Per square mile is not useful. Crime rates are related to people. People commit crimes, not land. This is a made up statistic whose only useful purpose is to make San Francisco go to the top of a list it otherwise would not. It's why crimes are reported per capita
The stat says that crime is much geographically denser on average than other US cities, even after controlling for population density.
This implies that crime levels are high throughout much of the city, or extraordinarily high in pockets.
And if you live here, you know this is true. In contrast to many other cities, where crime is often concentrated in pockets, SF has high crime almost everywhere with pockets of safety in expensive neighborhoods like Pac Heights, Russian Hill, Forrest Knolls, and the outskirts.
The stat means it’s harder to escape crime in SF, unless you’re one of the privileged few.
Crime per square mile will be higher anywhere where people live in high rise buildings instead of suburbs.
So what? Is it worse that a robbery took place 15 floors below you rather than five blocks away? Because I don't see the difference at all.
If you're worried about personal safety, literally the only important denominator is per capita. That's the likelihood of something happening to you.
Per square mile has no relevance to personal safety. And if high population density is a factor in crime levels rising, that's already reflected in per-capita stats.
Well that likelihood is measured as crime per capita, of course.
Conditional on someone breaking in, you are much safer in an apartment building. If you live in a single family house and someone breaks in, he or she will probably rob you. If you live in a 100 unit apartment building and someone breaks in, he or she will rob either your unit, or or one of the 99 others. For it to be yours, you need to be unlucky that day, even after the break-in.
No, because the crime rate is the same so it doesn't matter by definition.
But also, think about -- in the suburbs the criminal can just walk into your front yard. There's no difference between someone at the door to your apartment or the door to your house. (Heck, houses can be easier to break into because they have more doors to try out of view, windows that can be smashed, etc.)
And yes you can run into a criminal in an elevator. You can also run into them on a sidewalk, or get carjacked while stopped at a traffic light or to park.
But at the end of the day there's no difference. Crime per capita is crime per capita.
> This is a made up statistic whose only useful purpose is to make San Francisco go to the top of a list it otherwise would not.
It's high the list no matter how you look at it:
> San Francisco has one of the highest crime rates in America compared to all communities of all sizes - from the smallest towns to the very largest cities. One's chance of becoming a victim of either violent or property crime here is one in 18. Within California, more than 98% of the communities have a lower crime rate than San Francisco.
Low danger (low violent crime rate) does not equal low crime rate. It wouldn't surprise me if San Francisco has more tax evaders per capita. They are even probably concentrated in the financial district, which has lots of high rises, so more crime per square mile as well. I call for a crackdown.
It's a simple probability calculation. SF has a smaller area which results in anyone having the possibility of getting targeted by dangerous people. Larger cities also have more gang violence because they are bigger and gangs try to control territory and cause a lot of crime in the process.
SF has made itself a target by thinking people don't have the capacity to do bad things on purpose... and bad people will absolutely take advantage of this (ironic?). There is more nuance here of course, but I'm trying to quickly explain why less than 10 years ago I was walking around at 2am and felt perfectly safe, but now I won't even go to SF during the day.
Yup. Saying that there aren't many homicides per square mile in St Louis or Chicago is equivalent to saying that Palestine OH is a safe place because the town is really sparse and so the cancer per sq. mile is acceptable.
SF's (6.35)¹ rate of homicides is below the national average (7.8)². St Louis (66.07)¹, which is listed as a city of comparison, has about 10x more homicides per 100k. This may be counter to naive expectations where one might say that proximity has a causal effect on homicides, since proximity means opportunity.
Holy crap, I was wondering what the heck is going on in St. Louis. I can't find any super clear authoritative answers with a quick Google search, but did find one comment suggesting it's at least partly a statistical artifact based on city borders:
> Some of it is a statistical anomaly. Most cities in this weight class annexed their counties, and thus averaged in a whole lot of white upper class good schools suburbs. If you look at st Louis city and county together, the crime stats drop to the middle of the pack with other metros this size. [1]
This has always been a problem in comparing statistics between urban areas, because the administrative boundaries are entirely arbitrary. I've long wished for some kind of algorithm that could define metropolitan areas in some kind of objective way for statistical comparison, based solely on population maps, but I'm not aware of anything that exists.
Yeah administrative areas are very arbitrary, and based on historical factors. If you really wanted to compare, I think comparing MSA's might get you closer. But either way this is a terrible metric
There's a few things about this data that indicate why this is not useful:
1. The New York City Sq Mileage number includes water.
2. Density for each of these cities varies widely by community. For example, 6% of Chicago's sq mileage is in the O'Hare community, which has a population density of 1000 residents per square mile. A better comparison would be Chicago vs. the Bay Area
You'd probably have to compare areas of similar population density to make a serious statement.
Do you think SF is safe? Do you live there? If so do you go downtown? Or to parks, or to soma or ride the bus? Have you ever walked on Polk street? Take a glance towards the tenderloin if you do. I’ve seen brazen daylight heroin injection on mission street. A dude ducked into the entrance of tech shop to smoke a little crack with people inside looking at him. I’ve seen more public shitting than I would have thought possible. I’ve personally witnessed the phenomenon or brazen shoplifting (where someone just openly loads up a bag or even rides a bike through stealing stuff) I’ve experienced the elevated property crime. A good friend was held up at gunpoint. All in the last year I was living there.
I was there in December around Union square. There were three cops on every corner due to the rash of violent robberies and smash and grabs. I spent the week constantly looking over my shoulder.
San Francisco is very unsafe. There’s a general feeling of lawlessness and that crime can be committed with impunity. I would literally feel safer in Somalia because at least there I would be armed and expected to defend myself.
People's feelings are subjective. I have no reason to doubt that the poster would "feel" safer, which is why I trust data over feelings. Lots of people in the US "feel" unsafe, despite available data on crime rates.
I think it can get to perception of how safe or dangerous a place is. If there are lots of crimes happening all around you as walk around a city, that can obviously seem more unsafe than if you're driving about the countryside and only rarely pass criminal activity. Even if crimes per capita are equal the perception of danger is much greater in the former than the latter.
Everybody knows it's safer to live in the country, but that's not the argument he's making. He's saying it's also safer to live in any other city. I don't know if it's a great methodology though, going per sq mile.
