Having reported crime in SF after I was burgled via forced entry I can say first hand that it is arduous and the only reason I went through with the process is for insurance reasons. I do not trust those statistics at all. People who value their time more than the goods they were deprived of may decide that it simply isn't worth reporting. Every officer I talked to made sure to tell me that they weren't going to do anything about it, that there was no hope of getting my stuff back, and that I should avoid wasting everyone's time. If I didn't have a rather expensive laptop stolen I wouldn't have bothered. I was required to wait for police to arrive and they took over 8 hours arriving at 5am and all they did was tell me in person they were not going to do anything and they were clearly upset that I actually went through with the report and made them visit.
One of the offices that a friend worked at had a homeless person enter the lobby and start harassing people. They called the police who then reprimanded the reception and told them that the homeless person has their rights and does not have to leave, they informed the homeless person that he was under no obligation to leave which made it even more difficult for the office staff to remove him which they were unable to do. Women had to be escorted in and out of the office for the rest of the day while a random homeless person hurled abuse at them. It was all extremely unpleasant.
Kate Steinle was a friend of a friend and she was randomly shot and killed by a homeless person on Pier 14 not far from where I was living in SF. The accused was acquitted due to lack of evidence. A senseless killing of a kind lady for which there will be no justice.
I did not have much respect for SF police but after living there for some time I have even less respect for them now. This mess is part of their refusal to do their job, maybe that's due to a political diktat but it has been in place for so long now it seems that the current crop of police officers are totally ok with this status quo. I guess everyone who wasn't has already left the force.
I don’t know, most of the people I knew in SF have already left. Mainly to Austin.
I’m not sure what future the US has. I don’t know if its fate will be like Latin America with a gutting of the middle class, or South Africa with the high crime and corruption with rolling blackouts, or Russia with a massive private security industry.
Both open carry and concealed carry are legal without a permit in Vermont, which is the model for how States should behave in reverence to the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
On April 3rd, Florida became the 26th state that allows concealed carry without a permit[0]. This means over half the states now allow concealed carry without a permit. And it's likely that Nebraska will also pass constitutional carry [1] (ie concealed carry without a permit) this year becoming the 27th state.
Are any cities safe? Most cities have neighborhoods that outsiders are discouraged from visiting. SF just has a weird dynamic where those neighborhoods become the entire city once the sun goes down and 99% of people board up their windows and doors.
Checking violent crime rates in SF vs, say, Boston, Boston is actually a tiny bit higher (6 vs 5 per 1,000 residents). (Source: neighborhoodscout.com)
It'd be great if this discussion didn't death-spiral like the last one.
You can argue about the causes and the effects all you want, but unless you're doing something about it – either moving away, getting involved in policy, or volunteering at a soup kitchen – it's all just more ineffectual, angry talk... the same empty 'someone should do something' talk that has kicked this can down the road for decades now.
You say we have “kicked this can down the road for decades” as if billions and billions haven’t been poured into social services and charities and social justice initiatives of various types. I’ve no idea if you’re oblivious or disingenuous, but the way you have characterized the problem is not congruent with the reality I’ve witnessed over those same decades.
This idea that social services (community centers, at-risk youth outreach programs, etc) can do the work instead of police is tempting, but it's very unlikely.
Yes, that doesn't mean they are unnecessary. (Quite the opposite, as police also does too much. And similarly the prison system is also so laughably underfunded compared to its size that it almost makes things worse.)
But. And that's the real issue that many people just don't want to see, it's still chronically underfunded (and mismanaged, but getting better management is not going to be cheap).
Of those billions, have they been spent wisely? Spending feel-good dollars that are politically appealing and spending those same billions on bitter medicine (read: shelters that nobody wants to build, making more public toilets, etc.) that will not get you reelected are two very different things. Anyone can piss away a few billion and give themselves a gold star and a press conference for doing it.
The problems have done nothing but grow. Yes, there have been services. No, there haven't been solutions. That is kicking the can down the road, despite how well-meaing people may be.
I think the problem is that folks in SF have become too desensitized to crazy things like this.
