As someone who moved out of SF 2 years ago, this article reflects exactly the frustrations I felt with the city. I'm all for progressive ideals. I support universal healthcare. I support free higher-ed. I support basic income. And I'm perfectly happy to pay drastically higher taxes in order to fund all of the above.
But I also want to live in a city where I don't need to worry about my car getting broken into. Where I don't have to worry about being mugged late at night. Where the police department is adequately staffed to minimize crime, and those who do commit crimes are punished for doing so.
And call me an elitist, but I'd be very happy if my kids could grow up in a city where the streets are clean and don't smell of piss.
I don't see why any of those desires should be in conflict with my progressive ideals, but apparently in SF, that makes me a heartless capitalist pig. Whatever. Water under the bridge now. Best wishes to you SF. I'll just continue living here in my new home where people are willing to face up to real problems with practical solutions.
New York strikes a more sustainable urban balance than San Francisco. We embrace social programs, but not at the expense of quality of life or development.
A lot of the balancing comes from development. It's rare for e.g. a city block to come together to demand better policies. When they do, it's often a NIMBYist backlash against productive policy. Developers, on the other hand, care about the impact of policies on their aggregate holdings. Since they're typically developing a pipeline, their NIMBYist instincts tend to be relatively dulled.
Everything seems to point in the same direction. Cities which refuse to grow, instead transferring the fruits of growth to a land-owning elite, fail.
I have a very pessimistic view of how shitty (literally) SF is run, but this strikes me as being just as wrong in the opposite direction. The NYPD strikes me as the law enforcement branch of a police state. Surely there are other big cities that have a decent quality of life that aren't SF or NYC.
Can you name any big cities with an underclass of antisocial criminals, without a crime problem, and also without aggressive law enforcement to keep them in check?
The Yakuza is heavily integrated into the government and it has become tolerated by the people. A few decades ago the government cracked down on the Yakuza as they had too much hold on how the government was run, so they splintered and different chapters took different parts of crime (ie Yamaguchi-gumi are heavily against drug trafficking and Dojin-kai are heavily involved in it).
Japan is one of the most crime-free countries in the world, because serious crime is monopolised by the criminals (and penalties for cutting their lunch are pretty heavy, which is common amongst most Asian gangs) and "respect" or "honour" is considered sacred. They don't romanticise or make "being an asshole" look fun or positive (ala "Wolf of Wall Street" is a perfect example).
tldr: the twin cities tax businesses and put the money into low income communities to prevent crime, and in the 70s and 80s, 70% of subsidized units were built in the wealthiest white districts, to prevent ghettos from forming.
People may think what they will of my comment, but I visited San Francisco once and probably will never go back. I worked in downtown Seattle, walked to and from work at all hours in the city and saw all kinds of stuff, but in San Francisco I felt alot more unsafe. Seriously sketchy people that didn't just seem like they were harmlessly going about their crazy business. I wish San Francisco and its people the best, but from a distance.
Police in California cities are extremely expensive once you factor in the low retirement age, generous pension plans and lifetime health benefits.
And SF's particular flavor of idealism is carried to a remarkable extreme in the public arena.
The homeless (and others who are considered "marginal") get the benefit of the doubt from the police and society in general, even when they're pissing in the street.
This is a special kind of thinking which is specific to SF (and perhaps Berkeley and a small number of other cities). I don't believe such thinking is part of progressivism in general.
1) So you are happy to pay "drastically higher taxes" to fund some social programs, have you actually calculated what percentage of your income would be necessary to achieve that? And even with higher taxes, that would not be possible at all? And since taxes are coercively taken from everyone, not only from people that are apparently fine with that, that people who would otherwise hire or build new business that could employ poor people are running out? 2) Do you really expect outsource either money (taxes) and time (you do nothing) to politicians and get results as an outcome? 3) Do you know that you can be a capitalist without being a heartless capitalist pig? 4) Do you know that your progressive ideas is killing America because that didn't work in any country in no time in history?
