I lived a couple of blocks from Salesforce tower before the pandemic and found the entire city had lost a ground war to homeless drug addicts. There was a break in at the Walgreens in the area one night and I spotted some of the crooks hauling cylinders out of the shattered windows while others were mixing stuff over a fire on the sidewalk. I called the cops and the emergency response operator literally told me “what do you want us to do about it?” I replied “something?”. A guy I knew who rented me office space, who also ran a small business with street access, and is from the area, thought this was an okay response because they stole from a big company, he felt it was a victimless crime.
So, while I’m glad to see this is happening I’m doubtful any real change will come to San Francisco till there is real economic harm that befalls the community. Basically, when the Detroit 2.0 story comes to town.
> the entire city had lost a ground war to homeless drug addicts
As a former homeless drug addict, it's less of a war and more of a massacre. Despite the fox news-ass propaganda you see on HN all the time almost no one chooses to be out there like that. When I see folks down like that I think what has been done to them not what are they doing to me. This isn't them taking actions against you, this is the consequences of our policies; chickens home to roost shit. If you can't tolerate it then you must fight to change it.
> this was an okay response because they stole from a big company, felt it was a victimless crime.
I wonder if Walgreens thought about hiring their own security guards. It seems to make sense to pay for your own security, right? I assume insurance factors into that decision.
There are a lot of people who don't have much empathy for big companies. They would characterize them as soulless profit making machines that squeeze employees and consumers as much as they can, pollute the commons, homogenize the culture, warp politics, regulatory capture, unfair competition, inhumane, etc.
It’s interesting to me that private citizens and businesses in some places can reliably expect that the law won’t protect them but can also reliably expect the law to prosecute them if they defended themselves with the force that the law does.
I think this illustrates that the monopoly on “legitimate” violence held by the state comes with a very clear obligation to either use that monopoly or allow others to use violence, otherwise people will see the state as having abdicated its fundamental duty.
>> private citizens and businesses in some places can reliably expect that the law won’t protect them but can also reliably expect the law to prosecute them if they defended themselves with the force that the law does
"There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."
That seems to suggest that folks who have goods stolen from their stores would be justified in using violence to stop the thieves? Though the police doing it for them would be better? I don't see property crimes like shoplifting as justifying violence (armed robbery, sure, but not five-fingering stuff). Does it raise insurance rates for retailers? Sure. Does that raise prices for honest shoppers, yes also. So it's crappy, but attacking the thieves doesn't pass a proportionate response sniff test for me.
> I think this illustrates that the monopoly on “legitimate” violence held by the state comes with a very clear obligation to either use that monopoly or allow others to use violence, otherwise people will see the state as having abdicated its fundamental duty.
That part after the 'or' is quite sloppy as written. It's unclear if you are merely warning that vigilante justice may follow if the police don't do their job-- a truism; arguing for citizen's arrest that follows the same (or more stringent) basic procedures as police use; or whether you are attempting to rationalize expansion of violence to everyday citizens as those citizens see fit to protect their property.
Also interesting to note that all the major retail chains commit wage theft at least comparable to their losses to retail theft, and workers can reliably expect that the law won't protect them from that.
You got a take on that one? What has the state abdicated there and what should their or our response be?
> It’s interesting to me that private citizens and businesses in some places can reliably expect that the law won’t protect them
The courts have ruled that there's no obligation for the police to protect and serve [0]. The police have always shown up after a crime is committed, they weren't designed to be everywhere all the time.
It is legal for someone to protect themselves, with violence if necessary, isn't it? There are many laws allowing self-defense, castle doctrine, etc. Someone defending themselves may have to prove themselves in court, especially if they killed someone, but that seems fair enough. Lots of people legally defend themselves and their property every day.
What do you think we need to change? Should we expect the government to prevent violence? Should we have more police, cameras, drones, minority report, etc so that hopefully the police can prevent everybody from stealing from big stores?
EDIT: Walgreens could have security guards on hand and direct them to detain shoplifters, basically a citizens arrest, but they choose not to do so.
I visited SF in 2014 and hated it. I’ve been to many large cities around the world and can absolutely say it is the worst I’ve been to. Certainly there are worse parts of other cities but as a general level of crappiness, SF wins by a mile. I don’t understand how people live there, I don’t understand why there is no help for the homeless addicts and mentally ill people roaming the streets. I don’t know the history of the city (not American) that has lead to where it is but I do know that I never, ever want to go back there.
