SoMa has been this bad for a while, so any new company moving in can read headlines and know what they’re getting themselves into. Looking at Krakens job postings they’ve adapted the remote first work culture. Sounds like Powell is just trying to make some noise on his way out of town to attract attention to his company…
SF had similar crime rates to Miami, Corpus Cristi, TX, Mesa, AZ, Austin, TX and Chesapeake, VA.
And about 1/3 the crime rate of the worst cities: Detroit, Baltimore, St. Louis and Memphis.
Of course, individual neighborhoods and streets might be highly variable.
But as far as the 100 biggest cities go, SF seems slightly worse than average. I counted 38 cities with worse crime rates and 4 that didn’t fully report. So putting it somewhere around 39th or 43rd on the highest crime rates for the 100 biggest cities.
That is overall crime rate. If you look at the things random people are most likely going to be impacted by like property crimes you will see that SF is near or at the top. Also in many cities there are the areas where violent crime is high, but it is primarily gang violence back and forth with each other. These are weighed in the overall statistics.
For someone walking to work, getting their property taken, and aggressive harassment that is not reported in crime statistics makes them feel unsafe. The quality of life issues that SF has and are not in official crime statistics are what are making people feel that their city is a dump and they loathe walking down these streets. Human excrement, aggressive pan handlers, petty larceny through the roof, and pervasive open drug use.
It's notoriously difficult to make region-to-region comparisons using city crime data, so much so that the FBI explicitly warns against it on their crime-reporting website. [0]
The problem is that things change a lot from neighborhood to neighborhood -- the worst neighborhoods for crime are much worse than the best neighborhoods for crime. Second, municipal boundaries are mostly historical accidents; cities don't stop at their borders. Some cities draw their borders to include almost their entire surrounding region; others (like San Francisco) include a very tiny portion of their region. Depending on where the crime in the region happens to be, this can make a big difference. Why is Brooklyn part of NYC, but Jersey isn't? Why is Oakland not part of San Francisco, but Queens is part of NYC? Why are all the old inner-ring suburbs in Chicago a part of Chicago-proper, while none of the old inner-ring suburbs of St. Louis are part of St. Louis-proper?
These are just historical accidents that don't matter much if you're a human being walking around, but they have huge impacts on how statistics are compiled in each region.
So, OK, say you solve that problem by only looking at MSAs or "urbanized areas" so that you can normalize the comparison between "cities." That solves the problem, right?
Does it?
You still have the issue that you might be comparing one region with a relatively high rate of crime spread across its entire footprint to another city that has sky-high rates of crime in 5 neighborhoods and is relatively safe everywhere else. Which city has "higher" crime? Can you tell just by looking at its region-wide per-capita crime rates? Is that even a question statistics can answer, or is it philosophy? (See: the old joke about Bill Gates walking into a coffeeshop and drastically raising the average income of everybody inside.)
Yes, agreed that it's a hard problem, bordering on philosophy. Feeling safe, is a unique individual experience that won't show up in the data.
But in response to the claim from the article that "SF is not safe", I don't know a better way to analyze the claim that crime stats, even though it's imperfect for all the reasons you mentioned.
Good points. I don’t know of anyone has done the kind of deep analysis they’re advocating for though.
As a broad brush, I still think it’s fair to say in 2019 SF was around the middle of the pack for the top 100 cities in terms of reported crime per 100k known people.
SOMA's issues were already rampant 10+ years ago when I had an office at 9th and Howard, and Twitter was moving in. That it's gotten so much worse is, indeed, a strike against the city.
Plenty of the rest of town is just fine.. but out of towners may not understand that because there are shocking displays all over. And, frankly, there are definitely parts of town I won't park on the street anymore.
The government decided to convert a high value oceanfront property surrounded by residential apartments into a homeless shelter in SOMA - with access to spouse and pet care. The residents protested against it, got accused of NIMBYism, and were forced upon it anyways by admins that live predominantly on the West side.
The whole neighborhood cannot be parked in, and right next week had multiple cases of assault that went uninvestigated.
Right? I remember years ago when I lived in SF, body parts turned up in suitcases outside of Twitter's offices. Why is this a surprise that cities are dangerous places?
edit: I'm sorry everyone is taking my statement to mean that all cities are places where out of control crime happens (which I think is making a presumption about crime in SF). If you believe your city is a safe place or safer than SF great. But that doesn't make your city not a place where plenty of danger is to be found.
Check trimbo's reply below for the stats, but this assertion is simply not true. Wyoming's rate of violent crime per 100k population was 234 last year (8th lowest among US states) compared to rates of 538 for New York City and 715 for San Francisco. I have spent much of my life living and working in Wyoming/Bay Area and these stats seem to match my perception of each place. I know violence existed in Wyoming, but it was shocking when something like a murder happened. In big cities, the social fabric is different and individual events get lost in a sea of statistics.
