
Ask HN: How can you stand to live in San Francisco given the crime? - staunch
http://www.crimemapping.com/map.aspx?ll=-13628682.729867542,4547316.444930093&z=13&mc=ve_roads&cc=HO,RO,SX,WE&db=1/25/2012&de=3/01/2012
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zedshaw
I moved to SF from NYC, and NYC was _way_ safer by comparison. I used to work
for the NYC Dept. of Correction crunching the numbers on arrests and inmates
and I can tell you this is the biggest difference between the two cities:

NYC -- There's a cop standing on nearly every corner in most of Manhattan, and
actually standing, giving directions to tourists and being friendly but
professional. If there's a big crime in an area they show up, on foot, and
patrol like a damn army to say, "That ain't gonna happen again, try it." In
the words of one very sketchy NYC taxi driver, "You can't do anything in this
fucking town with all the goddamn cops around!" In NYC the police presence is
direct, visible, and makes them feel like part of the community.

SF -- Not a cop in sight, even in cars. They never patrol on foot. Even in
places like Union Square and Haight Ashbury you rarely see them. They might
show up for an event but they don't do shit but stand there and maybe harass a
homeless guy or two. I walk all over this city at all hours of the day and
night, and even seeing a cop car is a surprise. Usually they only show up
after something major has happened. They do show up quickly, but they are not
present and do not feel like part of the community.

If all SF did was make cops _walk_ a beat and arrest people for every petty
crime (like NYC did) they could drastically improve things. After that, making
sure _every_ street was well lit with good street lamps would help even more.
Hell I'd willingly pay more taxes if it was agreed that the SFPD motorpool
budget was cut in half and officers were forced to walk.

~~~
rabidsnail
> If all SF did was make cops walk a beat and arrest people for every petty
> crime (like NYC did) they could drastically improve things. After that,
> making sure every street was well lit with good street lamps would help even
> more. Hell I'd willingly pay more taxes if it was agreed that the SFPD
> motorpool budget was cut in half and officers were forced to walk.

Hopefully we won't have to elect a Rudy Guiliani or a Frank Rizzo to make that
happen.

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dkasper
1) Almost everywhere is safe during the day.

2) At night most issues happen in certain areas where you can take steps to
minimize your risk.

3) Most crime doesn't cause permanent damage. Getting mugged sucks, but
physical things can be replaced.

4) It's a risk/reward proposition. If it's worth it to you to live in the city
then you deal with it. If it's not worth it to you then there are plenty of
safe suburbs.

~~~
kasrak
I'm interning in SF this summer. Any tips where the "certain areas" to avoid
are?

~~~
danilocampos
You'll know them immediately, and getting back out is easy once your spidey
sense tingles. Mostly, stay out of the Tenderloin.

~~~
dpiers
I stayed at a hostel in the Tenderloin when I was in town for a conference
last year. Walked to/from Moscone with my $2k MBP in a Timbuk2 bag every day.
Never had any trouble, not even when I was walking back at 1AM and fairly
intoxicated.

Am I just a lucky idiot?

------
rabidsnail
San Francisco is somewhere in the middle of the pack for US Cities by rate of
violent crime. It has about half the number of violent crimes per capita of
Philadelphia, for example.

As a side node, San Jose has shockingly little crime. It had the sixth least
violent crime per capita of US cities in 2010, at about half the rate of San
Francisco.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_cities_by_crime_r...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_cities_by_crime_rate#2010_Data)

I always take stats like crime with a grain of salt, though, as everyone in
the community has an incentive to juice them. Crimes have a tendency to get
"lost" or downgraded in the stats, and that happens at different rates in
different places.

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danso
As a former crime reporter, I just have to chime in and say that not all crime
statistics are created equal. For example, when I was building a crime map for
my region, some large departments provided no data, which made their areas
look rather safe in comparison.

There is no universal standard for granularity. Or even classification (even
if jurisdictions are within the same state).

This is less of a problem if you are only focusing on SF as I think there is
only one jurisdiction there (SF police), but something to keep in mind when
trying to make comparisons with SF to anywhere else in the Bay Area.

