SF isn't violent ignores that the
| residents are on the edge of violence constantly.
|
| > SF is 55 out of the biggest 100 cities on burglary rates,
| by the way.
|
| These crime rates are what's reported by the police and
| they refuse to take reports of anything that hasn't
| escalated so they ignore most of what the everyday person
| suffers. These statistics should be seen more as evidence
| of collusion in the SFPD, not used to prove the safety of
| the city.
| vkou wrote:
| > LA and Seattle
|
| That's a strange way of spelling Cleveland, Memphis,
| Baton Rouge, Tulsa, Baltimore, Albuquerque, Detroit,
| Mobile, Cincinnati, Toledo, Des Moines, Seattle,
| Indianapolis, Spokane, St. Louis, San Bernadino,
| Bakersfield, Kansas City, Oklahoma City, Milwaukee,
| Buffalo, Minneapolis, Durham, Orlando, Wichita... And I
| can't be bothered to list the next 30, all of whom also
| have more burglaries per capita than SF, and most of
| which also have more assaults, murders, and rapes.
|
| LA is #73 on the burglary index, by the way.
|
| You're making a lot of claims, and providing zero data
| for them.
|
| > These crime rates are what's reported by the police and
| they refuse to take reports of anything that hasn't
| escalated
|
| Please provide a shred of evidence that this doesn't
| happen in any of the other other cities listed in https:/
| /en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
|
| Why even bother arguing this question, if all you have is
| anecdotes, speculation and just-so stories?
| LawTalkingGuy wrote:
| > Why even bother arguing this question
|
| I live in two of the drug cities and visit others, and
| pay taxes that support many of these policies
| specifically. Do you live in one of the west-coast cities
| in question, or is this an abstract political battle for
| you? If you live here, do you feel you're a
| representative resident?
|
| > if all you have is anecdotes, speculation and just-so
| stories?
|
| Well, there's the crux of it, these are anecdotes that
| have happened to me personally. Over decades of
| experience and watching things change. And there's tons
| of data collected by victims but as has been pointed out,
| the news often chooses to report on _acknowledged crime_
| where a police officer has been sent out and taken a
| report. FB groups where people log violent street
| interactions or businesses ' windows being broken show a
| definite uptick that government statistics don't. I know
| it's true because I walk past enough of those broken
| windows and stabbing sites to provide a reality check for
| what I'm seeing published.
|
| We know that there are vastly more actual rapes than
| reported rapes and punished rapes. Why it is so
| unreasonable that there are vastly more actual attacks
| and robberies than reported?
|
| > [other cities] all of whom also have more burglaries
| per capita than SF, and most of which also have more
| assaults, murders, and rapes.
|
| Perception of livability despite violent crime has a lot
| to do with the localization of that crime. If only
| certain areas, at certain times, are dangerous - and if
| those areas are ones that can be avoided - then you can
| generally just go elsewhere with your family and be fine.
| That's the liberal way SF and such used to work. Sure,
| there were sleezy places but the street people would even
| helpfully and quietly warn tourists - "Hey bud, there's a
| lot of drugs down here, you should really take your kids
| a few blocks that way."
|
| But once it spills over into random attacks outside that
| area, such that you can be killed at the busiest coffee
| shop in the city, the entire veneer of safety goes away.
|
| We're saying two main things: that _it got bad really
| quickly_ and predictably, and it 's _being officially
| downplayed_.
|
| > Please provide a shred of evidence that this doesn't
| happen in any of the other other cities listed in
|
| It's somewhat annoying that what should be an issue of
| local policy ends up being purity-checked by people
| trying to decide if we're too partisan in national
| politics. We're talking about our policies, not trying to
| claim that other cities can't fail just as hard as we are
| but with a different set of errors.
| stickfigure wrote:
| It feels a bit like you're championing a narrative of "See,
| it's not so bad! You'll just get your stuff stolen and your car
| vandalized!" I wouldn't feel so smug about that.
|
| I lived in SF for ~15 years, experienced multiple car breakins
| (when I had a car) and one weird guy who walked up to me on the
| street and said "I have a gun and I'm going to shoot you"
| (which I somehow calmly ignored). For the record, I didn't
| comment in that thread and I generally don't feel the need to
| bash SF in public - I just simply moved out.
| davidgerard wrote:
| No, it would be the narrative where multiple HN commenters in
| the previous thread took this as a launching point to call
| for a full authoritarian crackdown of the homeless.
| testbjjl wrote:
| > I just simply moved out.
|
| Thank you!
| medellin wrote:
| It's impossible to reason with anyone from SF who thinks the
| city isn't that bad. Reality is most large cities are
| absolute trash now. But at least where i live i can talk with
| people who aren't living in some reality distortion field
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >It's impossible to reason with anyone from SF who thinks
| the city isn't that bad. Reality is most large cities are
| absolute trash now. But at least where i live i can talk
| with people who aren't living in some reality distortion
| field
|
| I'm 56 years old and have lived in NYC for most of my life.
| And I can tell you (and provide appropriate statistics if
| you're unwilling or unable to look for that easily
| available data) that NYC (I can't speak to SF, although my
| brother and his family lived there for many years --
| including in the Tenderloin -- and I found it a delightful
| place) is enormously safer and cleaner than it was for the
| first 35 or so years of my life.
|
| When I was a child, there were street gangs in most
| neighborhoods, people would put signs on their car windows
| noting the lack of valuables inside in hopes of not having
| their windows smashed (In one case, circa 1978-80 I saw a
| car with its window smashed and the little sign that had
| been on the window saying "no radio, nothing of value, and
| the perpetrator of the vandalism wrote "just checking" on
| the sign). You almost _never_ see that any more.
|
| Streetwalkers were in most neighborhoods (even the nice
| neighborhoods), leaving used condoms to litter the streets
| every morning, Times Square was a shithole. No Disney store
| -- mostly just porn shops and peep shows, and with con
| artists, robbers and other miscreants.
|
| Cocaine (crack, mostly) was openly sold on street corners
| even in wealthy neighborhoods.
|
| Homicides in 2020 were less than 1/3 what they were in
| 1980[0] (and while that number increased significantly in
| 1987, that was because of a change in classification when
| "cause of death" was "unknown", the death being classed as
| "homicide" whereas previously, those were not included in
| "homicides" previously[1].
|
| So, no. Large cities (and SF among them -- although NYC is,
| on a per-capita basis even safer than SF) in the US are,
| for the most part, enormously safer than they were even 15
| years ago.
|
| And since you don't seem to have much of an idea of what's
| really going on (and maybe don't care if it doesn't fit
| your trained-in prejudices?), I'll give you a tl;dr: You're
| talking out of your ass and it smells that way too. Yuck!
|
| [0] https://criminaljustice.cityofnewyork.us/wp-
| content/uploads/...
|
| [1] I searched around a bit, but couldn't find anything
| online, but that's true for a lot of news from before 2005
| or so. But it was big news, because (see graph in [0]
| above) "homicides" increased significantly due to this
| change.
|
| Edit: Fixed typo.
| JoeJonathan wrote:
| I miss the 1970s, when big cities were just swell!
| spaceguillotine wrote:
| This happened to me in much smaller and "safer" cities as
| well. This is America
| confidantlake wrote:
| I also lived in San Francisco. Was never threatened by a
| random weirdo. Lived in a different city and was threatened
| (he said he would beat me to death). But somehow the city I
| live doesn't have constant bellyaching about how dangerous it
| is despite having a higher violent crime rate than San
| Francisco.
| idopmstuff wrote:
| The problem with saying that SF has relatively low violent
| crime is that it ignores the constant, extremely aggressive
| verbal assault that people are just accustomed to. In the
| years I lived there, I had people scream at me that they were
| going to kill/stab/etc. me at least a couple of dozen times
| (I would describe this as violent crime). Of course, if you
| call SFPD, they'll just tell you it's not an issue and ignore
| you, so those don't go into any statistics.
| nostrademons wrote:
| You just learn to tune it out. Crazy people gonna crazy.
| It's like the announcements that come over the PA at
| airports for "Please report any unattended baggage - if you
| see something, say something", or 99% of what the news
| media writes, or Putin's threats to nuke the West, or the
| breathless pitches of startup founders that they're going
| to change the world.
| cemerick wrote:
| You're right, "violent crime" is a term of art that
| involves the commission of a...crime. "Verbal assault" is
| not assault. I guess if you don't like the vibes in a
| place, you can go somewhere else, but trying to use such
| things to influence how people talk about or perceive
| _actual_ , no, _for real_ crime is intellectual
| malpractice.
| pbourke wrote:
| Your comments are disingenuous. A decline in the quality
| of life in a city due to crime, substance abuse,
| homelessness and untreated mental health disorders has an
| immense affect on one's well being. That goes doubly so
| for people with spouses and children.
|
| If you are confronted by a mentally ill person screaming
| threats at you, is your first thought to seek comfort in
| the violent crime stats? You must be some kind of robot,
| if so.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| We should convince the SF tourism board to use this
| motto. Come to San Francisco, where our vibe is constant
| threats of murder but you probably won't actually get
| murdered!
| Swizec wrote:
| Just to offer a counter-anecdote: In 8 years of living in
| SOMA, which has the 2nd highest crime rate after
| Tenderloin, nobody has even once threatened to kill me.
| Or even hinted at wanting me harm.