It's easy (for either side) to rely on stereotypes about places we haven't spent much time, but the statistics (as well as my lived experience) tell a different story than the one you are trying to spin. Admittedly, in both places the worst of the crime is experienced by people who are lower on the socio-economic ladder, especially if they can't afford a place to live. It just turns out there is a higher concentration of those folks (for a variety of reasons: cost of living, availability of services, etc...) in cities than rural towns.
But even this is too kind to cities, because while the average rate of crime in cities varies a lot from neighborhood to neighborhood and city to city, all the most dangerous places in the country are in cities.
There is no rural area with a sustained 60+ per 100k homicide rate, but you'll find that in North St. Louis.
Similarly, when you're in the Tenderloin in San Francisco you are in one of the most dangerous places in the country. There is no rural area that even remotely compares.
According to those tables the state of Wyoming had a murder rate of 3.4 per 100k and New York city had a murder rate of 3.8 per 100k. It doesn't seem right to me that "You're much more likely to get shot" in Wyoming versus NYC. I think, based on the data, that you're slightly more likely to get shot in NYC. Furthermore, in the last couple years murders have substantially increased in NYC.
Fruits of an experiment in progressivism driven by the DA.
I once had a break-in and laptop stolen, tried to call the cops and to my alarm no one answered. Called another number and was told to call 911, again no answer. Filed an online report, no follow up.
1 week later, car broken in again in a parking lot with surveillance camera.
CA is one of the most “progressive” states.
SF is one of the most “progressive” cities in a progressive state.
Chesa is one of the most “progressive” DAs in a progressive city in a progressive state.
Progressives have complete control of the legislation and the enforcement and this is the result of their policies in action.
SF is placed in a difficult position due to its extremely high cost of living in a small area. It does not matter what policies SF put into place, there will still be people on the streets: "63% said an inability to afford rent was the primary culprit; 11% of unhoused San Franciscans actually had jobs."[0]
The rampant drug crisis isn’t helping, it is a mental health and drug crisis causing homelessness more than a lack of housing. They say they are following “The Portugal model” but they are not. Portugal does not tolerate open drug use or openly being high/aggressive.
There is also a housing crisis but I am not sympathetic. SF just refuses to build buildings, everything gets mired in “affordable housing” debates. Build houses and skyscrapers until the prices go down and then build a couple more. Simple supply and demand.
Additionally SFs budget has doubled in a decade. They do less with more than practically any other city.
There certainly is a connection but not necessarily the one you’re suggesting. “I called the cops and they didn’t show up therefore progressive justice policies are bad” is quite a leap. Can’t it also be that cops are just jerks, who largely don’t live in the city, who are happy to collect the paychecks and watch the city fall apart because they are personally invested in the political narrative?
There are plenty of videos floating around out there of cops refusing to take reports on break-ins and robberies and even assaults. It’s really odd to me that anyone on a site like this would take the side of the armed authoritarian gang in this debate.
I suspect the person you are responding to is also invested in a certain political narrative.
People complain about progressive polices, but from what progressive candidates lol
The left is powerless, we got trounced in the last election cycle and none of our policies, even popular ones like weed legalization, has been implemented.
If anything conservative policies are more widely implemented, and are what is failing.
The current model of policing is a failure in many ways, and now it can't even keep the peace anymore, it's pathetic. But who is going to evict your grandma so a real estate company can but hey house and sell it without the police?
While it might be true nationally that left policies aren’t being implemented, it’s not true on the West Coast. Just as one example, in Portland where I live, all drugs were decriminalized in personal user amounts beginning in February 2021, in response to a ballot measure. In Seattle, one of the candidates for the city attorney’s office during this last election had previously tweeted “Eat shit” to the SPD’s benign holiday greeting, and she still secured a healthy chunk of the vote. At least one of Seattle’s city council members is a socialist and regularly advocates for seizing private housing to redistribute.
To be super precise the council member you're referring to, Kshama Sawant, is technically a self-avowed Trotskyist. If a Trotskyist can be elected to city government it's pretty fair to say the left is "winning" in that particular city. When you dust off your history books and think about Trotsky's "Permanent Revolution" for a bit, suddenly a lot of the policies that actively make people more miserable start to make more sense.
You are very bad at numerical thinking. Higher crime rate per capita does not mean higher crime rate, does not mean higher possibility to get attacked.
My original claim was that cities are dangerous places. This relatively anodyne claim was met with claims that not all cities are dangerous (a false statement; show me any city and I'll show you where to find plenty of danger), which doesn't refute anything I said, let alone bring up any data. In fact, they characterize their argument as "incredible", so I don't know how I'm supposed to take that. Like, if you're telling me something is incredible but you don't back that up with any credible data, what am I supposed to say? It seems like we're all going with our personal experience here as 0 data have been brought up or offered by anyone.
If anyone wants to offer some data about the safety of western cities in Europe, I'll show you some data that demonstrates they are dangerous. The only thing we'll be quibbling over is degrees of danger and how much one city is more dangerous than another, but again that doesn't refute a single thing I said in my original post, which was just to say that cities are dangerous. Which if you are upset about the usage of the word "are" in this context, then change it to "can be" to make you feel better.