It's odd that the article avoids the question of where crime occurs in the city, as that might provide some answers. A few months ago I made many data visualizations of where criminal arrests occur in San Francisco: http://minimaxir.com/2015/12/sf-arrest-maps/
The tl;dr is that, as expected, SF crime is centralized in the Tenderloin, with 16th St Mission being a close second. However, as the years progressed, crime has become relatively less centralized around those areas. (there wasn't much activity on Lombard Street, though.)
There is no tl;dr for crime, society, and geography. Even if there were I think San Francisco would still be an outlier. Regardless, arrests and incidence of crime are separate things. Making it easier to look at data is certainly useful and thanks for helping in that respect, but that doesn't provide answers on its own.
Why not walk up to Valencia? Though, I guess there you might get puked on...
I have to say though, the Mission has never felt as dangerous as the 'Loin did 15 years ago, when I used to wait for the 21 at Jones.
Eventually I moved to just take the 5 which was safer. I have to say, either I'm lucky or something, but I've not had any issues with crime in S.F. in the 16 years that I've lived here. Philadelphia for example has always felt much more dangerous at night.
> “We are not going to criminalize people for being poor,” he said. “That criminalization is only going to make it harder for them to get out of poverty.”
No, but we should criminalize people if they commit crimes. Laws exist for a reason, and they must be enforced to be effective.
I don't think what you say is wrong. But I don't think it's the ironclad reply you hope.
As Anatole France said, "In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread."
I just had my bike stolen out of my back yard here in the Mission two days ago. I'm still mad. But odds are that it was some homeless addict, and enforcing the law and putting him in jail for a few weeks will be no more effective in solving the problem of petty theft than not enforcing the law.
I would certainly like to see the cops arrest the people up the stolen goods chain, the people who actually have something to lose. Crime shouldn't pay. But the way to stop people stealing to survive is to help them find some more productive way to survive.
> But the way to stop people stealing to survive is to help them find some more productive way to survive.
I agree with this completely – ultimately, you have to find a better and more sustainable solution.
But right now, some people know they can commit crime in San Francisco, and see it through with relatively few consequences, causing a concentration of crime in the city. It provides an incentive to crime… and ultimately, ignoring it won't make it go away either.
Sorry to kill your Robin Hood romanticism, but odds are that it was people who are routine bike thiefs and flip them in LA, making very handsome money, rather than some poor fellow whose been shortchanged by life and left on the sidelines. Those people are mostly harmless and passed out on the street, rambling incoherently at worst, and at best asking for money.
Those are the kind of people stealing bikes, and they deserve judicial action:
Yes, please condescendingly tell me more about the neighborhood I've lived in for 15 years. Because I'm sure you know way more about it than I do.
Christ, I have personally chased down a bike thief to help a friend get her bike back. I saw the guy up close. I saw the scabby meth face. I felt the addict skinniness under my hand when I grabbed him.
Yes, I know that professional bike thief rings also operate in my city. But they aren't the ones stealing 8-year-old bikes out of back yards, bikes that were worth $500 new. They are stealing things with resale value.
"Some research has shown that increasing the severity of a punishment does not have much effect on crime, while increasing the certainty of punishment does have a deterrent effect."
>“We are not going to criminalize people for being poor,” he said. “That criminalization is only going to make it harder for them to get out of poverty.”
I don't understand this attitude -- policing crime and taking actions to reduce the number of victims isn't "against" those in poverty. If you're poor and committing non-trivial crimes, it's your personal choices working against you, not society.
Maybe I'm too "east coast," but I'm also not comfortable with the idea that criminal acts should be excused if the perpetrator is under some income threshold or got himself/herself hooked on drugs.
For those "voting down", please explain to me how my worldview is disagreeable. I'm not against changing my mind based on solid arguments.
I see where you're coming from. But you have to keep in mind that there a myriad of offences that you're not susceptible to commit if your living standard is above a certain threshold.
Say, loitering, because maybe you have no home or a crowded one, so it's better to spend more time of the day on the street. Or petty theft, for people who're really poor. If you're a druggie and need money for a fix. Or say you're in the country illegally.
And I am sure we could come up with more. The point is none of these behaviors (well, except loitering, I don't get why that should be criminalized) are desirable for society as a whole, but it's not correct to pretend that the laws applies to all citizens equally, when there a forces that prod some people towards classes of crimes. That goes the other way too, for example considering tax evasion.