|
| Property crime is a different story. That has indeed been
| a problem.
| y-curious wrote:
| My first time in SOMA I had a homeless guy almost piss on
| my shoes followed by another guy shadow-stabbing with a
| real knife and pointing at me. Let's call it a mulligan.
| SllX wrote:
| Why even offer a counter-anecdote? Are you trying to give
| the impression to impressionable people that not every
| person gets threatened with murder on a regular basis
| here? That's true, but it seems like you're just trying
| to discount one person's lived experience. I know women
| that get groped on MUNI regularly but not every woman
| gets groped on MUNI. People don't usually threaten me,
| but I've stopped people from threatening others in front
| of me. Hell, I've stopped a guy from trying to roll
| another guy sleeping on the street into oncoming traffic.
| Nobody has ever stolen my phone from me, but that doesn't
| mean phones have never been stolen from people.
|
| And before you go to the stats, just remember something:
| lies, damned lies and statistics. If the police don't get
| involved, there's no police report. If the DA doesn't
| charge a crime, there's no "crime" even if there actually
| is. Homicides and property crimes tend to leave the most
| evidence behind, but those aren't the only crimes that
| matter and even the criminal amounts of piss and shit
| around just the MUNI and BART stations probably isn't
| generating any police reports either. Verbal harassment
| and threats also don't tend to generate enough of the
| right kind of paperwork to make it into the stats, but it
| doesn't make it less real.
| Swizec wrote:
| > Why even offer a counter-anecdote?
|
| To say that "constant threats of murder" does not
| accurately describe SF.
| SllX wrote:
| Against a deliberately facetious post someone made that
| was a follow-on to a follow-on of somebody else's
| anecdote?
|
| Let me put it this way: needing to counter an anecdote
| with your own comes across as unsympathetic at worst and
| apathetic at best. "Yeah that happened to you, so what?
| It doesn't happen to me!" kinda vibes.
|
| It happens enough that too many people have these stories
| about San Francisco. They're the kinds of things that can
| happen anywhere, but San Francisco is one of the places
| where it is talked about as happening a lot.
| Swizec wrote:
| You are right.
|
| I think what gets me is the underlying classism that
| oozes out of these conversations everywhere I turn.
| People here (in SFBA) are oh so liberal and progressive
| ... as long as the undesirables aren't in _their_
| neighborhood. Then suddenly everyone's pearl clutching.
|
| For the most part they mean you no harm. Just because
| people are poor, doesn't mean they're dangerous.
|
| One of the dumbest examples was when a neighbor asked me
| to stop putting cardboard boxes in recycling because "it
| attracts the bad element and then they camp in our
| street". Ffs man they're homeless, let them have a damn
| box.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| The homeless people you're advocating for are the worst
| victims of the homeless people being criticized in this
| thread. You do no favors for people who happen to be poor
| by providing cover for the crazies.
|
| If there were more being done about the people
| threatening violence, intentionally urinating on
| passersby, molesting women, accosting people in the
| streets, your neighbor would likely be less concerned
| about the cardboard box people.
| handoflixue wrote:
| Threatening to assault someone is, in fact, a real crime.
| You cannot, legally, go around "screaming that you're
| going to kill/stab/etc." people. Looks like Penal Code
| 422, if you need a concrete reference for California
| specifically
| LawTalkingGuy wrote:
| You're wrong. Verbal assault is assault, and is violence,
| because it leads to the _reasonable expectation_ of
| violence. You don 't know if the crazy person threatening
| to kill you will actually try to do it so you have to
| imagine that they will.
|
| --
|
| Sorry Dang, you're right.
| dang wrote:
| You broke the site guidelines badly with this comment and
| have been breaking them in other places too. We ban
| accounts that post like this, so would you please stop?
|
| If you'd please review
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and
| stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
| marcinzm wrote:
| Menacing/verbal threats/criminal threats are a real crime
| in most places including California.
| bigtex88 wrote:
| You've got a really weird black and white view of these
| things. As long as people aren't literally murdering you
| then it's ok? The idea that "real crime" only happens
| AFTER the actual crime has taken place is super bizarre.
| That's not how the world works.
|
| Go find me a city that has people that are super happy
| and nice to each other and also has a high murder rate.
| Wait, I bet you can't.
|
| Talking about the petty crime and the "vibe" is
| absolutely on topic for this, because that sort of
| laissez-faire attitude leads to murders like the one
| we're discussing.
| jjulius wrote:
| >Talking about the petty crime and the "vibe" is
| absolutely on topic for this, because that sort of
| laissez-faire attitude leads to murders like the one
| we're discussing.
|
| ... you mean the murder in question that, as we've found
| out in this article/thread, has nothing to do with the
| "petty crime" and "vibe" that you're referring to?
| bigtex88 wrote:
| Still seems like a good opportunity to me to bring up the
| general "whatever" nature in SF regarding crime. Perhaps
| this stabbing took place because the assailant felt more
| brazen knowing that the police in that city won't do
| anything?
|
| Let's just let the homeless and the mentally deranged do
| whatever they want in SF. That's definitely a good way to
| run a modern city. Better than hurting their feelings! /s
| jjulius wrote:
| >Let's just let the homeless and the mentally deranged do
| whatever they want in SF. That's definitely a good way to
| run a modern city. Better than hurting their feelings! /s
|
| If that's the takeaway you're getting from this comment
| chain, I really don't know what else to tell you.
| smolder wrote:
| > The idea that "real crime" only happens AFTER the
| actual crime has taken place is super bizarre.
|
| Huh? A crime must take place for... a crime to have taken
| place. It's tautological.
|
| Threatening people is not usually a crime, but that
| depends. If it's a problem in SF, they could probably
| make it a crime.
| projectazorian wrote:
| > Go find me a city that has people that are super happy
| and nice to each other and also has a high murder rate.
| Wait, I bet you can't.
|
| Many Mexican and Brazilian cities have much higher murder
| rates and people are still generally happier and nicer
| than in the US, especially if SF is the basis for
| comparison.
| zo1 wrote:
| [flagged]
| projectazorian wrote:
| Which "tough" practices do police need access to?
| Extrajudicial beatings and murder? Torture? Tell us
| please, don't hide behind euphemism.
| zo1 wrote:
| How about arresting them for the crimes they commit.
| That's more than enough.
| giantrobot wrote:
| > Couple that with police not really being able to be
| tough on degenerate hood youths and voila
|
| Police should terrorize anyone you don't like. Awesome
| system you're proposing.
| idopmstuff wrote:
| The problem is you actually don't understand what assault
| is. Assault does not involving actually touching someone
| - that's battery. What you're describing as verbal
| assault is actually assault and is a real crime,
| generally considered to be violent crime in crime
| statistics.
| cemerick wrote:
| The only thing I'm "championing" (just pointing out, really)
| is that certain populations seem to enjoy using anecdotal
| tragedy to promote their own quasi-apocalyptic worldview re:
| _some_ American cities, despite all available data
| contradicting that worldview.
|
| I'm sure everyone here appreciates the update on your locale,
| and your own stories of property crime and/or non-criminal
| (yet perhaps unnerving?) personal interactions. Alas, none of
| that appears to be relevant to either the submitted story, or
| homicide or any other violent crime.
| hermitdev wrote:
| It's not just this tragedy, it's any tragedy. Every time
| there's a mass shooting, people use it as a rallying cry
| for more gun control, rather than focusing on fixing the
| issues that actually led to the violence (usually severe
| mental health issues), as if people haven't used knives or
| vehicles to commit mass murder/violence. Never let a good
| tragedy go to waste, so the saying goes.
| comte7092 wrote:
| > usually severe mental health issues
|
| Do you have a citation on that?
|
| I am not fully researched on this topic, but as a lay
| observer it appear that the gun rights side basically
| categorizes anyone who is willing to commit a mass
| shooting as mentally ill, and hence every mass shooting
| is a result of mental illness by definition. But it does
| not follow that mass shooters are mentally ill by any
| professional standards.
| [deleted]
| suzzer99 wrote:
| And yet the US is the only place where mass shootings
| resulting in 5+ deaths regularly happen.
| notch898b wrote:
| [dead]
| mhoad wrote:
| It's actually nothing like that at all. People keep
| bringing it up because the US has the second highest
| number of gun related deaths of any country in the entire
| world.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| hermitdev claimed that if guns weren't available, people
| would use knives or cars instead. So the fact that gun
| related deaths are higher in the US is irrelevant. And
| they do have a point: knife murders are more common in
| Europe than they are in the US.
|
| But not by much. The fact that the murder rate in the US
| is 7X the murder rate in Europe is a much more relevant
| statistic.
| ToValueFunfetti wrote:
| ~25% of the murders in the US are already committed
| without guns, so even if you removed gun crime outright
| and no one decided to commit the same crime with a
| different weapon, the US would still have ~2x the murder
| rate of Europe. Not that this is a case against gun
| control, as we're still (very theoretically) saving
| ~15,000 lives a year. But it does suggest that there is a
| cause for the differing rates that is not related to
| guns.
| rubyn00bie wrote:
| Sources please. This reads like a NRA ad full of lies.
| dmoy wrote:
| FBI:
|
| https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-
| the-u.s.-...