Also, in any urban area, extremely violent crime is most heavily centered on
drug-related incidents (a drug dealer collecting, for example). Not all (or
even most) of these crimes happen across a random distribution of the
population.

~~~
brown9-2
Wait, you would make crime maps that showed areas that didn't report crime as
having no crime? That seems like a pretty dishonest map.

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Mizza
Lock your bike up! And the tires! Avoid drunks. You'll survive.

Moving here from Boston, I was actually pretty taken aback by the amount of
property crime. More than anything, it was the way that people here think "Oh,
that's just how things are here. Your stuff gets stolen."

Californians are too mellow for their own good!

~~~
carguy1983
It's the only city where leaving your car windows down is safer than leaving
them up.

:)

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impendia
"In the long run we are all dead." --John Maynard Keynes

Second what dkasper said, but I would add that I _love_ the culture of San
Francisco. There is so much energy, so much excitement, such a mixture of
people pushing their limits, doing exciting things, and _doing them damn
well_. To live in the city is to be in the center of it.

I actually worked at Stanford (until recently, when work took me away from
California), thirty miles south, and I loved San Francisco too much _not_ to
live there.

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redschell
Ah, yes. Crime mapping. As an LA resident, I've lost quite a bit of time
playing around with the crime mapper at the LA Times website, poking around
places I used to live, checking out demographics, average amount of education,
income, etc. and it would be safe to say that LA is significantly more
dangerous than SF, at least going by the numbers.

So, what keeps me from bolting for the cozy countryside? Well, it's tempting
to hit you with the one-word answer "Work." which is certainly compelling, but
obviously there are alternatives in the age of telecommuting to living in the
risky city.

The best I can come up with is that I'm alright here. I might be better
somewhere else, but I'm ok with LA. I have friends, family, and fond memories
here, and those mean a lot to me. I'm no romantic, and I would up and leave if
opportunity in SF, Austin, NYC, or Mumbai called, but this is where I am right
now, and it's not bad.

Try not to get caught up in the crime maps. You know very little about what
lead to the unfortunate incidents represented by those ominous buttons.
Control what you can, keep your eyes open, and, should you ever find yourself
in a precarious position, don't be a hero.

~~~
carguy1983
West LA / Santa Monica, which is similar in size and population to SF, is
significantly safer than San Francisco. I've lived for extended periods in
both locations.

For example, you don't have to take all the change out of your ashtrays and
hide your phone charger/other electronics every time you park your car on the
street, or see drug deals going on in broad daylight, walk past brothels on
your way to get coffee, or see drunk people get into extremely violent fights
at night outside the bars. Frequent murders occur in the city.

Anyway, my point is that SF is _really_ unsafe when it comes to property crime
and vice. Like, to the point that it's really obvious that the police just
aren't enforcing laws at ALL in most neighborhoods. For what it's worth, I
lived in one of the nicest neighborhoods, Pacific Heights (Fillmore &
California), and saw most of that stuff within 2-3 blocks from my front door.
Japantown and Divisadero were where most of it happened, but my friends' cars
got broken into EVERY time they parked on the street near my place.

~~~
redschell
Oh, no doubt. LA is a big place, and some bits are clearly nicer than others,
but I guess I was just trying to point out that crime can happen anywhere for
any number of reasons. You're more likely to get robbed in South LA than in
Santa Monica, absolutely, but you can stay reasonably safe in both places by
just doing a few simple things, like keeping valuables, especially smartphones
out of sight at all times, walking with a bit of purpose, and making sure to
straight up avoid places at certain hours.