The question becomes then how to we manage these behaviors, and I'm not sure that an increased pressure by the state to enforce existing laws on a vulnerable population, actually solves anything.
Yeah you might have some moral ideas about whether "getting yourself hooked on drugs" is a good idea, from a policy standpoint that's irrelevant, what matters is to manage the fallout that this has on society right now and how to deal with it in the future.
In Europe currently they're housing many refugees in very crowded shelters, where by the sheer concentration of people, arguments and violent conflict are more likely to break out.
This has has little to do with what kind of people you put in this housing, and a lot more with, among other things, the absence of any space for people to retreat back to.
The problem there isn't one of personal character, which you are trying to make it, but living conditions.
My argument is, that similar dynamics are at play at a larger scale. And you won't be able to fix those problems by trying to stay blind to that and just try to look at people individually.
If you're really unable to see how one easily understandable, concrete example can serve as an illustration of a generally more complex instance of a related problem, then I don't think this conversation is going to get us anywhere.
You've repeatedly fallen back to a wider position; you're not giving "concrete examples." You're blowing the discussion out of scope (trying to drag in something happening 6000 miles away with a totally different context) -- crime in San Francisco is not closely related to cultural differences, self- and by-policy segregation, and fear of policing/censorship happening in Europe.
A more explicit phrasing of the argument may be that structural explanations better explain a phenomena than unique individual factors, and that the "unique" individual factors might not be that unique.
So what you end up punishing is (personal factors) x (structural factors), but we don't get to know how much each weigh. If we're using punishment or removal of a human from society as a way of getting rid of bad social phenomena rooted in bad personal factors, then it's in our interest to punish uniquely bad personal factors, or else common personal factors interacting with a bad situation will continue to output bad social phenomena.
Additionally, structural fixes seem to me like lower-hanging policy fruit than throwing a person in jail and subjecting them to severe financial disadvantage. Society's fixes for individual behavior are crude, and quality human resources are extremely finite and being spent elsewhere. But for our emotional sense of justice we look for the high-hanging fruits first.
And let's say among the bad personal factors population there are gradients of badness. Why do we seek to irritate that badness by exacerbating structural factors of crime, i.e., by throwing them into an awfully managed and abusive system where they don't get real sustained access to professionals, and why do we financially impair them?
Lowering your expectations for low-income households and treating people that come from them as if they're too stupid and/or broken to not commit crimes is wrong is offensive. There's a difference between acknowledging the value free education, cheap housing, and money for food and outright turning a blind eye to opportunists and criminals.
>If you're a druggie and need money for a fix.
How is that your or my problem? You get yourself addicted to drugs. If someone mugs my girlfriend and trades her phone for some heroin, I don't understand why I'm supposed to shrug it off, feel sympathy for the criminal, and let that junkie make someone else live in fear so they can get high.
>there a forces that prod some people towards classes of crimes. That goes the other way too, for example considering tax evasion.
Muggings, rapes, and violent crime have drastically different effects on people than the taxman putting a lower number in a ledger. Trying to conflate crimes that happen to a person with financial loopholes is apologetics for violent criminals.
>Or say you're in the country illegally.
Then don't come to the country illegally if you're going to do destructive things against the people that you want to help you.
I'm not turning a blind eye, I'm acknowledging that different classes of people have different classes of problems and commit different classes of crime.
I am not conflating these different types of crimes; what I am saying is that "crime" is really just a tool to deal with behavior that is detrimental to a societal good. And maybe that it's possible to deal with these problems in more appropriate ways then just trying to enforce laws with higher pressure.
And while you're right, that tax evasion is different from mugging someone on the street, don't pretend that white-collar crime is a victimless crime. And again, increased pressure to enforce existing laws, might not be the best answer there either.
And again: If I am a druggie and need a fix, then it's more likely that this problem has a better solution that just throw me in jail. It makes a whole lot more sense to treat a serious drug addiction as an illness. But that needs a little bit more empathy than your approach of "You knew the risk when you went out skiing, don't complain to me that you're on the ground with a broken leg now" - sure there is some truth to it, but that doesn't help anyone.