|
| It's about 28-35% of homicides without guns
| dmoy wrote:
| (note you may also be interested to learn from that table
| that knives are used ~5x more frequently than all rifles
| in homicide)
| ToValueFunfetti wrote:
| Here's the murder weapon statistics for 2019 from the
| FBI[1]. This only includes homicides for which the weapon
| is known. We'll assume that the rest match the
| distribution, though I suspect if you can't identify the
| weapon, there probably aren't bullet holes.
|
| Summing total homicides gives 13,927. Summing total
| firearm homicides gives 10,258. 10,258/13,927 = 77.15%. I
| admit I did not do initially do that work and instead
| summed percentages from this infographic[2], arriving at
| 26.3% non-firearm homicide. I can't explain the
| discrepancy, as they point to the same data. The total
| homicide count is 5 higher on the FBI site, so possibly
| the page was updated later on. I point this out to
| clarify that I rounded the percentage down, which is why
| I felt comfortable with .25 * 7 ~= 2, though the answer
| with the new percentage is 1.59. I'd round to 1.5 if I
| did it again.
|
| If you want a source for Europe's homicide rate being 1/7
| that of the US, you'll have to ask the person I was
| replying to. Wikipedia[3] says Europe's murder rate is
| 3.0 and the US is 6.5, but I expect the person here was
| restricting it to the EU or something else along those
| lines (also various sources differ, and it's something
| that changes over time). I don't think the restriction
| changes either of our points, as long as the 7x number
| does really exist.
|
| I can't recall ever having seen an NRA ad but I don't
| imagine my comment sounds anything like one. If the NRA
| really does say in their ads that they're not making a
| case against gun control and that it could save 15,000
| lives a year, I don't have a problem sounding like them.
|
| [1] https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-
| the-u.s.-...
|
| [2] https://infographicjournal.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2021/05/we...
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_in
| tention...
| mhoad wrote:
| The point you seem to be making doesn't really hold up to
| even a light level of scrutiny.
|
| There is not any evidence what so ever that a person who
| might commit a murder with a gun would just use the next
| available option to them such as a knife. That was
| something that was just introduced to the discussion as a
| fact when in reality it's something you have made up.
|
| In fact it's immediately clear that to most people they
| are two very different things precisely because one of
| them is literally just pushing a button.
|
| There is a reason why the murder rate is 7x higher
| because the access to guns requires a much lower buy in
| to commit the act in the first place.
|
| Hence why people argue for stricter gun control laws.
| Mass access is precisely the problem.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| > The point you seem to be making doesn't really hold up
| to even a light level of scrutiny.
|
| What point do you think I'm making? Because I think
| you're trying to reiterate the same point.
| MrOwnPut wrote:
| so you think these gangs are just going to not kill
| people anymore because all guns magically disappeared?
|
| you do know when they don't have access to guns in prison
| they then shank people with whatever they can sharpen,
| right?
| mhoad wrote:
| You are responding to a claim that nobody made and then
| introducing another "fact" that isn't actually relevant
| to the conversation.
|
| The argument isn't that all murder stops. It's that it
| goes down, dramatically when you remove guns from the
| equation.
| Jochim wrote:
| There's much less opportunity to attack someone with a
| knife and it involves a lot more personal risk. You're
| likely to get stabbed back unless they're totally
| unprepared. It's much more difficult to do a "drive by
| knifing".
| bigtex88 wrote:
| It's a lot harder to murder a large number of people with
| a knife than a gun.
| MrOwnPut wrote:
| what about a van? and there's been plenty of mass
| stabbings.
|
| focus on getting rid of gangs, your gun murder rate will
| plummet.
|
| noone seems to care about the 20-60 shootings per day in
| gun-free Chicago.
|
| all of those criminals don't seem to respect the gun
| laws...
|
| the only thing that happens when you restrict guns in the
| US is you take away the ability for law-abiding citizens
| to defend themselves.
| mhoad wrote:
| And yet... there's no vehicular homicide crime wave but
| 8/10 murders in the country involve a gun
| https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/02/03/what-
| the-da...
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| "Where effective tool is available it's used"
|
| Isn't really the gotcha you might think.
|
| We know who uses guns to kill people, we know who they
| kill. You don't see those on the news because no one
| wants to talk about it.
|
| Of the 10,000 murders or so per year with firearms, over
| 66% are drug and gang related.
| mhoad wrote:
| We both understand the concept that the US has more than
| 1 major social problem at the same time right and that
| other countries also have comparable levels of gang
| membership but wildly different murder rates.
| MrOwnPut wrote:
| So everyone who is currently killing each other with guns
| will see their enemy gang in the street and not decide to
| slash them because they are too lazy? They only wanted to
| shoot them?
|
| It's the type of gangs in America, it's not about "gang
| membership" or whatever metric you're trying to throw
| out.
|
| They shank people with tooth brushes in prison. MS-13
| decapitates people with axes. It's the gangs, not the
| guns.
|
| Chicago and many cities in America would be safer with
| more legal guns, less gangsters.
| mhoad wrote:
| It's really difficult to pretend this is a serious
| comment.
|
| It's just so all over the place responding to arguments
| that no one ever made with a series of facts you seem to
| have taken from who knows where.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| [flagged]
| [deleted]
| krferriter wrote:
| A person with a few full magazines and a semiauto rifle
| in a crowded place, and not much concern about surviving,
| can kill dozens of people in a couple minutes before
| there's any chance of someone else with a gun being able
| to stop them. I'm not aware of someone doing this with a
| knife. Seems like it's always a gun. Probably because a
| gun makes it really easy to kill people quickly.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| _I 'm not aware of someone doing this with a knife_
|
| Guns are clearly more deadly than knives, so I am not
| intending to equate them, but mass casualty knife attacks
| also happen.
|
| 10 dead, 15 hospitalized in Canada mass stabbing attacks,
| police say:
|
| https://www.cbsnews.com/news/canada-stabbing-
| saskatchewan-de...
|
| Six people were killed and 14 injured after a knife-
| wielding man stabbed passersby on a pedestrian shopping
| street in the eastern Chinese city of Anqing:
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/09/china/china-knife-attacks-
| mic...
|
| At least 15 killed, dozens injured in knifing near Tokyo
|
| https://www.jacksonville.com/story/news/nation-
| world/2016/07...
| cmh89 wrote:
| The person you replied to said
|
| "A person with a few full magazines and a semiauto rifle
| in a crowded place, and not much concern about surviving,
| _can kill dozens of people in a couple minutes_ before
| there 's any chance of someone else with a gun being able
| to stop them. I'm not aware of someone doing this with a
| knife.
|
| The Canadian incident took place over days and 13
| different locations. The other two incidents don't say
| how long they took but it just takes way longer to kill
| people with a knife than a gun.
| atchoo wrote:
| I don't consider two of those to be good comparisons to
| mass shootings of the "kill dozens of people in a couple
| minutes" variety.
|
| The Saskatchewan stabbings were attacks at 13 separate
| locations across a sparsely populated reservation rather
| than a single mass casualty event.
|
| The Sagamihara stabbings were attacks on sleeping
| disabled patients inside a care home. It reminds me more
| of Angel of Death type mass killings (by nurses /
| doctors). He considered it to be euthanasia and the
| weapon could have been a pillow - the mass killing was
| not down to the deadliness of the weapon but the
| passivity of the victims.
|
| The Anqing attack is a better example - a single event
| against conscious victims. Nevertheless, mass stabbings
| across the whole globe are rarer than the daily mass
| shootings in the US.
| bigtex88 wrote:
| [flagged]
| ruph123 wrote:
| > Every time there's a mass shooting [...]
|
| If this is a valid premise, then you know you are doing
| something wrong as a society. Mass shootings are common
| place in the US (with currently 177 mass shootings this
| year so far). This is not normal.
| dmoy wrote:
| It depends entirely on the definition of mass shooting.
|
| If you use the FBI's active shooting definition, there's
| closer to 15-20 per year on a 20 year average.
|
| https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/active-shooter-
| incidents...
|
| If you use the GVA definition, which includes a whole lot
| of other things, then yes. But the GVA's dataset is
| somewhat suspect.
|
| For example this qualifies as a mass shooting in the GVA:
|
| https://www.atlantapd.org/Home/Components/News/News/4031/
| 631
| txsoftwaredev wrote:
| US isn't even close to the top of the list for mass
| shootings in the world and it is not "common place". Most
| "mass" shootings, which could be just three individuals,
| are gang related and added to the data for mass
| shootings.
| dmoy wrote:
| Not even three. GVA includes a lot of incidents with just
| two individuals being shot, so long as at least two other
| people are present for the incident.
| screye wrote:
| On the other hand, I feel like it takes an incredibly
| public tragedy for a platform for HN to tolerate any
| discussions around SF crime.
|
| People want to talk about crime, drugs & homelessness all
| the time. It is only in high profile cases where the issues
| seem topical, that HN can't discourage discussion around
| them.
|
| > quasi-apocalyptic worldview re: some American cities
|
| I don't see why speaking out about lack of police
| enforcement is seen as 'quasi-apocalyptic'.
|
| > despite all available data contradicting that worldview
|
| All available data is in favor of those speaking out about
| crime & drugs in west coast cities. Additionally, the eye
| test seems to portray a situation that's more dire than
| even the data might suggest. (underreporting, catch &
| release).
| hindsightbias wrote:
| You must have some filter on. There are literally
| thousands of HN posts in the last few years about housing
| and crime and hundreds of which devolved into the
| dystopian hellhole memes endemic in the HN ideosphere.