Interesting line about SFPD though. I wasn't aware they were so inept.

~~~
carguy1983
I agree - East LA, South LA, all are not nearly as safe as West LA. My main
point is that West LA, as a whole (and by that, I mean you never have to leave
it), is safer than SF, which is more akin to taking the different
east/west/south LA's and packing them all together into one peninsula.

In other words the bad parts are impossible to avoid.

Having said that, the restaurant food in SF is better on average (LA = driving
to eat good food) and of course there's more/better/bigger tech
companies/activity in the bay.

:)

------
epistasis
This map doesn't show any information about population density. It's
impossible to judge risk without normalizing for that. It's certainly possible
to get scared from the shear number of incidents, but it's not a rational
fear.

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pepelepu
Hey, an Argentinean here... You REALLY don't know what insecurity is...

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jfruh
As someone who used to live in SF and now lives in Baltimore, this question
strikes me as pretty funny.

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ruckusing
I live in Lower Haight and recently joined our neighborhood block on
NextDoor.com [1]

A lot of my neighbors have been posting about recent break-ins. There has been
a good number of break-ins recently and people are chiming in with historical
stories from the last 2 years.

Overall its nice to be in the loop. I am surprised to hear about so much
burglary in Lower Haight.

On Tuesday evening my motorcycle, parked in front of my house, was vandalized.
Over the last 2 years I've had to replace my spark plugs 4 times. I come out
in the morning and they are either gone or half missing. Apparently you can
tie the porcelain part to some wire and swing it against glass and it breaks
the glass more efficiently (?). Last year my girlfriends scooter, also parked
in front of our house, was vandalized.

There doesn't seem to be much rhyme or reason. Its messed up.

[1] <https://haighthayes.nextdoor.com>

------
samstave
I am an SF native - and I am about to take a very large project which will
move me from SF to Dallas. I am worried more about Dallas than SF.

I have never experienced any crime in SF, aside from my bike pump being stolen
when I forgot to take it off my bike which was locked at bart.

I live at the top of Noe Valley/Castro area and its quiet and fantastic.

If you don't put yourself into stupid situations, you'll not see crime.

I don't go out to shitty bars in the mission at night, I don't spend time in
the tenderloin either.

But the tenderloin is surrounded by amazing areas, like union square.

Tranny valley (polk street) has some colorful characters which you'll see if
you go bar hopping or to SF Grubsteak after a late night of drinking.

Overall - I find SF to be one of the safest, most wonderful cities in the
world.

------
seanmccann
All cities have crime. Many areas of San Francisco are very safe, many areas
are not. If you avoid going to unsafe areas, particularly at night, you'll be
fine. San Francisco is once of the most dense cities in the US, looking at a
map might isn't the best way to determine if a city is unsafe in general.
Check out stats like these:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_cities_by_crime_r...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_cities_by_crime_rate)

Also, there are many cities in the Bay Area. Oakland has a high crime rate,
but other areas have very little crime.

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dustineichler
Because the good out weighs the bad... how does anyone live in the suburbs
assuming this was a loaded question.

Crime is everywhere, you can stick your head in the sand and pretend it
doesn't exist or you can enjoy your life. I lived in a containment zone in SF
where the cops intentionally pushed criminal activity towards a 2 block
radius. It was trade off to live in a prime location. SF is dirtier than it is
dangerous if you're smart about it. What got annoying fast was the amount of
dog poop on the side walk(s). The end.

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josiahq
Because it's the 9th safest city in the US in its size category >500K.

<http://www.morganquitno.com/cit05pop.htm>

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mtgentry
That does seem high. Here's downtown L.A. which seems pleasant in comparison:
<http://bit.ly/zdnbyn>

~~~
waterlesscloud
Hey, Skid Row is crime free!

Obviously this is not actually the case.

------
j2labs
According to this website, New York, NY doesn't have any crime.

~~~
mtgentry
Hmm their crime data must not be easily accessible...

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jonursenbach
Easy: live out where I live in the Inner Richmond.

~~~
rekoros
How bad is the commute to SF?

~~~
cpeterso
Inner Richmond is a neighborhood in SF. Confusingly, there is also a Richmond
city in the East Bay, but you would not want to live there if you are
commuting to SF (or in general, really).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richmond_District,_San_Francis...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richmond_District,_San_Francisco)

------
sabat
1- SF is a city with diverse neighborhoods; there are some that are quite
safe, and others where you'd be well-advised to watch your back. The crime may
appear dense on that map, but in reality, it's not like a stick-up happens
every time you set foot outdoors.

2- San Francisco is not the same as the Bay Area. As someone who lives in So
Cal, you may possibly think that I live in "San Francisco," whereas I actually
live in the East Bay. The Bay Area is a huge, fairly dense populated area.
Palo Alto, Berkeley, San Jose, Oakland, Fremont, San Mateo, Marin
County—they're all in the Bay Area, but none are "San Francisco".

~~~
GiraffeNecktie
And the graphics on the map tend to make you think that these were all serious
crimes. The "gun" symbol actually means "weapon" not "gun" which could mean a
guy threatening someone with a baseball bat. "Robbery" would include low level
stuff like shoplifting. Also it's worth remembering that lots of crime is low-
life vs low-life (aka settling of accounts) and not much of a risk to the
average person.

~~~
astine
If you click on the icons they give you more detail as the the nature of each
crime. Most of the ski-masks seem to be "STRONGARM ROB." which implies a
mugging to my mind. The gun symbol means weapon, and most of them seem to be
knives.