I'm not pretending white-collar crime is victimless, but I'm also not at all comfortable with the bias of "remove the consequences of crime for people perceived to be disadvantaged."
The issue of treating drug addiction as a health issue instead of a crime is a tangential topic, but enforcing the law when a drug addict commits a crime is not (e.g. mugging, theft, assault).
I am not sure where you got "remove all consequences" from.
I said "increasing enforcement of existing laws, might not be good policy for the people who will suffer from this enforcement as well as not resulting in the decrease in crime rates that you might think"
> The issue of treating drug addiction as a health issue instead of a crime is a tangential topic, but enforcing the law when a drug addict commits a crime is not (e.g. mugging, theft, assault).
To me it's not tangential, but rather the core of the issue.
Let's take the druggie. I agree with you that 'removing consequences' of crime committed to acquire more drugs is a terrible idea. Justice to the people affected is important.
However, if this consequence is jail time, a criminal record, or any other form of punishment that doesn't benefit both the addict and those affected by him, we're only sweeping the problem under the rug, and we're not acknowledging the complexities of addiction and the dignity of the human behind the 'druggie'. Furthermore, it's likely that said addict will become a worse problem for society down the road. It's lose-lose.
There are plenty of solutions where the addict's crime have consequences other than simply punishing them that are more effective, less dehumanizing, and ultimately better for society as a whole.
On a more... ethical level, I feel that where we fundamentally go wrong in these situations is that we forget that being poor, being an addict, and even to a degree being a criminal is not just a simple matter of choice. I've personally known many addicts, criminals and poor people, and I can say with full conviction that the vast majority of them were good people who made mistakes that were not 100% their responsibility. Instead of bickering over how much responsible they are, accepting this reality and trying to approach it with compassion for all sides should already improve many things. Hell, if more people would just go a bit below 100% it'd be a good start.
I think I'm a pretty good person, but putting myself in the position of my addict, poor, or criminal friends, with the same environment, parents, friends, and choices available, all of them mostly out of their control, well, I'd likely make those same choices.
And applying everything I've learned about willpower, group dynamics (groupthink), peer pressure, and whatnot, makes me even more convinced that punishment is not only a solution that doesn't work, but morally wrong and detrimental to society as a whole.
If I understand you, you're suggesting a course of corrective action that doesn't simply look at a given event (e.g. robbing a woman at knifepoint) when suggesting punishment for a crime. This is already the case in US courts, wherein judges are allowed to know prior convictions and extenuating circumstances. Counseling and treatment is already a part of the legal process.
More contentiously, there's always a sob story that can be spun for any given criminal, but ultimately, I believe it dangerous to hand-wave away the role of personal agency. Being born poor is obviously not a personal choice, but actions taken along the way (having a child when young), taking the risk with illegal and highly addictive drugs, committing violent crime, are conscious acts that unsurprisingly make it harder to get out of poverty. The consequences of those actions is likely particularly known in lower income areas.
You're thinking about this from the position of a logical person who cares about the welfare of others. Decriminalizing assault and theft is asking victims to take part in a system in which they pay money to support people who are causing harm.
> Being born poor is obviously not a personal choice, but actions taken along the way (having a child when young), taking the risk with illegal and highly addictive drugs, committing violent crime, are conscious acts that unsurprisingly make it harder to get out of poverty. The consequences of those actions is likely particularly known in lower income areas.
I was raised with the same belief, however I have learned through broader experience that people from varying backgrounds have vastly different ways of perceiving and evaluating the information in front of them. I do not mean this to indicate, for example, that people in poverty are inferior and incapable of logically assessing the consequences of a teen pregnancy.
Rather, I would suggest that you and I were likely privy to a myriad of small, incremental and beneficial teachings and experiences that led to our view of teen pregnancy. As a result I believe it unwise to judge others, who did not have the privilege of those same teachings, based on the assumption that they knew the "unsurprising" "consequences" of their actions.
I'm not judging -- I'm stating facts. Also, I was hoping to hint at that policing crime isn't the same as criminalizing being poor. It's possible to be flat out broke and not commit crimes.