|
| The quickest path to karma at HN is to post anything
| about BA housing.
| RC_ITR wrote:
| > platform for HN to tolerate any discussions around SF
| crime.
|
| I think we all live in our own bubbles, because I see _so
| much_ discussion of SF crime.
|
| I also think it's important to note that there is a
| _huge_ difference between "should we prevent random
| street killings?" and "how much effort should SFPD exert
| to protect cars when the majority of _actual SF
| residents_ don 't even own one?"
|
| EDIT: Just to cite my sources: [0] shows 397k registered
| cars in SF [1] shows 810k residents.
|
| [0] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv-research-
| reports/research-...
|
| [1] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/sanfranc
| iscocit...
| ribosometronome wrote:
| >I also think it's important to note that there is a huge
| difference between "should we prevent random street
| killings?" and "how much effort should SFPD exert to
| protect cars when the majority of actual SF residents
| don't even own one?"
|
| Hmm, the vast majority of tourists in Orlando aren't
| Orlando residents, but if I got murdered back in my hotel
| on a Disneyworld trip, I would hope they'd be willing to
| at least poke into it.
| RC_ITR wrote:
| Again, I agree _murders_ are important to discuss, but it
| is not a good idea to talk about smash and grabs like
| they _are murders_.
| dang wrote:
| Yes, it's common for one and the same topic to be
| perceived as both hideously overrepresented and hideously
| underrepresented on HN.
|
| Even the very most popular stories get perceived as being
| suppressed--for a striking example see
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35296170.
| [deleted]
| Guid_NewGuid wrote:
| Just to reinforce what you say here
|
| > I think we all live in our own bubbles, because I see
| so much discussion of SF crime.
|
| As a European on this platform it's ceaseless whinging
| about the state of SF and how the "woke mob" are ruining
| San Francisco and the state of the Tenderloin versus
| Mission or Market or whatever and I don't particularly
| care to know.
|
| Like I've started to learn the parts of a city I have no
| particular interest in visiting from repeated stories
| about how someone shouted and pooped in the street
| because of boogeyman de jour.
|
| Definitely feels like maybe YC could make a "local HN" to
| save the rest of us from these circular discussions.
| wpietri wrote:
| I appreciate you saying so. As a 20-year SF resident I
| wondered if it was just confirmation bias making me think
| those topics/views were incredibly common. But it's at
| the point where I'd almost rather deal with Bitcoin
| boosters.
| TylerE wrote:
| 18% of that 810k is under 18.
|
| 397k for 664k adults means a 59.8% car ownership rate.
| RC_ITR wrote:
| I think it is important to note that police do not only
| protect adult residents.
| rchaud wrote:
| Because HN is a technology discussion board with a
| worldwide audience, not a local politics one. YCombinator
| isn't even based in SF.
|
| When the CEO of YCombinator blocks people on Twitter for
| disagreeing with him online on SF politics[0], it tells
| me I don't want HN to be a haven for that.
|
| [0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32639125
| JeremyHerrman wrote:
| FWIW, he mass blocks people who have _never_ interacted
| with him on twitter. If you happen to like a tweet from
| an account that he doesn't like, you're blocked!
|
| I get that people need to protect their feeds for their
| mental health, but I'd expect a public figure to have
| thicker skin and not default to hitting the scorched-
| earth-mega-auto-block button so often.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| I wouldn't really take who YCombinator execs have blocked
| with much of an indication of anything. It's a badge of
| honor to be blocked by Paul Graham over something silly
| and petty.
| rchaud wrote:
| I'm referring to blocking people specifically over SF
| politics, as per his own comment, linked to above.
| p_j_w wrote:
| It's indicative of the exec's desire to actually engage
| on a topic with people who might disagree with them.
| That's a big issue with how much control they can
| potentially exert on this site.
| Rekksu wrote:
| What does "SF crime" have to do with the content that is
| expected on hackernews?
| shadowgovt wrote:
| > People want to talk about crime, drugs & homelessness
| all the time. It is only in high profile cases where the
| issues seem topical, that HN can't discourage discussion
| around them.
|
| Indeed, because that's not what this forum is for.
| There's ten thousand fora online for general, local, or
| city-policy political discussion; those topics are only
| germane in this forum when they relate to tech or the
| processes of tech.
| kevingadd wrote:
| Crime - and SF crime specifically - frequently gets
| discussed on HN when crime-related stories make it to the
| front page. You're not paying attention if you think the
| site has a zero-tolerance policy for it.
| kolinko wrote:
| Considering that a large population of sf tech is migrants,
| many people, myself included, compare it not to other
| American cities but to European and Asian ones.
|
| I would say that the comparison is apt - since we compare
| the tech/science successes of SF with the rest of the
| world, we should also compare the crime rates with it.
| RC_ITR wrote:
| I didn't like the direction of this comment. All cities are
| good and bad in their own way for the people that live
| there.
| politician wrote:
| It might be helpful for you to take a class on gun safety
| to reduce the anxiety you have about seeing guns.
| Remember, the police also open carry because peaceful
| open carry is primarily about deterrence.
|
| Brandishing a weapon is legally different from open
| carry, and is already a crime. Brandishing means to draw
| or exhibit the weapon in a threatening manner, or to use
| it in a fight, other than in lawful self-defense.
| wpietri wrote:
| > certain populations seem to enjoy using anecdotal tragedy
| to promote their own quasi-apocalyptic worldview re: some
| American cities
|
| For those interested in the topic, I recommend Loewen's
| "Sundown Towns". My copy's on loan, but I think it's in Ch
| 11, "The Effects of Sundown Towns on Whites" that he talks
| about the culture among descendants of white-flight
| suburbanites, their low-to-no-experience views on the
| horrors of the city, where Those People run rampant. Many
| are terrified of even going to cities. To people who
| actually live in the cities, their view is almost
| unrecognizable.
|
| As an example from something in my feed reader today [1],
| take Theo Wold, a former Deputy Assistant to the President
| for Policy (under Trump) and current Idaho Solicitor
| General. He quote-tweeted a photo of a white woman hugging
| two Black men. They were the Tennessee Three, the state
| legislators who were under threat of expulsion for protest.
|
| His comment: "Every Red State will have to wrestle with the
| fetid, urban Leftist vote sinks. That begins with asking
| the question: why does the GOP continue to push the
| annexation/development of rural land that only grows the
| size and power of Leftist strongholds?"
|
| Fetid stronghold sinks! Sounds pretty bad. In our favor, at
| least we have taco trucks on every corner.
|
| It reminds me of nothing so much as this bit from Chairman
| Mao: "It is very necessary for the educated youth to go to
| the countryside to be reeducated by the poor and lower-
| middle peasants. Cadres and other people in the cities
| should be persuaded to send their sons and daughters who
| have completed junior or senior middle school, college or
| university, to the countryside. Let us mobilize."
|
| [1] https://balloon-juice.com/2023/04/13/late-night-open-
| thread-...
| idopmstuff wrote:
| Someone saying that the have a gun and are going to shoot
| you is very clearly assault, which is a criminal act. It
| would generally quality as a violent crime in statistics
| (if SFPD took reports of threats of violence, which they
| will not).
|
| While we should use data, we should also understand where
| there may be issues with the data that we're using.
| runjake wrote:
| We should also take practical steps to increase your
| chances of survival, which, if someone says this to you:
|
| - Keep an eye on their hands.
|
| - Attempt to de-escalate the person.
|
| - If they brandish a weapon in extreme close proximity to
| yourself, use both your hands to firmly grab onto the
| hand/wrist that's holding the weapon and extend your arms
| fully (using your skeleton to maintain that distance and
| provide added strength). Your focus should be on
| controlling that hand so they don't stab or shoot you.
| Yes, you may incur injury regardless, this is what's
| colloquially known as a "shit sandwich".
|
| - Increase distance and vacate the area as soon as
| possible. If they have a gun, run in a zig zag pattern
| and seek cover (blocks bullets) or concealment (hides
| you, but doesn't stop bullets).
|
| - Once you are safe, then report the incident to law
| enforcement (if they'll do anything).
| jstarfish wrote:
| You mean well, but this is Hollywood-grade advice for
| close quarters encounters.
|
| Arms extended gives you the least possible leverage. Like
| when cops in movies run around with gun drawn at arms'
| length (the Weaver stance is _for target shooting_ ). To
| disarm a gun-wielding opponent, you want to get in close,
| grab the weapon from both sides securely ( _hug_ it) and
| do a dead drop. Unless you 're fighting The Rock, they
| can't hold both you and the weapon. Unless you _are_ The
| Rock, you 'll probably get killed grappling with them any
| other way.
|
| Don't do this for knives. Just stay the length of two
| arms + 1 beer bottle away from them.
|
| I don't have any advice for swords but anyone who comes
| at you with one isn't playing by conventional rules, so
| run like hell.
|
| The zig zag thing is a myth. It works in Counter-Strike,
| but you'll just end up dying an embarrassing death in
| reality. The only zig zagging you should be doing is
| _from_ cover to cover. Get _to_ cover as directly as
| possible. This isn 't The OA...interpretive dance won't
| save you.
|
| PROTIP: As cover goes, cars are made of the same stuff as
| beer cans and glass. The IC engine block is the only part
| that will actually stop a bullet. EVs are explosive.