And that is based on 2014, it seems it has got a lot worse since.
SF does offers more help to homeless addicts and mentally ill people than most other local governments in the region. Ironically, this attracts more of them to the city. And just by offering help, they can't legally force people to take it.
There is certainly plenty of graft, waste, and stupid policy in the SF homeless-industrial complex. The city government is highly dysfunctional. But any real solutions will have to be implemented at least at the state level.
> Outside the Ross store on Market Street Friday evening, shoppers queued up to enter the store. It's one way the store is trying to reduce rampant theft by limiting the number of people inside the store at any given time.
The amount of mental gymnastics residents (voters) of SF do to normalize the narrative of property crime, along with the horrific state of affairs for mental health and drug addiction, is absolutely wild. Especially given the amount of lip service given to broader social issues in almost every social setting. It is one of the most apathetic and deeply hypocritical situations in America I've ever seen.
I think it's a more difficult set of problems than people realize. It does seem like the enforcement has been strangely lax but I believe it's not just an attitude problem but also partly a logistical problem. There are too many desperate and criminals for the system to handle. Because of the economic situation and inequality, lack of sufficient public housing and support as well as cultural retrogressions driven by that, etc.
This is not to try to excuse the total out of control situation but just to suggest that there are deep societal issues at least compounding the poor management.
Having said all of that I believe if store owners were authorized to use deadly force under some circumstances then much of the crime spree would go away. The underlying societal issues would still be there though, just less obvious.
Too little, too late, SF. The damage from the last few years of relative anarchy will not be undone by a few arrests. Get back to me when you stop people from rampantly shitting on the streets.
SF voters have a habit of voting for pro-crime government. Being anti-crime is a losing political proposition. After all Dirty Harry from the 1970s was set in SF.
I also hate the smell and look and fear of spending time in SF. However, does anyone know what the solution really is?
We assume it's more police and more charges brought by the DA. I'm not sure the data supports that incredibly well.
It would be nice if we took half a percent of the tech money generated in the last decade and built a world class crime reduction program. Maybe a facility (unlike prison) where you don't get educated by career criminals...
San Francisco budget is $14 billion. Of which $672 million is for "solving" homelessness.
Austin City budget is $1.3 billion.
Yes, half of Austin budget is spent by SF on homelessness alone.
Money is not the problem.
SF is already getting gigantic chunk of tech money.
They just demonstrated, year over year, that the only thing they are extraordinarily good at is wasting this money.
What we need is to fire ever single government worker and rebuild the government from scratch. And yes, I know that this is utterly delusional proposal, which is why SF will continue spending like Saudi Prince on crack and SF streets will continue to be lined up with homeless people.
Yeah as you suspect the data supports anything but. Carceral responses to crime increase crime, and this has been extensively studied and concretely known for decades. If police solved or prevented crime american cities would be the lowest-crime places in the world. We keep doing this for other reasons, not to decrease crime.
There are many extremely awful things that have been normalized in SF that are not normal in most (all?) large American cities. For example:
Mentally ill people in high-traffic areas that openly use drugs and defecate on the sidewalk.
High chance of having your car window smashed and car contents stolen.
Retail stores putting ever more items behind lock and key.
Women feeling unsafe walking alone in many areas of the city after dark.
Public parks full of criminal element that make walking through it a high-stress, high-alert situation.
All of this results in a high level of general anxiety and makes it an unpleasant place to live or even visit. Anyone who still lives in SF, I feel extremely bad that this is your life. It’s extremely sad.
This is a genuine question; I'm trying to separate possible FUD from the truth here. I lived in NYC 20 years ago, and you're not describing anything different.
Three of these things are pretty normal in big cities --- having your car broken into (it was unbelievably bad back in the days where car stereos were valuable), having the soap locked up at the Walgreens, and feeling unsafe after dark.
But the other ones, having lived in San Francisco for a couple years and visited semifrequently afterwards, do feel sort of distinctively west coast.
Certainly the reported normalization of daylight retail store robberies seems pretty abnormal!
Later
Oh, my god, people, yes, I am referring to what’s normal in North America, not Europe. I assumed that was obvious but, whatever, I’m not here to defame Antwerp.