Having grown up in a town where the high school graduation rate was below 80%, I can assure you that it's not unfair to expect people from low-income families to know the consequences of their actions.
This is pretty far from my statement of not excusing or ignoring crimes committed by those in poverty, especially violent crimes.
Granted that people should obviously be to held responsible for their actions, acknowledging the fact that there are many people that would do something in a desperate situation which they wouldn't otherwise do is very important in my mind.
I think the point isn't the 'non-trivial' 'got himself/herself hooked on drugs' crimes, but the basic ones for those who don't have any money (homelessness, begging, loitering, working in illegal conditions cause thats all you can get, petty theft etc.). Not every poor person is crazy hooked on drugs and committing major crimes. Most of them are just normal people who have to make difficult choices.
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." -Anatole France
Was there ever an update around Ian Murdock? I think his beef with Oakland PD, not SF PD, but I would definitely be interested to know if there was a conclusion to that story.
There are many people–social scientists and economists among them–who would suggest to you exactly that. The U.S. has spent (i.e. transferred) trillions fighting poverty. The result? Not much.
The good stuff that has happened to poor people since 1945 mostly comes about through private innovation.
The thought that reducing safety nets could result in better outcomes for both their intended beneficiaries and those who fund the government is scary, perhaps. But not at all beyond the realm of civil discussion.
I don't have a citation, but I think it's reasonably to say that a large part of the good things for poor people have just been things getting cheaper, so that the same amount of economic output buys you more comfort. That's largely a result of private innovation driving down prices. That may or may not be what GP was referring to.
We can have a civil discussion, sure, but when you're talking about tolerating violence, what we're civilly discussing is no longer a civilization. I'm basically with you on the private innovation thing and thinking carefully about safety nets. That's not what I was initially objecting to, so I'm actually not sure where you're coming from.
Genuinely curious - why do you see a problem here? Typically its the 'progressive' countries like northern europe with the highest taxes and the safest, cleanest streets.
>> I don't see why any of those desires should be in conflict with my progressive ideals
> This is precisely the origin of the problem.
And, WHY, exactly is this the origin of the problem? The poster said they'd be willing to pay drastically higher taxes to fund the programs that should benefit many people forced onto the streets and also wants a city appropriately staffed to handle criminals and those still on the street causing problems (i.e. mentally ill).
The parent comment didn't suggest rounding them up and getting rid of them or to act in any way that was discompassionate. How's this conflict with progressive ideals?
It's not progressive to have a shit filled city that's so poorly staffed it can't keep its streets cleaned and safe to an acceptable level.
Since you seem to know where the problem starts, what's your solution?
San Francisco has the 2nd highest spending per person of all cities in the US at almost $10K per person. Only DC is higher at $15K and that probably has something to do with the way the district is funded.
It's not a lack of money that causes all of SF's problems, it's how the city is run.
One issue is that the City is basically run by a single party. I'm proud that the City has ranked voting now, which should support third parties, but that hasn't translated into that yet...
The fact that we hold elections in off years, means that there is lower voter turnout and increases the chances that party faithful will elect the same people each year. The election rules encourage the current political situation in the City.
Please don't post generically ideological comments to HN. They're a particularly harmful form of unsubstantive comment because they provoke generically ideological flamewars, which are the worst sort of thread.
I fully agree, in fact, the comment's intention was to counteract generic ideological thinking. I do see how it could be interpreted as ideological crusading, though, and it probably was excessively inflammatory in any case. I will avoid doing that in the future.
“Police are barred by city ordinance from installing surveillance cameras in San Francisco”
This just seems bonkers to me - every few days hoodline is reporting a stabbing / shooting in the TL and they never seem to have any leads, I guess this is why. There should be security cameras on every cross street in the TL.
So my coworker, let's call him "Justin" woke up less than 2 weeks after midnight to two voices and somebody sticking his foot through his open window (lives in tenderloin, with his gf). To me that's a much more pressing fear than overpolicing.
I think people who live in a crime ridden neighborhood would, in many cases, be supportive if the cameras reduced crime.
I believe the practical reality is that, in most places where video security cameras are ubiquitous (e.g. London), the vast majority of the recorded footage is never viewed by anyone and is not archived. There's too much of it and it's too boring.