| idopmstuff wrote:
| I can't imagine you live in SF, because this is just bad
| advice.
|
| You don't attempt to de-escalate. You completely ignore.
| You do not try to grab their wrist. If they brandish a
| weapon, you run.
|
| You don't report the incident to law enforcement, because
| they do not care and will do nothing.
| treeman79 wrote:
| And depending on the DA you'll be thrown in jail if you
| defend yourself.
| [deleted]
| ambulancechaser wrote:
| The gist of your point is 100% correct. I just want to
| point out that under the common law definition of assault
| (and i have no idea what definitions are in effect in
| SF), the fact that the person calmly ignored them points
| that this might not be assault.
|
| > Assault is generally defined as an intentional act that
| puts another person in reasonable apprehension of
| imminent harmful or offensive contact. No physical injury
| is required, but the actor must have intended to cause a
| harmful or offensive contact with the victim and the
| victim must have thereby been put in immediate
| apprehension of such a contact.
|
| Calmly ignoring the threat is evidence that the person
| was not "in immediate apprehension of such a contact".
|
| I only bring this up because i think it's interesting,
| and the underlying point you are making is 100% correct.
| This kind of thing is not normal nor innocent and not to
| be tolerated.
| [deleted]
| stickfigure wrote:
| Oh, I was definitely apprehensive of imminent harm.
|
| More details: Fairly normal-looking dude walked up next
| to me and kept pace for a couple minutes, threatening me
| and calling me "faggot" (which seemed odd, since I was
| walking with my girlfriend at the time). I didn't see an
| actual gun so I figured that the safest course of action
| was to simply ignore him until he presented more of a
| threat or walked away. I guess I bored him so he walked
| away.
|
| The calm took some willpower.
| ambulancechaser wrote:
| For sure. I didn't mean to derail the thread or tell you
| how you feel, just share what I think is an interesting
| aspect of assault as defined in common law. But your
| subjective experience here is exactly what the law means
| to recognize with assault and sounds like it was assault.
| But who knows. Glad the situation fizzled out (usually
| best case scenario)
| Lochleg wrote:
| It's a reasonable belief and fear that person will carry
| out the act. You are probably misinterpreting the
| reasonable part, especially when people mask their
| reaction to try to get away or out of shock / instinct.
| The person making the threats probably gets enjoyment
| from getting a rise out of random strangers. Also,
| returning to the original context, there are too many
| people on the street that have severe mental health
| crises going on and are freely roaming some cities. They
| don't necessarily need to go to be convicted of a crime
| as a solution.
| idopmstuff wrote:
| > I just want to point out that under the common law
| definition of assault (and i have no idea what
| definitions are in effect in SF), the fact that the
| person calmly ignored them points that this might not be
| assault.
|
| This is actually an interesting point of semantics to me.
| I guess it'd really hinge on how you define "calmly" here
| - if you saw me walking my dog while a homeless person
| screamed that he was going to kill me, I would certainly
| appear calm. Even internally, I suspect my heart rate
| would increase but not enormously. Still, I would be very
| alert and mentally prepared for the possibility that this
| person is going to attack me, because I very much believe
| that to be possible. Given that, I would say that I have
| a reasonable apprehension of imminent harm (and I expect
| a lot of San Franciscans are similar in that regard).
| [deleted]
| bigtex88 wrote:
| What an absolutely asinine thing to champion. How does that
| do any good to actually help with "policy" as your initial
| comment seems to intend? All you seem to be doing is acting
| like "I'm smarter than all of you!"
|
| SF is a dangerous city. That seems to be the main point of
| concern here.
| quest88 wrote:
| No one is denying crime is a problem. The point is that
| people were quick attribute this tragedy to yet another
| unprovoked attack, which turned out to be false. But it
| fit the narrative, so it was believed to be true.
| emodendroket wrote:
| Well if we're inventing types of danger out of whole
| cloth and proposing solutions to them they probably won't
| help with anything. We also should probably quantify what
| "dangerous" means if, as both that post and the article
| say, violent crime in San Francisco is actually
| exceptionally _low._
| sanedigital wrote:
| By "certain populations" do you mean a small selection of
| the worst members of almost all populations?
|
| Jumping to conclusions and pushing narratives isn't the
| exclusive purview of any particular group, especially not
| in 2023.
| ajross wrote:
| And as other folks in this topic are pointing out, anecdotes
| like that are simply misleading. San Francisco is not a high
| crime US city. Period. It is not. It is middle-of-the-pack at
| worst. Nor is it getting "worse faster". It saw a crime wave
| across the pandemic that is receding now, just like most of
| the world.
|
| It's just wrong. You're wrong. Any narrative to the effect of
| "SF is unsafe because of ..." is wrong, because SF is _not
| unsafe_ in any measurable way.
|
| And more to the point: those very (wrong) narratives are
| _simply out of control_ among the prevailing demographic here
| on HN. And frankly it 's getting kinda toxic.
| handoflixue wrote:
| > SF is not unsafe in any measurable way.
|
| Well, no. SF is not unsafe in any _measured_ way. You can
| easily observe from this thread, anecdotally, the police
| routinely ignore people shouting threats and other crimes.
| It 's entirely possible that if we actually measured all of
| those, and counted them as the crimes that they are, that
| SF would look remarkably worse.
| ajross wrote:
| Do police measure "shouting threats and other crimes"
| anywhere, though? You're literally inventing a new
| category of crime just to be able to claim SF is the
| worst. Isn't the Occam explanation here that... you're
| just wrong?
|
| Blunt counter-hypothesis: Tech bros are a bunch of
| suburban snowflakes who never lived in a dense urban
| environment before and are addressing their culture clash
| with hate instead of understanding. This is anecdotally
| true in my experience, which means I'm right by your
| logic, no?
| handoflixue wrote:
| > You're literally inventing a new category of crime
|
| There are actual laws against threatening people I'm not
| inventing anything. I grew up in a major city with plenty
| of crime problems, and I still absolutely expected police
| to respond to someone who had a knife and was threatening
| to kill people. Clearly things have gotten worse if
| they're now ignoring such crimes.
|
| > Isn't the Occam explanation here that... you're just
| wrong?
|
| First, I never claimed SF was the worse - I simply said
| we don't have enough information to make reasonable
| conclusions in either direction.
|
| Second, Occam's razor says that if the crime statistics
| are the same in two cities, but we have a ton of
| anecdotal evidence that one city is ignoring certain
| crimes, then that latter city probably has a higher crime
| rate.
|
| If we had page after page of anecdotes that SF techies
| are just snowflakes and what they're responding to is
| totally normal, that would obviously change the equation.
|
| Of course, keep in mind, if you're right, we've simply
| established that EVERY major urban center has a huge
| problem of "crazy people threatening people on a regular
| basis", and that's still an incredibly undesirable
| situation that we want to fix.
|
| I'd also be curious why I don't hear about people from
| New York, London, Seattle, etc. reporting that it's
| totally normal for crazy people to threaten them with a
| knife. Surely there are techbro snowflakes in Seattle, at
| a minimum?
| bitwize wrote:
| > It feels a bit like you're championing a narrative of "See,
| it's not so bad! You'll just get your stuff stolen and your
| car vandalized!" I wouldn't feel so smug about that.
|
| "You can be mad but I guess I don't personally view my car as
| an extension of myself and I've never really felt violated
| any of the 15 or so times my car was broken in to. Once a guy
| accidentally left a cool knife in my car so if it keeps
| happening you might get a little treat." --Seth Rogen
| rchaud wrote:
| > It feels a bit like you're championing a narrative of "See,
| it's not so bad!
|
| Steven Pinker has made a career out of this. Ironically a lot
| of his adherents are quick to jump on the "this is the safest
| time in human history" statistical warbling when discussing
| an issue they feel doesn't personally affect them.
| throwaway29812 wrote:
| It is the safest time in human history. Not for your laptop
| sitting in a car perhaps, but the greater context is
| important.
| handoflixue wrote:
| I mean, violent crime really has fallen dramatically in the
| past 30 years, at least in the US:
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/191219/reported-
| violent-...
|
| That doesn't mean cities like SF aren't outliers, of
| course. But it really is the safest period of US history
| dgs_sgd wrote:
| Steven Pinker made claims about humanity as a whole. We can
| definitely be in the safest period in human history while
| at the same time having some cities that are pretty
| dangerous
| emodendroket wrote:
| I've been accosted by strange people in multiple cities if
| that's the standard of disorder now. Not saying it's nice for
| that to happen but I don't think it says much about SF.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >I've been accosted by strange people in multiple cities if
| that's the standard of disorder now. Not saying it's nice
| for that to happen but I don't think it says much about SF.
|
| As have I. One of the most serious was at the bus station
| in the _huge_ metropolis of Santa Cruz, CA[0] (population
| ~63,000 in 2020).
|
| As I've said elsewhere many, many times: There are assholes
| _everywhere_.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Cruz,_California
| freejazz wrote:
| >It feels a bit like you're championing a narrative of "See,
| it's not so bad! You'll just get your stuff stolen and your
| car vandalized!" I wouldn't feel so smug about that.
|
| You are making the poster's exact point for them. Take a step
| back, breathe, think.
| ipqk wrote:
| You just extrapolated that narrative up in your head. The OP
| said nothing that remotely hinted at that.
| ZanyProgrammer wrote:
| Which all has jack and shit to do with this case.