My friends and I were attacked by a gang on New Years completely unprovoked in Paris in 2000, which is also where my dad had to fend off another hoard of people trying to rob him while on crutches 10 years before that.
This is just learned helplessness. Out of control violent crime is not an inevitable part of city life. It doesn’t have to be this way at all. Feel free to compare the violent crime rates in my city (Singapore) to San Francisco.
Out of control violent crime is not an inevitable part of SF life either, but it seems like that's the presumption about what the situation is in SF.
Moreover, I didn't say anything about crime or crime rates, I said cities are dangerous places. As in there's danger in cities, which I don't think is a false or disagreeable statement. I mean, you take Singapore as an example, Singapore has a sex trafficking problem. Literally my friend's mom just went there, and her favorite story was about all the American guys she met taking sex holidays.
> I didn't say anything about crime or crime rates, I said cities are dangerous places. As in there's danger in cities
You said:
> No one has ever been brutally murdered in your city?
You are aware that murder is a crime, right? You are aware that you’re participating in a discussion about violent crime?
> “We shut down Kraken’s global headquarters on Market Street in San Francisco after numerous employees were attacked, harassed and robbed on their way to and from the office.”
Violent crime rates are an extremely reasonable measure of danger in a city.
> Literally my friend's mom just went there, and her favorite story was about all the American guys she met there taking sex holidays.
This is an extremely unlikely story. Singapore during the pandemic has been a difficult place to go for any kind of holiday. Tourism to Singapore essentially disappeared over the past two years. And for sex tourism specifically, venues that would ordinarily host that sort of thing are closed. You literally couldn’t even buy an alcoholic drink in a bar past 10:30pm for the past two years, give or take a week. Nightlife venues like clubs aren’t going to reopen properly for another couple of weeks. Are there some people flouting the law? Of course there will be. But nobody would choose Singapore for sex tourism at the moment given the restrictions on nightlife.
I can’t help but note that the first section of the Wikipedia page on crime in Singapore mentions sex trafficking. If you weren’t aware of the local situation regarding pandemic restrictions, I can see why you might think that “all the Americans on sex holidays” is a vivid and plausible story to suggest that Singapore is a dangerous place. But I’m sorry, it’s just not.
I'm glad you love your city and all, but whether or not you find my story unlikely you're not really denying the thrust of it. That the issue is a prominent feature on Wikipedia seems to bolster my argument and prove that it's a problem, I'm not sure why you brought that up as it doesn't help your position.
Anyway, as far as the story in question, it covers violent crimes as well as drug use, harassment, public sanitation issues, mental health, as well as just homelessness in general, not all of which are violent or crimes. Lumping all of this into "out of control violent crime" really throws the issue out of context.
It's also true that violent crime rates are an extremely reasonable measure of danger in a city, but in so far as we're talking about cities, they also show that violent crime does in fact concentrate there, and they also hide dangers which are not crimes or are not reported. For example, the crime of rape is committed at much higher rates than it's reported, so if we were to look at the stats of a place with a high rate of rape, we might conclude there is a low rate of rape based on low figures. So while they are reasonable they are not the full picture and can in fact be misleading.
> As in there's danger in cities, which I don't think is a false or disagreeable statement.
If this is truly what you're saying then why say it at all? What value do you feel it contributes to the conversation?
Yes, there is danger in cities. Sometimes it rains in small towns. Restaurants serve food, some of which is good and some bad. All equally useless statements.
Mainly I was just concurring with the parent and throwing out that it seems absurd to complain about danger when you're moving out given the kinds of things that neighborhood had been known for. The bit at the end was mostly a quip to punctuate the linked story, so sorry everyone took that as some grand thesis on the relative safety between rural and urban environments, or some dig at progressive cities or something. I don't know what sensibilities I stepped on.
Anywhere with lots of people will have murders, that should be pretty obvious. If you choose a population outside of cities of the same size, there will be murders there too.
> Your original comment was a straw-man attempt to dismiss all criticism of SF's crime as risible naiveté. So what are you actually saying?
Talk about a straw man! I didn't dismiss all criticisms of SF's crime (where did I do so?), I dismissed this specific criticism of SF's crime, pointing at their risible naivete for seemingly completely disregarding the history of violence in the neighborhood that they moved into. If body parts had been found in suitcases next door, and you still choose to move in, you can't cite crime as a reason you feel the neighborhood has gone to hell. All I was really doing was agreeing with the parent and pointing out the general tone of the neighborhood. So sorry I offended everyone with my quip.
> Why is this a surprise that cities are dangerous places?
US cities. Toronto, for its faults, is a large city which is very safe. Unless you’re a gangster.
I bet I could walk around Jane/Finch on my phone and have better personal security than the nice area of many US cities.
It’s sad that you can’t solve the problem as a nation, because IMO cities are the figureheads of a civilization. Look at Detroit. The Rome of High Modernity 70 years ago, now a rotten husk.