Although London also has extensive car number-plate reading technology so they don't need to store the video, they can just store the rats nest of hits of vehicles travelling around.
Thanks for pointing that out. This does take matters to a different level because someone will surely hack such a nifty DB of license plates, times and locations (if they haven't already).
But even so, there's a legitimate policy debate to be had about the value of such a DB vis a vis its riskiness to individual privacy. Unfortunately, that's the difficult world we live in. Medical records have been hacked. Voter records have been hacked. And yet, somehow, societies have continued to compile and update them.
"About half the cases here are thefts from vehicles, smash-and-grabs that scatter glittering broken glass onto the sidewalks."
This is way too close to home... Was in SF for GDC 2016 about a month ago when my crews vehicle window was smashed (in the Moscone Center Parking Lot) and 5 backpacks full of MacBook Pros, iPads, cash and an expensive digital SLR with even more expensive lenses were swiped in the blink of an eye. We had dropped our stuff there and grabbed a bite to eat when we came back to the horrific site of our rental vehicles window shattered all over the ground.
Just the night before we were noting how incredibly quiet SF was at night after 9:30pm. Apparently a quiet city is NOT a crime free one.
The security guard and guys in the booth at the parking garage were less than helpful despite there being a variety of security camera screens/cameras. When we called the cops they said we could wait there for an officer but it might be hours so we best just go to the nearest station and file a report. A month out and we've heard nothing on the case despite there being about $20k of belongings grabbed. We didn't really expect to hear much based on their response.
Yes I realize it was incredibly stupid to leave that amount of valuables in a vehicle in the city. Lesson learned there. In our city (Boise) you can practically leave your keys in the ignition without any concerns. Thankfully we paid for the no hassle insurance on the vehicle and our company insurance covered most of our stolen goods. It was still a big loss though and a major hassle. I'll never be so naive again. Hopefully someone reading this can learn from our mistake as well.
In San Francisco, if you leave anything worth more than a couple hundred dollars in your car, it's as good as gone.
I'd go further than that. If you leave anything in your car, you can count on it being broken into. A jacket on the floor is enough for them to smash a window to see if there is anything valuable hiding underneath.
It's called "law enforcement". If you try to pull off a bunch of smash&grabs in Bandra or Colaba the cops will beat you with lathis. Law enforcement is far from uniform - many neighborhoods (e.g. Baiganwadi) don't have much of it. But no one parks their car in Baiganwadi.
What seems to make SF pretty unique is that even in the wealthy areas it lacks effective law enforcement.
Also, poverty in Mumbai isn't quite the same as poverty in the rest of India. Significant portions of Mumbai approach US-"poor" levels of income (about $15-20k/year, PPP adjusted) which is considered quite wealthy over here.
> It's called "law enforcement". If you try to pull off a bunch of smash&grabs in Bandra or Colaba the cops will beat you with lathis.
Where I live thieves are often beaten to death. And the rate of theft is still high. I could point you to some studies about punishment not being an effective crime deterrent, but not sure it would change your mind. It's a complicated problem and law enforcement is a band-aid at best.
Do you think crime would not increase if punishment were reduced?
Fundamentally I think law enforcement is just one piece of the puzzle. Intrinsic factors (culture, biology, economics, psychology) also play a major role - all else held equal, the US is likely to be more violent than India (important exception being sexual violence). But law enforcement does matter - how else to explain how clean little India is in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur?
It's not true in Brooklyn. I've left all kinds of things visible in a car and not had a single break in in 15 years. It's easy to make assumptions but from an outsiders perspective SF feels out of control at this point.
I live in SF and when I first showed up here, I too was really unaware of how bad the problem was. My car was broken into 6 times, once for only the change in my ashtray! (I can only assume, there was nothing else of value in the 99 corolla!)
Lived in Capitol Hill neighborhood in Seattle for a couple years, once someone smashed the car window to try to grab stuff in a backpack I had in plain view. It only had empty water bottles in it, but they broke the window I had to have fixed. I learned to never leave anything that could be construed to be worth any amount of money in sight in a car I'm not in.