| Proven wrote:
| [dead]
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| As soon as I saw the reported murder I figured it was a
| business partner who felt scorned, but then HN narrative
| continued for a full week about the lack of safety in SF. While
| things might be bad, random murders by strangers are still a
| rarity compared to targeted killings.
| vimax wrote:
| I find it strange that nobody is mentioning the Hindenburg
| Research report against Square that came out a week before
| the stabbing, and the fact that there's likely a fraud
| investigation underway.
|
| https://hindenburgresearch.com/block/
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| Thank you. There are so many sketchy things going on with
| Square/Block that some bad actors might be involved was
| never surprising to me.
| IndoorPatio wrote:
| +1
| etc-hosts wrote:
| Didn't Lee leave Square a long time ago?
| rajup wrote:
| That goes both ways. I wonder if you would come back to this
| comment when one of your held beliefs are disproven. I won't
| derail this thread into what it might be, but I won't hold my
| breath...
| sidibe wrote:
| Also we are all so proud of being rational and data driven
| while ignoring the actual murder rate in SF, which is well
| below average in America. Now you can say that it's high
| relative to the rest of the world but most people here want to
| shit on SF relative to the USA too.
| txsoftwaredev wrote:
| Literally.
| IndoorPatio wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| To those of us with mental models constructed from data, this
| case is proceeding as expected. If Momeni is guilty I hope he
| admits his guilt.
| qup wrote:
| I haven't been to SF and therefore don't have an opinion.
|
| How is one story really highlighting something? This is just
| one anecdote where it wasn't what people expected, it's not
| proof they're wrong.
|
| (I have no idea if they are, it's just a bad argument)
| cemerick wrote:
| The story contradicts what so many here took as a given, that
| Lee was a victim of stochastic violence in SF. The
| highlighting is in revealing that so many were wrong in
| applying their biases to the original news, and then using
| that to leverage into e.g. condemnations of the city in
| general.
| brookst wrote:
| I mean we all know the reality was that people who don't
| like the very liberal politics of SF were reasoning
| backwards to get to the "liberal politics causes murder"
| confirmation they crave. I don't think anyone even
| pretended that condemnation of the city was a new
| conclusion for them.
| hhgf5yhbd wrote:
| Saying stochastic instead of random doesn't make you seem
| smart, just pretentious
| dang wrote:
| Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| rconti wrote:
| Oh I'd absolutely cop to that. My first thought upon reading
| the article was "holy crap, we were all wrong".
| IndoorPatio wrote:
| This could be an opportunity for people to evaluate the
| accuracy of their mental models.
| JoshTko wrote:
| I was wrong about violent crime, but was right about robbery,
| theft, burglary, and property crime significantly above
| averages (~50%).
| reddog wrote:
| > including current faves Austin and Miami
|
| Austin has 2.57 murders and nonnegligent manslaughters per
| 100K. Same year, SF has 6.35 per 100K. So SF is twice as bad as
| Austin. Your right about Miami though.
|
| But 6.35 isn't bad. The murder rate in St Louis (for
| comparision to the US city with the worst) is 66.07 per 100K.
| And Colima Mexico (worst in the world maybe) is 182 murders per
| 100K.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_homicide_rat...
| brabel wrote:
| Sweden is in the middle of a gang crisis with people murdered
| every week... still, the murder rate over the last several
| years has always been below 1.23 (the highest value, in
| 2020).
|
| https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/SWE/sweden/murder-
| homi...
|
| According to this[1], Sweden had 116 murders in 2022, less
| than the peak in 2020, which was 124. Basic maths tells me
| that' around 1.104 murders per 100K people (current
| population is 10.5 million).
|
| [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/533917/sweden-number-
| of-...
|
| Puts thing into perspective.
| projectazorian wrote:
| Also worth noting that SF contains most of the Bay Area's
| high-crime areas, yet the city limits are much smaller than
| those of most major American cities. So that skews the crime
| rate upwards. There's a similar dynamic at play with several
| other American cities.
| fintechjock wrote:
| If the argument is that SF is high crime because of policy
| decisions, then the line drawing doesn't matter
| projectazorian wrote:
| The line drawing was a policy decision, and it makes
| regional level policymaking near impossible, creating
| adverse incentives for suburban jurisdictions and
| constraining the options of local policymakers in SF.
| It's the cause of many of the Bay Area's current social
| woes.
| y-curious wrote:
| Ok but I wish we could have a database where we DON'T count
| gangbangers killing other gangbangers. Would probably be much
| closer.
| kevstev wrote:
| From what I understand, rural rates of violence are much
| higher than cities per capita:
| https://www.americanprogress.org/article/gun-violence-in-
| rur...
|
| The list of counties with the highest rates of violence
| listed on that article are all southern and rural and not
| known to be associated with gang activity that I am aware
| of.
| skyyler wrote:
| https://www.kxan.com/investigations/homicides-on-the-rise-
| ho...
|
| https://abc7news.com/san-francisco-crime-rate-bob-lee-sf-
| vio...
|
| 2021 numbers put Austin slightly ahead of SF.
| grogenaut wrote:
| I grew up in St Louis. We didn't worry so much about murder
| for cause as someone had to specifically dislike you
| (cheating on/with spouse for example). We just watched the
| street crime rates.
|
| That said moving to the west coast people freak out all the
| time about yearly murder rates that are a weekend in STL.
| somenameforme wrote:
| A lot depends a lot on distribution, which surface level
| stats don't reveal. I've lived in very high crime rates
| that were perfectly safe because it was a mixture of 'don't
| go to these areas' and basic interpersonal stuff. I've also
| lived in areas that were far safer on paper, but were
| substantially more dangerous _for me_ because crime was far
| more 'equal opportunity.' I've no idea of the situation in
| San Francisco but this could easily explain the perception
| : stats relationship.
| nverno wrote:
| Exactly, murder stats aren't necessarily a good measure
| of how safe a city feels to a typical dweller. Many city
| homicides are gang-related, and if the gangs only operate
| in specific areas, killing eachother, the city can still
| feel totally safe to other people. Constant theft really
| weighs on the psyche- needing to worry about everywhere
| you leave your bike locked or park your car is a burden.
|
| To your point, Ulaanbaatar felt like one of the more
| dangerous cities I've been in because people would rob
| foreigners in broad daylight on crowded streets, but I
| don't think there was much homicide at all.
| projectazorian wrote:
| > Constant theft really weighs on the psyche- needing to
| worry about everywhere you leave your bike locked or park
| your car is a burden.
|
| This was my experience living in Chicago. While violent
| crime was much higher than on the West Coast, it was
| highly localized and it remained true that if you didn't
| go looking for trouble, it usually wouldn't find you.
| There is affordable housing and the social safety net
| hasn't completely collapsed so there are many fewer cases
| of out of control mentally ill folks on the streets.
|
| Meanwhile, petty property crime felt like it was much
| lower. Car break-ins definitely happened but it was not
| at all endemic like it seems to be in LA or SF. Although
| I've heard this has changed if you own a Hyundai or Kia
| due to a security vulnerability in many of those cars
| permitting easy hot-wiring. The new security patches
| rolling out will fix that problem, I hope.
| nverno wrote:
| That's interesting about Chicago, that's one city where I
| imagined the murders would've had more of an effect.
|
| It seems impossible that people don't even have to lock
| their bikes in a lot of Asian cities coming from the
| states.
| projectazorian wrote:
| There are several neighborhoods in Chicago with almost
| all the amenities of NYC/SF, low crime, but much lower
| cost of living. Although housing costs in those
| neighborhoods have gone up quite a bit as more and more
| remote workers figure this out.
|
| (yes, it gets cold sometimes, but you can always take
| some of that money you saved by moving and get on a plane
| somewhere warm)
| Aeolun wrote:
| For comparison, Japan has 0.3, the UK has 1.1 and France has
| 1.3.
|
| I know they're in the linked table, just wanted to mention
| that even the best city in the US is still relatively bad.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| Birmingham UK has way higher numbers
|
| https://www.bhamwiki.com/w/Birmingham_homicides_by_year
| Aeolun wrote:
| Holy shit, Birmingham sounds like a fun place to live.
| Guess it's offset by how safe the rest of the UK is.
|
| Of course you are now more likely to die from lack of
| medical care than a murder, so it may not matter too
| much.
| jefftk wrote:
| _> even the best city in the US is still relatively bad_
|
| Your parent didn't mention the "best city in the US"
| though? Per the linked table it seems to be Irvine CA at
| 0.72 per 100k, which would be below average in the UK or
| France.
| eclipxe wrote:
| Zot!
| explaininjs wrote:
| What an incredibly effective way of showcasing murder
| rate isn't everything - you couldn't pay me to live in
| Irvine.
| giantrobot wrote:
| But Irvine has The Spectrum (is it still open?) and...
| The Spectrum! A real cultural nexus.
| emodendroket wrote:
| Yes, the Spectrum is still open.
| emodendroket wrote:
| Others are paying a great deal for the privilege though.
| teacpde wrote:
| Curious what makes Irvine a bad place to live for you?
| explaininjs wrote:
| Takes the American "unwalkable city" trope to the extreme
| - you can't even really bike there. People live in
| isolate subdivisions (gated, often) connected to the
| outside world by mega-arterials with 6+ lanes.