It’s a special sort of crazy in the U.S. where on the right, you’ve got folks who seem okay not setting hard boundaries on not-okay levels of violence because it conflicts with their political ideology, and… on the left you also have folks not setting hard boundaries on not-okay levels of crime and violence because doing so would conflict with their narrative of things.
I worked in a soup kitchen as a teen. This ain’t a soup kitchen problem.
Because SF is dense and not particularly segregated (as far as US cities go) so wealthy white people are more likely to witness first hand or be victimized than in in many other places.
The easy assumption is that in cities like Miami, LA, Chicago, St. Louis, and (previously) NYC the violence was confined to particular pockets of the city e.g. those rife with gang violence. It was easy for ordinary people to avoid by staying out of those areas.
In cities like SF and Seattle there is widespread and visible chaos and disorder, even in the large shopping districts and tourist areas. This is perpetuated by their residents' indifference and acceptance of utter lawlessness as normal.
You could likely leave your car parked on the street during a night out in the aforementioned "murderous" cities and not worry.
In SF and Seattle there is a very good chance you will have your windows broken.
I was 2 h and one block away in spacetime. Wish I'd been there and I hope if a chance arises I will be able to help. Many times strangers have stopped to help me when I was injured. It is sad none like that crossed paths with this poor man.
Bad take. NOT being able to speak about this publicly is precisely what got us here in the first place. We NEED to start expressing that we’re not okay with this before anything will change.
Your comment reeks of “stop whining, I didn’t even hit you that hard”.
How long until acceptance of what was once one of the most beautiful cities on earth becoming a cyberpunk opium den? You people are doing your city such a disservice. Fix it sooner, not later.
Complaining about people who are saying its broken is the opposite of fixing it.
What is it going to take to admit that The City has a problem? Because the collective denial and doubling down on our failed policies clearly isn't working.
A commenter on the SF Chronicle page made an interesting argument: the city should return to at-large elections for the Board of Supervisors. Even though a significant majority of the city roughly agrees the city needs stricter enforcement of the laws, it can't quite get there. Citywide elections typically result in center or right-of-center (in relative SF terms) winners; for example, the most recent left-of-center mayor in SF was Art Agnos, 1988-1992. But a majority of the Board of Supervisors is now left of center; district neighborhoods are too susceptible to pandering and cheap promises.
GP is unclear. It seems they are saying the left is like the right with their attachment to their respective dogma. The reader has to assume the SF govt is left wing.
I wasn't as clear as I should have been but you are exactly right. Dogmatic homeless advocates are extremely similar to Evangelical activists:
They refuse to allow facts to penetrate their belief system. My mother became a drug addict when I was 3 years old and was homeless and drug addicted until she died in 2015 of an overdose. In the process of trying to help her I became very active in working with the homeless specifically in the Washington DC area and then in Denver. When you actually spend a lot of time and shelters and you're trying to get people to be self-sufficient you start to realize that the advocates who insist that they be given housing without having to give up drugs are absolutely ideologues who care nothing about facts or outcomes. It's a religious crusade to them and it's easy for people like me who grew up in borderline cults to recognize it. It's like a formula of behavior you see.
There's a non-zero chance that the evil pieces of garbage that beat this man in the head with a pipe or the guys who stabbed crazy Bob to death were getting fentanyl and free needles provided to them with San Francisco taxpayer funds. I don't mean that the SF government was giving them fentanyl I mean that they were purchasing fentanyl with SF government funds provided to them.
I’m really sorry to hear that. The amount of suffering in the US makes me sick to my stomach. I don’t know what the solution is but clearly ignoring it isn’t working.
Since we already have the 2nd Amendment then it should be obvious to you that you are mistaken.
With that in mind, what are your more reasoned thoughts about how to solve the problems in San Francisco? Deep thinking is encouraged here as I don't live there, have never been there, probably will never visit, but still would like to understand cause, effect, and solutions for things that people who live there see as problems. I too would see many of these things as problems if they were occurring in my neighborhood.
The 2nd Amendment was in practice not honored in California until June 2022 when the Supreme Court ruled in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. SF still didn't issue its first concealed carry permit until January 2023.