Then we moved to Bellevue, thought we got away from the problems of the city. My wife leased a new car and the same night someone smashed the rear window out with rocks, apparently just for kicks as nothing was taken from the car.
At trailheads for hiking routes, I often see smashed glass all over the ground. In a city the probability of crime may be higher, but it seems like that kind of stuff could happen anywhere.
I've heard advice that if you don't have any valuables in the vehicle, leave the windows rolled down and the lock unlocked so anyone who thinks they can steal something won't do much damage getting in, and the fact that it's open in the first place discourages them from believing there'd be anything valuable inside.
I've seen stores leave tills empty and opened after they close, presumably for the same reason.
Maybe I'm jaded, and please don't take this as victim blaming, but why on earth would you not put that much gear in the trunk rather than leaving in a seat!?
Thx for explaining calmly! Was hesitant to post, but your case was too outlandish not to ask. So many SF friends have been bitten, some repeatedly, and I just can't fathom why someone wouldn't use their trunk, especially after having their laptop stolen twice in a month!
It's one of those mistakes you only make once in life. Now I wouldn't even dream of leaving my backpack in my car in my relatively low crime city that I previously never would have given it a second thought. It's a little sad that my entire world is now less trusted because of this invasive incident.
I'm sorry for the theft. I am a third generation San Franciscian. Don't current live there.
I had my vechicles broken into many times, when I go to San Francisco now, I clean out my vechicle of anything. It actually forces me to clean my vechicle.
I take all my expensive items(laptops, cameras, and especially those white Canon lenses) with me. I take everything out, and put it in a big duffel bag. I take my stuff everywhere. I've had a few funny looks from people, but the natives, I belive, know what I'm doing.
Keep an eye on that duffel bag. I use Packsafe products, and will literally lock the duffel to a chair, rail, anything what would slow down a grab and run.
As to vechicle, theft--I put kill switches in my vechicles. I learned that one from my dad. He grew up in the Richmnd district, and had a kill switch in his first car in the 50's.
I've had a lot of smashed windows, but never a stolen vechicle.
I even got to the point, a few years ago, where I would just leave the vechicle unlocked, and kept the glove box open, with a note that read, "There's just a portable radio under the driver's seat. I'm not a wealthy person. My life has not been going great."
Unless you're really rich and can literally isolate yourself from all this, SF really isn't worth it. Of course, if you're really rich, you can live down in Palo Alto, around the same neighborhood Steve Jobs lived in, or someplace like Los Altos Hills, Atherton, etc and avoid all the (literal) shit in SF.
SF is past the tipping point IMO. The absurdity of paying $3000+/mo for a 200 sq ft "micro-apartment" finally sunk in I guess. Some other place is going to be home to the next batch of unicorns (well, maybe the third-next batch) and SF will be done for. The city will panic and frantically grant the building permits and provide semi-workable solutions to the rampant crime and traffic problems to try to get some of the glory back, but it will be too little too late.
I think living in Santa Clara County and commuting (preferably on Caltrain) is infinitely better than actually living in SF. There's just as high as concentration of geeks, and its so much safer (three cheers for the suburbs).
What irks me is the hypocrisy of the city supervisor who is speaking out against the capitalist ethos of the new arrivals who disrespect San Francisco's liberal traditions. Seriously dude, a city where you pay > $1K to live in a kennel is as dog-eat-dog as a city can get.
> Why don't you think about the people who are trying to put a shelter above their heads and not just about the homeless?
Which I think is a more honest representation of your view.
San Francisco has become a dog-eat-dog city because of the new arrivals, because of the massive wealth streaming in to the city.
It has become a very different place than it was in the eras that it welcomed the beatniks, the hippies, the gay community. Those people came to put a roof above their heads. They came to find a home. The newest arrivals have mostly come to line their pockets.
The draw of SF used to be that it was a free-wheeling, anything goes type of place. But that was decades ago. Now there is hardly a reason to go there unless it's something business related.
I agree San Francisco has its problems, but calling it a failed city is grossly overstating the problem. San Francisco continues to have a high degree of social mobility relative to the rest of the United States [0].