Sounds exactly like Seattle. Ever since Police powers have been taken away. Crime has drastically gone up.
I grew up here and when nobody knew about Seattle. It was a awesome place to live. Now, not such a good place. You add yearly 1+ month of forest fire smoke to the mix. It doesn't leave to much left.
As mentioned, many of these are very common in other large cities (EDIT: fine, in the US). I'm going to call out this one because its frequently mentioned and seems harder to tackle than the other problems:
> Mentally ill people in high-traffic areas that openly use drugs and defecate on the sidewalk.
What is the solution to this? Round them up and put them in jail? Bus them to another city? Forcibly enroll them at a mental health facility? Improving housing costs somehow? Free housing for the homeless? Maybe walk-in drug clinics?
Some of these solutions sound inhumane. Others appear to be politically impossible at the scale needed. So what's the solution and why are the people who live there against it?
It is truly awful that one of the most powerful centers of wealth generation in the world also cultivates an environment where people can have nothing and be treated as less than human because of it, then be personally blamed for their reaction to that state. We should not have normalized that.
It's sad to see that when this topic comes up, there's so little interest in addressing the causes of these problems rather than simply treating the symptoms. It's especially concerning that people who otherwise present themselves as liberal and libertarian are in favor of such authoritarian policies in this area, especially when all evidence suggests that that simply makes the problem worse. It seems like there's no space for welfare, healthcare and social work, just violence.
You can't have reliable stats when your government completely ignores some crimes, redefines them as noncrimes, doesn't send the police, doesn't arrest, drops charges immediately, or gives you a slap on the wrist instead of a proper sentence.
There are however ways that don't depend on the government. For instance, videos of looting. I've seen a riridulous number of looting videos from LA and SF (and other crimes too). No other state produces so much video of criminal activity from random observers.
I said this elsewhere, but the flaw in the “but the data shows a decrease” type of thinking when it comes to crime is that it doesn’t take into account:
- How low these rates have to go to feel “safe”
- The impact singular novel and particularly violent events has on safety psychology
It’s one thing to have high rates of discrete shoplifting. But even just one daylight smash and grab is enough to rattle people.
The curious thing is that I've lived in two places now where I see two competing takes: crime is lower than it ever has been, and crime is much more visible to the average person. It always forks into these kinds of discussions where folks roll out stats that don't match people's testimony and there's some mention that all media is conservative and thrives on this kind of news.
I'm not really ready to settle for either of those takes. They both seem wrong. Is there anything else that could create both of these outcomes?
[+] [-] godzillabrennus|3 years ago|reply
So, while I’m glad to see this is happening I’m doubtful any real change will come to San Francisco till there is real economic harm that befalls the community. Basically, when the Detroit 2.0 story comes to town.
[+] [-] giraffe_lady|3 years ago|reply
As a former homeless drug addict, it's less of a war and more of a massacre. Despite the fox news-ass propaganda you see on HN all the time almost no one chooses to be out there like that. When I see folks down like that I think what has been done to them not what are they doing to me. This isn't them taking actions against you, this is the consequences of our policies; chickens home to roost shit. If you can't tolerate it then you must fight to change it.
[+] [-] mikem170|3 years ago|reply
I wonder if Walgreens thought about hiring their own security guards. It seems to make sense to pay for your own security, right? I assume insurance factors into that decision.
There are a lot of people who don't have much empathy for big companies. They would characterize them as soulless profit making machines that squeeze employees and consumers as much as they can, pollute the commons, homogenize the culture, warp politics, regulatory capture, unfair competition, inhumane, etc.
[+] [-] AbrahamParangi|3 years ago|reply
I think this illustrates that the monopoly on “legitimate” violence held by the state comes with a very clear obligation to either use that monopoly or allow others to use violence, otherwise people will see the state as having abdicated its fundamental duty.
[+] [-] rufus_foreman|3 years ago|reply
"There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."
[+] [-] blacksmith_tb|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jancsika|3 years ago|reply
That part after the 'or' is quite sloppy as written. It's unclear if you are merely warning that vigilante justice may follow if the police don't do their job-- a truism; arguing for citizen's arrest that follows the same (or more stringent) basic procedures as police use; or whether you are attempting to rationalize expansion of violence to everyday citizens as those citizens see fit to protect their property.