I didn't know this about concealed carry. Thanks for that.
Concealed carry or open carry is not the answer though. It clearly doesn't work as a deterrent in places where it is available as crimes still occur in broad daylight against victims who one could assume have a high probability of being armed. In fact, it is more common now that one would be shot in a road rage incident by some coward with a gun than it has been in the past.[0]
I don't think 2A is the answer here, but I just wanted to point out: "having" something in the Constitution doesn't mean anything when local politicians, courts, and police restrict it.
Kinda reminds you of how the other amendments are treated doesn't it? Seems to depend a lot on what's socially okay in your region whether it is speech, privacy, religion, etc.
I think this is related to the way firearms are defined in the code. An incomplete collection of unfinished parts is no big deal whether it is part of a firearm or a component of ammunition. It is when they are assembled and ready for use that the relevant laws come into play. I may be wrong and that's okay since I am not an expert on any of this. I just hoped to spark a conversation.
2A is Federal Law, so local government can't restrict it. If you think local government has been violating it for years, then it doesn't mean what you think it means, according to the current very-right-wing Supreme Court, which has recently struck down unconstitutional gun laws.
The Supreme Court doesn't just go through the books of places and strike-through laws they don't agree with. The law has to be used against someone and it has to be appealed through multiple levels and then the Supreme Court has to be petitioned to review it. It takes a lot of money and time, and many people are just going to settle in the lower courts.
Places have had unconstitutional laws on the books for a long time before someone had a case that made it to the Supreme Court. For every case that you do hear about, there are cases that don't make it for whatever reason and you don't hear about.
I am definitely not a legal scholar, so if any facts in my comment are wrong please let me know.
I believe you are correct and you have identified part of what is broken or frequently abused in our political system. Unfortunately there are only two parties and they seem to focus on all the things that piss off the other guys so much that they are each more than willing to advocate for and attempt to pass new laws that clearly are unconstitutional knowing that if they can maintain control of enough of the process that those laws can be in force for a long time and may bolster their position over that term.
Citizens need to be more informed about the whole legislative process, their rights and their responsibilities etc. Voting should be mandatory and more than two parties should be in the process. Somehow we have to make this work or we are all pawns.
Local government isn't supposed to be able to restrict it. But in practice, it often takes a really long time before unconstitutional laws get declared as such by a court.
Here's an idea: what if SF's DA applied the same prosecutorial discretion to anything that looks remotely like self-defense for 30 days. Simply as an experiment to see if there would be a precipitous decrease in crime.
I see no reason why concealed carry should be legal anyway. Open carry should be the norm if you are going to allow individuals to bear arms anytime, anywhere as some 2A supporters argue.
Of course I am against open carry too since we already pay for city, state, and federal law enforcement operations that should allow all of us to go about our business without fear of being robbed, assaulted, or murdered.
Law enforcement though has been militarized and has become a tool of fascists after a couple of generations of careful fear-mongering designed to turn us against each other and thus build a case, first in one area and then expanding nationwide, for everyone to go around armed all the time increasing the likelihood of unstable personalities using their firearms in crimes of passion that otherwise would not have occurred.
Open carry and concealed carry create the environment for an increase in firearm crimes while at the same time failing to serve as a deterrent in the hands of untrained citizens.
in theory i also agree except the law enforcement that we pay for does almost nothing for us to go about our business without fear of being robbed, assaulted, or murdered. a prominent tech executive was just stabbed to death in SF, you cannot park anywhere in the bay area without clearing your entire car of belongings, elderly people are being mugged and robbed in their neighborhoods, asians continue to be attacked in broad daylight, home break ins are frequent, and the police are nowhere to be found and they do not even seem to attempt to find or book the perpetrators
i dont think that firearms is necessarily the right answer but i can understand why people may feel the need to take their protection into their own hands when our law enforcement agencies are like this
There are several active lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of many of California's current gun laws. With the recent Supreme Court ruling, they are making excellent progress forward, but are still often stuck in a process hell driven by the politics of the 9th Circuit Court.
Weren't people giving stats for the Bob Lee article(s) saying pretty much the opposite?