|
| It's not surprising it ranks so low in murders - it's
| hard to get killed when you're only outside for the time
| it takes to walk from your parking spot to the shop.
| Aeolun wrote:
| Apologies, since they seemed to pick an example based on
| desirability I assumed it was the best.
| version_five wrote:
| Per capita rates are often hard to compare (I'm not agreeing
| or disagreeing with any conclusions). I find the rates often
| have more with how boundaries are drawn and are especially
| inaccurate for smaller populations as a reflection of overall
| safety. There's probably an element of that in the St. Louis
| numbers.
|
| I once saw a crime map of the boroughs in a city where I
| lived. It showed the downtown as way higher than others per-
| capita, but it's because few live there as it's mostly
| commercial, more than higher absolute numbers. Lots of
| effects like this skew the numbers.
| kemayo wrote:
| Yeah, Saint Louis is a weird case because it has a _really_
| tight boundary compared to most cities, so the crime
| numbers you see are all about the urban core and don 't
| include data from the suburbs.
|
| This NYT article has some numbers comparing "metro areas"
| rather than cities, and it knocks Saint Louis down a few
| slots (while still leaving it amongst the worst in the
| nation, for sure):
| https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/17/upshot/crime-
| statistics-s...
| lopkeny12ko wrote:
| Doubly so because all comments raising suspicious about the
| event were immediately dismissed as bad faith arguments without
| any consideration.
|
| 1. Why was he out by himself? At 2 AM? 2. It didn't seem
| "random" at all, and in fact seemed like a targeted homicide.
|
| Turns out both of these suspicions were valid. /shrug
| turtleyacht wrote:
| > While Lee is one of a dozen homicide victims in San Francisco
| this year, his is the only killing that has garnered national
| coverage -- or, in most cases, even cursory local coverage.
|
| > San Francisco's other homicide victims in 2023 are Gavin
| Boston, 40; Irving Sanchez-Morales, 28; Carlos Romero Flores,
| 29; Maxwell Maltzman, 18; Demario Lockett, 44; Maxwell Mason,
| 29; Humberto Avila, 46; Gregory McFarland Jr, 36; Kareem Sims,
| 43; Debra Lynn Hord, 57; and Jermaine Reeves, 52.
| kemayo wrote:
| Maybe this speaks to me being in a worse location, but I'm
| sitting here thinking "it's April and this major city has
| only had twelve homicides? That's pretty great!"
| wnevets wrote:
| I remember rolling my eyes alot while reading the comments in
| that thread. I would expect many of those people will double
| down rather than offer any mea culpa.
| draw_down wrote:
| [dead]
| baremetal wrote:
| [flagged]
| robotbikes wrote:
| If the claim of the former commissioner spraying people with
| bear mace is true then it is hardly a random attack but an
| escalation of violence after being attacked by a chemical
| weapon.
| baremetal wrote:
| nice deflection but you aren't exactly making the case that
| SF isn't a violent and lawless place.
| dundarious wrote:
| Your linked article and the OP indicate that this was a case
| of an assault leading to another more brutal assault.
| baremetal wrote:
| [flagged]
| dundarious wrote:
| Yes, violence against homeless people is not only an
| under-reported phenomenon, its link to inciting further
| violence and crime is also under-reported. Thank you for
| highlighting it, if a little indirectly.
| baremetal wrote:
| I agree with you completely and I am an advocate for the
| homeless.
|
| I am grateful that we achieved middle ground on this.
| [deleted]
| rubyn00bie wrote:
| Yeah the exact same thing happens with Portland every time it
| pops up on here. The HN audience by and large irrationally
| hates progressive policies and cities with them. It's weird
| watching people here parrot the opinions of the corporate
| overlords.
| [deleted]
| BenSahar wrote:
| Yeah, I get the same thing with Chicago. Anything that allows
| them dump on their "enemies".
| carrja99 wrote:
| The Chicago one gets me. I am not in SF often but we have
| taken 3-day weekend trips to Chicago since my children were
| 3. Multiple times walking around downtown, enjoying Navy
| Pier, even a couple of cases where we were walking to our
| hotel probably later than we should have after the
| fireworks.
|
| Not once did we ever feel unsafe in the 10 years we have
| made trips out there. But read the news and you'll think it
| was a lawless warzone.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Chicago and NYC feel (and are) very safe in the high-
| income and touristy areas. SF is unique in that the crime
| "leaks out" into those areas.
| kodah wrote:
| I don't think this is a great representation of what's going
| on.
|
| There are _many_ legitimate problems in Portland. If you go
| on any online discussion you 'll see residents showcasing
| them. Those threads get barraged by liberals and
| conservatives that don't live here either defending or
| attacking the issue at hand. None of this is helpful.
|
| I wish you could hear the frustration in my voice.
| Frustration at the Progressive Party for picking ideology
| over the health of the city, frustration at the right for
| turning our local issues into national showcases, frustration
| with the people in the comments who think commenting on the
| goings on of a city they don't live in is anything but a bad
| faith take.
|
| I am tired. I want Progressives and Republicans gone, and
| from what I can see I'm part of a growing group in this city.
| We'll solve our own problems in due time, extremists can get
| lost.
| vdnkh wrote:
| Any topic on HN which is tangentially related to the Culture
| Wars (progressive cities/DAs among them) typically has
| several comments bashing the "woke".
| nilespotter wrote:
| [dead]
| Varqu wrote:
| [flagged]
| myrmidon wrote:
| Why is this downvoted? Are the numbers bad?
|
| This is suprising to me as non-American because Detroit reads
| to me "like gang-infested murdercity" and I would have
| expected San Francisco to do significantly better in crime
| numbers...
|
| Are the numbers misleading or IS criminality in San Francisco
| comparable to Detroit?
| positron6000 wrote:
| The numbers are misleading because they're based on
| voluntary reporting from law enforcement agencies to the
| FBI's UCR program. The FBI has this to say:
|
| Data users should not rank locales because there are many
| factors that cause the nature and type of crime to vary
| from place to place. UCR statistics include only
| jurisdictional population figures along with reported
| crime, clearance, or arrest data. Rankings ignore the
| uniqueness of each locale. Some factors that are known to
| affect the volume and type of crime occurring from place to
| place are:
|
| * Population density and degree of urbanization.
|
| * Variations in composition of the population, particularly
| youth concentration.
|
| * Stability of the population with respect to residents;
| mobility, commuting patterns, and transient factors.
|
| * Economic conditions, including median income, poverty
| level, and job availability.
|
| * Modes of transportation and highway systems.
|
| * Cultural factors and educational, recreational, and
| religious characteristics.
|
| * Family conditions with respect to divorce and family
| cohesiveness.
|
| * Climate.
|
| * Effective strength of law enforcement agencies.
|
| * Administrative and investigative emphases on law
| enforcement.
|
| * Policies of other components of the criminal justice
| system (i.e., prosecutorial, judicial, correctional, and
| probational).
|
| * Citizens' attitudes toward crime.
|
| * Crime reporting practices of the citizenry.
|
| - https://ucr.fbi.gov/ucr-statistics-their-proper-use
| Varqu wrote:
| Where does it state that it's based on the UCR program?
|
| Because their methodology is well described:
|
| https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/about-the-data/crime-
| rates
| positron6000 wrote:
| On the link you provided
| (https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/ca/san-
| francisco/crime) there's a "Source & Methodology" link
| which says "Raw data sources: 18,000 local law
| enforcement agencies in the U.S." and "Date(s) & Update
| Frequency: Reflects 2021 calendar year; released from FBI
| in Oct. 2022"
|
| The FBI puts out one main source of crime stats - UCR. On
| the UCR site that I linked to: "The UCR Program includes
| data from more than 18,000 city, university and college,
| county, state, tribal, and federal law enforcement
| agencies." Those numbers aren't a coincidence.
|
| UCR is the main data product that people use for (usually
| incorrect) analysis. The FBI itself says that the data is
| incomplete to the point that it should not be used as a
| way to determine the safety of a location.
| Varqu wrote:
| They even discuss it in detail: "What makes
| NeighborhoodScout(r) Crime Data uniquely accurate? Most
| city neighborhood crime data are incomplete and
| inaccurate because crimes are reported by individual law
| enforcement agencies, rather than by city or town, and
| many cities - even small ones - have more than one agency
| responsible for law enforcement (municipal, university,
| county, transit, etc.). Even FBI data are reported by
| agency not by city or town, providing an incomplete
| assessment of city-wide crime counts. It is an agency-
| centric rather than locality-centric reporting method. If
| you use FBI data, you only get city-wide general counts,
| and only from one agency in the city, so it is generally
| incomplete for the city overall, as well as not specific
| to a neighborhood or address."
|
| And further: Once we have these complete set of reported
| crime data, along with millions of geocoded reported
| crime incidents using a GIS, we begin our crime data
| development process.
|
| The results are fine resolution, highly accurate crime
| data that are comparable nationally.
|
| Our approach provides you the ability to look at small
| areas effectively.
|
| In some cases a city agency is in charge of law
| enforcement, while in other areas it's a county. In many
| cases it is more than one agency for a geographic area.
| Since the geography varies, it's difficult to compare the
| scores among jurisdictions, or to get a true and complete
| picture of crime risk. This is why we use a relational
| database to assess the true count of reported crimes in a
| locality.