You mean if you have a Stanford or CMU CS degree and wine and dine with VCs? Sure, its a great place for upward mobility. Now what about everyone who was actually born in SF and who isn't in tech?
One of the metrics, as mentioned in the article, is the probability of a child being in the upper quintile of income, given that their parents were in the bottom quintile (hardly wining and dining with VCs).
In SF, that probability is 0.122, or 12.2%… extremely high relative to the rest of the country. Atlanta is 0.045, and even New York City is only 0.105.
The liberal utopia. Where no one has the moral confidence to do what must be done. Where people are so worried about being nice that they forget to be good.
Despite being in the tech industry, the only people I know that live in San Francisco fall firmly in the "Have-nots" category, and it has been illuminating watching their resentment turn to anger to full on (as in actually violent) class warfare. 15 years ago, those that moved there seemed genuinely happy and peaceful. Now they are on standby to riot.
Being able to see both sides is an interesting perspective and unfortunately it doesn't give me much hope. The rhetoric on one side is dismissive and bordering on authoritarian, the rhetoric on the other side is growing hateful and violent. Whereas living in Stockton (where I am from, as well as those I know living there) could be compared to living in Cleveland or Detroit, the only parallel I see in San Francisco is Paris circa the 1780s. Which is kinda scary.
Gee, I can't imagine why people would be hateful and violent when they're being driven further and further into poverty - and out of their homes and neighborhoods - by rent-seekers and rich dudebros. I can't imagine why they'd be hateful and violent when they're starving and homeless the next street over from 20something billionaires who do basically nothing useful for humanity.
Paris circa the 1780s is exactly right. I hope the homeless of SF build a guillotine very soon.
I just spent the last week in SF (am from a flyover state), and had a difficult time enjoying walking the city without feeling stressed about not knowing if the next block would feel safe or not. It definitely solidified my decision to not move out there.
I wonder how much of this has to do with Prop 47 which resulted in only a citation and no arrest for:
• Commercial burglary (theft under $950)
• Forgery and bad checks (under $950 value)
• Theft of most firearms
• Theft of a vehicle (under $950 value)
• Possession of stolen property (under $950 value)
• Possession of heroin, cocaine, illegal prescriptions, concentrated cannabis, and methamphetamine
It's California-wide, but it would be interesting if an increase in crime happened after it was passed.
> “We are not going to criminalize people for being poor,” he said. “That criminalization is only going to make it harder for them to get out of poverty.”
Underlying this sentiment is the idea that the poor are a monolith. That someone stealing from cars or someone with mental problems who can't maintain a job or relationships is a good representation of "the poor".
The guy in the article who had his BMW broken into can afford to be blasé about the incident - he's insured, whatever was stolen he can replace without blinking an eye. The poor person who is robbed can't just replace whatever was stolen. "Poor people" aren't just perpetrators, they are also disproportionately victims (unless SF is different, which it probably is because it's so weird) - and I think they yearn for safety and stability MORE than wealthy people, they just can't do much about it. We mistake the complacency - which is the natural and probably healthy reaction when you don't feel you can affect social change - for a comfort with all aspects of the urban environment.
I was robbed at gunpoint on my birthday a few years ago in front of the SF Chronicle for my cellphone!
The thief was finally caught, he wore a leather holster and was called the cowboy bandit by the police and robbed 40 other people. At trial, one particular gentleman had been beaten and facially disfigured after handing over his phone because the thief noticed he was gay.
My old boss had his car smashed and valuables removed.
And a popular travel blogger who reviews national parks in her RV which she lives in and is herself rather poor, stopped in SF overnight and had all of her possessions stolen from her trailer.
But I also want to live in a city where I don't need to worry about my car getting broken into. Where I don't have to worry about being mugged late at night. Where the police department is adequately staffed to minimize crime, and those who do commit crimes are punished for doing so.
And call me an elitist, but I'd be very happy if my kids could grow up in a city where the streets are clean and don't smell of piss.
I don't see why any of those desires should be in conflict with my progressive ideals, but apparently in SF, that makes me a heartless capitalist pig. Whatever. Water under the bridge now. Best wishes to you SF. I'll just continue living here in my new home where people are willing to face up to real problems with practical solutions.
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