My only takeaway is that on some level, a lot of people really want to live in fear.
Letting one dramatic headline make you so emotional that you ignore larger trends in data is such a choice. It's not required.
And as far as culture wars go, when it comes to something like gay marriage I get it, there's a policy winner and loser there.
But what's the point of pretending cities are more dangerous than they are? The people there know the true level of safety, and how it differs from the performative outrage discourse.
There isn’t a single quote or data point in that article that suggests violent crime is down or that somehow perceptions of fear are unwarranted. The homicide rate has “recovered” from the pandemic (or is shockingly higher if you consider how depopulated/vacant the city is post-COVID).
> 2019, the city proposed opening a homeless shelter in the area, and residents protested, arguing that the facility — which eventually did open — would be detrimental to public safety.
> Opposition to the shelter gathered momentum after a woman trying to enter her condo building was attacked that summer by a man suffering from mental illness, one of many seemingly random assaults that occurred in succession as the pandemic emptied public spaces.
> But a bodega owner in the area said that crime seemed to be rising, and that at night, the neighborhood became a backdrop for drug use and occasional sideshows.
> San Francisco recorded 56 homicides in 2017 before some violent crimes dipped during the pandemic; in 2021 and 2022, the homicide count was back up to 56, according to data from the city’s Police Department.
It’s not exactly Portland or Chicago, but I think it is reasonable for people in SF to say the status quo is unacceptable.
Progressives tend to systematically underrate crime as a problem because it “magically” went down for so long after the 90s. Incidents like this remind people that crime is real, and not just imagined by the Fox News, and that the victims are real, too.
The data isn't always accurate. Just because it hasn't happened to you doesn't mean it's not happening often. Your perception isn't always correct.
Anecdote, I spent some time wandering around east palo alto (at the time, was the murder capital). It didn't feel particularly bad, but the data said otherwise.
You can't trust random people's perception of safety. You can't trust the data either.
The great bargain of America is that you live in a country with insanely high violent crime rates for the developed world but don't complain about it too much because it's usually well contained to gangs or other communities/neighborhoods which are easy to avoid by those with means. What you experienced, even in East Palo Alto, is exactly that. Even in Chicago which has really high rates of violent crime, the north side neighborhoods are perfectly safe.
You're right, but it's not a sustainable way to govern nor has it ever been fair to anyone not of means. In SF I see this anger that people of means can't separate themselves from crime and I think it's time for Americans to finally have the conversation on safety work for everyone and not just the moneyed.
The Bay Area has always been particularly badly segregated. Palo Alto is wealthy and posh, East Palo Alto is a dump. San Jose boasts huge tech companies while East San Jose is full of gang fighting. I grew up in one of these violent areas of the Bay (starts with East but that's all I'll mention publicly) and the gap in resources is huge. Bad schools, poor libraries and community spaces, poorly maintained parks, unsafe neighborhoods, no pedestrian affordances, high speed badly maintained roads, the list is endless.
The downtown part of SF isn't really considered a posh area by most of the old money interests in SF, who live in the Northwestern parts of the City. The old political families of SF all live there in huge, beautiful houses and the neighborhoods are very different than the parts of FiDi and SOMA that new money tends to hang around.
The Wire is a great show that goes into some of the politics and challenges of America's containment style of policing.
I think that's a bit of an unfair characterization. I would replace "Want to live in fear" with "Human brains are wired to pay more attention to facts which may present a danger to our safety, and modern news media exploits this to win the attention economy game."
Human brains are also wired to pay more attention to anecdotal data than statistics.
Some human brains. I live here and don't really care about crime news and I don't have a sense that things are more dangerous than usual. It's a big city, statistically bad things are going to happen all the time.
I used to work in San Francisco. I didn't want to live in fear, but yeah it was getting exhausting how much I had to watch my back. Didn't even think it was a uniquely SF thing until I went to other cities. Like, NYC subway feels way safer than BART, setting aside the fact that it works way better.
Do you live in San Francisco? The people here are fully aware of how ridiculously dangerous the city has become. There is no 'performative outrage discourse'
Data can be massaged and manipulated. Sure there is priming with the narratives but at an instinctual level, the few times I visited SFO, I had to watch my back than say Cancun, Mexico.
Letting one dramatic headline make you so emotional that you ignore larger trends in data is such a choice. It's not required.
And as far as culture wars go, when it comes to something like gay marriage I get it, there's a policy winner and loser there.
But what's the point of pretending cities are more dangerous than they are? The people there know the true level of safety, and how it differs from the performative outrage discourse.