|
| Although most agencies report, not all do. This creates
| holes in the data. Our method allows us to accurately
| fill in the holes based on the crime experience of many
| like locales, and provide accurate crime data for
| anywhere in the U.S.
| positron6000 wrote:
| The quote you posted offers no actual information about
| how they purport to plug gaps in the data:
|
| > And further: Once we have these complete set of
| reported crime data, along with millions of geocoded
| reported crime incidents using a GIS, we begin our crime
| data development process.
|
| > The results are fine resolution, highly accurate crime
| data that are comparable nationally.
|
| > Our approach provides you the ability to look at small
| areas effectively."
|
| Can you explain to me what their methodology is? Because
| this is just marketing-speak and doesn't provide any
| facts about how or why their analysis is accurate.
|
| ---
|
| Edit: from their own site!
|
| > Q. Why rank cities on safety even though the FBI
| cautions against it?
|
| > A. This report and/or our data cannot and should not be
| used as a measure of the effectiveness of law enforcement
| due to the myriad factors that can contribute to crime in
| a community.
|
| -
| https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/faq/top100dangerous#q9
|
| This is literally taken from the FBI doc that I linked to
| earlier.
| Varqu wrote:
| The numbers might not be 100% accurate (as other commenter
| mentioned, there is no normalized dataset available) but
| they show an approximate scale.
|
| It seems though that some Bay located HN readers disagree
| with both statistical and anecdotal evidence, which might
| be actually an example of sunken cost bias (it's not
| surprising considering the cost of property in SF / Bay
| Area)
| waboremo wrote:
| You can generally assume most statistics posted within any
| comment on any site are misleading, and to use that
| cynicism to assess the "numbers".
|
| Just how it is on the internet, most people who post the
| "numbers" are doing so for a very specific intention, and
| it's not at all to highlight the objectivity of them.
| You'll want to get the source research yourself and see
| what they say about it, and usually most papers tend to be
| far more nuanced than "thing bad" or "thing good".
| IndoorPatio wrote:
| Our research reveals the 100 most dangerous cities in America
| with 25,000 or more people, based on the number of violent
| crimes per 1,000 residents.
|
| https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/blog/top100dangerous
| positron6000 wrote:
| That data is sourced from the FBI's UCR program
| (https://www.fbi.gov/how-we-can-help-you/more-fbi-services-
| an...) which relies on _voluntary reporting_ from law
| enforcement agencies.
| Varqu wrote:
| How does it influence the comparison?
|
| EDIT:
|
| There is no mention of UCR as data source, where did you
| get it from?
|
| https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/about-the-data/crime-
| rates
| positron6000 wrote:
| Because the dataset is incomplete if even a single city
| doesn't opt into sharing data, or only provides a portion
| of the real data.
|
| From the FBI itself:
|
| > Pitfalls of Ranking
|
| > UCR data are sometimes used to compile rankings of
| individual jurisdictions and institutions of higher
| learning. These incomplete analyses have often created
| misleading perceptions which adversely affect geographic
| entities and their residents. For this reason, the FBI
| has a long-- standing policy against ranking
| participating law enforcement agencies on the basis of
| crime data alone. Despite repeated warnings against these
| practices, some data users continue to challenge and
| misunderstand this position.
|
| - https://ucr.fbi.gov/ucr-statistics-their-proper-use
| Varqu wrote:
| Would you mind including some better reference datasets,
| then?
| positron6000 wrote:
| That's the point: there is no dataset that will allow you
| to reliably rank every "major city" by crime stats
| because every city reports crime differently and no crime
| dataset also accounts for factors which may affect those
| statistics (eg law enforcement misreporting crimes for
| political reasons).
|
| How do you even define a city in this case? You say those
| are normalized crime stats per 1k residents - how big are
| the metro areas? Are there any cities that also count a
| portion of their suburbs as part of the city? Does doing
| so reduce per-capita crime stats? etc...
|
| My suggestion would be to thoroughly vet your sources
| before posting their conclusions as fact.
| Varqu wrote:
| You falsely assumed that the data is sourced from UCR.
| positron6000 wrote:
| No I didn't. I've been working with UCR data for 10+
| years and I recognize it in the wild. Furthermore, my
| points still stands regardless of the source: "there is
| no dataset that will allow you to reliably rank every
| 'major city' by crime stats because every city reports
| crime differently and no crime dataset also accounts for
| factors which may affect those statistics."
|
| If you know where their source data comes from and why
| its so accurate, feel free to educate me. Their own site
| says this:
|
| > Q. Why rank cities on safety even though the FBI
| cautions against it?
|
| > A. This report and/or our data cannot and should not be
| used as a measure of the effectiveness of law enforcement
| due to the myriad factors that can contribute to crime in
| a community.
|
| -
| https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/faq/top100dangerous#q9
| piva00 wrote:
| Crime != violent crime.
| Varqu wrote:
| I was talking about crime in generally, not violent crime
| specifically.
| graderjs wrote:
| I didn't: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35463321
|
| My first instinct was it was related to tech.
|
| _When i heard about it at first i thought maybe it had
| something to do with MobileCoin... maybe someone lost a lot of
| money or was afraid to lose market share._
|
| Then when I commented I was really trying to figure out the
| mechanics of how it went down if it really were a robbery.
| weston wrote:
| Agreed! It was really disgusting how everyone immediately
| turned the news of his passing into political posts designed to
| trash the entire city of San Francisco, when it was obviously
| too soon for anyone to know the full story behind his
| unfortunate death.
|
| I hope this news brings his family and friends some closure.
| hhgf5yhbd wrote:
| SF looks worse if it was a deranged tech bro, there are a lot
| more of those there than homeless people. Harder to avoid.
| tomstockmail wrote:
| Tech Bros take more in government handouts too.
| bnralt wrote:
| It's interesting. The initial post that mentioned that Rob Lee
| was murdered got mass flagged and stayed at the bottom of the
| page. There's discussion about his murder and crime in general,
| but the top comment is asking people not to be political and to
| post their memories of Rob Lee.
|
| The only submission about Rob Lee's death that stayed at the
| top of the page was one that didn't mention that he was
| murdered in the headline, and where dang came in and told
| everyone to keep politics out of it and avoid flamewar stuff.
|
| People said it was reasonable that people mass flagged any
| submission that mentioned the murder in its headline, because
| it was flamewar stuff.
|
| But now we have this submission. I looked through all of the
| top comments, and they're _all_ using this to talk about the
| larger "is San Francisco safe?" debate. About half of them are
| specifically complaining about other people's views, including
| complaining about other Hacker News comments.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| That's absolutely not what happened. This,
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35448899, was the
| original post that got a lot of traction about Bob Lee's
| death. I _was_ one of the people who flagged it pretty early
| on, not because I thought it wasn 't newsworthy, but because
| it was one of the biggest collection of dumpster fire
| comments I've ever seen on HN - hardly anyone was interested
| in anything but spouting their own preconceived notions,
| particularly since at that point very few details were
| actually known about the crime.
|
| But as you can see from that link and the vote counts, it was
| definitely (pretty quickly) unflagged, and then you can see
| in the top comments that dang just split the threads into 2
| separate posts, one for rememberances of Bob Lee and the
| other one remained for political discussion.
| jjulius wrote:
| It was really surreal, reading through that thread and watching
| everyone assume they knew exactly what happened when there had
| literally been no public information given out about the
| suspect.
| nemo44x wrote:
| My wife asked me "how do we know the killer was a homeless
| guy?". I could only reply - "good point".
|
| I think a part of it is people are fed up with how the city
| has deteriorated and no amount of gaslighting will change
| that fact. So, when he was killed it seemed like just another
| thing in the decline of the city.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| I thought the reason was that someone had looked at CCTV
| footage of the event, and saw someone who looked homeless.
| Of course, most of us software engineers proudly go for the
| "clean homeless" look.
| fundad wrote:
| someone saw video?
|
| These are the folks that think a chatbot can replace a
| journalist.
| y-curious wrote:
| Pretty sure my cat walking on my keyboard with
| autocorrect can replace a journalist.
| rchaud wrote:
| not surprising on a message board where IQ levels end up
| being a common topic of discussion.
| [deleted]
| refurb wrote:
| Is this your first time on HN?
|
| Post any story - tech, biotech, engineering, finance, war -
| and half the comments are people confident they know "the
| real story" and how everyone is wrong.
|
| Why would this story be any different?
| jjulius wrote:
| Who said I don't find that approach in other subjects to be
| strange, as well?
| curo wrote:
| > The alleged killer also works in tech and is a man Lee
| purportedly knew.
|
| I commented below but the IT consulting LLC in the bio is
| inactive (both in the division of corp website and online). Is
| that the only evidence here for the statement above?
| ryanwaggoner wrote:
| You might want to start by reading the story before you try and
| dismantle it. A few paragraphs later:
|
| _Rather, Lee and Momeni were portrayed by police as being
| familiar with one another. In the wee hours of April 4, they
| were purportedly driving together through downtown San
| Francisco in a car registered to the suspect._
| curo wrote:
| I'd love a link to the SFPD statement if you have it (I
| cannot find it)
| ryanwaggoner wrote:
| Journalists don't always work off of public statements.
| [deleted]
| dang wrote:
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35555859.
| nkingsy wrote:
| "In the wee hours of April 4, they were purportedly driving
| together through downtown San Francisco in a car registered to
| the suspect."
|
| This is from "multiple police sources" from the article.
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