[+] [-] giraffe_lady|3 years ago|reply
You got a take on that one? What has the state abdicated there and what should their or our response be?
[+] [-] mikem170|3 years ago|reply
The courts have ruled that there's no obligation for the police to protect and serve [0]. The police have always shown up after a crime is committed, they weren't designed to be everywhere all the time.
It is legal for someone to protect themselves, with violence if necessary, isn't it? There are many laws allowing self-defense, castle doctrine, etc. Someone defending themselves may have to prove themselves in court, especially if they killed someone, but that seems fair enough. Lots of people legally defend themselves and their property every day.
What do you think we need to change? Should we expect the government to prevent violence? Should we have more police, cameras, drones, minority report, etc so that hopefully the police can prevent everybody from stealing from big stores?
EDIT: Walgreens could have security guards on hand and direct them to detain shoplifters, basically a citizens arrest, but they choose not to do so.
[0] https://mises.org/power-market/police-have-no-duty-protect-y...
[+] [-] simonbarker87|3 years ago|reply
And that is based on 2014, it seems it has got a lot worse since.
[+] [-] nradov|3 years ago|reply
There is certainly plenty of graft, waste, and stupid policy in the SF homeless-industrial complex. The city government is highly dysfunctional. But any real solutions will have to be implemented at least at the state level.
[+] [-] timr|3 years ago|reply
What a dystopia SF has become.
[+] [-] wpietri|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] solaarphunk|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ilaksh|3 years ago|reply
This is not to try to excuse the total out of control situation but just to suggest that there are deep societal issues at least compounding the poor management.
Having said all of that I believe if store owners were authorized to use deadly force under some circumstances then much of the crime spree would go away. The underlying societal issues would still be there though, just less obvious.
[+] [-] voakbasda|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NullPrefix|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] notlukesky|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fundad|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcrad|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] johndhi|3 years ago|reply
We assume it's more police and more charges brought by the DA. I'm not sure the data supports that incredibly well.
It would be nice if we took half a percent of the tech money generated in the last decade and built a world class crime reduction program. Maybe a facility (unlike prison) where you don't get educated by career criminals...
[+] [-] kjksf|3 years ago|reply
Austin City budget is $1.3 billion.
Yes, half of Austin budget is spent by SF on homelessness alone.
Money is not the problem.
SF is already getting gigantic chunk of tech money.
They just demonstrated, year over year, that the only thing they are extraordinarily good at is wasting this money.
What we need is to fire ever single government worker and rebuild the government from scratch. And yes, I know that this is utterly delusional proposal, which is why SF will continue spending like Saudi Prince on crack and SF streets will continue to be lined up with homeless people.
[+] [-] epicureanideal|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rasz|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] giraffe_lady|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] monero-xmr|3 years ago|reply
Mentally ill people in high-traffic areas that openly use drugs and defecate on the sidewalk.
High chance of having your car window smashed and car contents stolen.
Retail stores putting ever more items behind lock and key.
Women feeling unsafe walking alone in many areas of the city after dark.
Public parks full of criminal element that make walking through it a high-stress, high-alert situation.
All of this results in a high level of general anxiety and makes it an unpleasant place to live or even visit. Anyone who still lives in SF, I feel extremely bad that this is your life. It’s extremely sad.
[+] [-] jrm4|3 years ago|reply
This is a genuine question; I'm trying to separate possible FUD from the truth here. I lived in NYC 20 years ago, and you're not describing anything different.
[+] [-] tptacek|3 years ago|reply
But the other ones, having lived in San Francisco for a couple years and visited semifrequently afterwards, do feel sort of distinctively west coast.
Certainly the reported normalization of daylight retail store robberies seems pretty abnormal!
Later
Oh, my god, people, yes, I am referring to what’s normal in North America, not Europe. I assumed that was obvious but, whatever, I’m not here to defame Antwerp.
[+] [-] justlikeseattle|3 years ago|reply
I grew up here and when nobody knew about Seattle. It was a awesome place to live. Now, not such a good place. You add yearly 1+ month of forest fire smoke to the mix. It doesn't leave to much left.
[+] [-] soraki_soladead|3 years ago|reply
> Mentally ill people in high-traffic areas that openly use drugs and defecate on the sidewalk.
What is the solution to this? Round them up and put them in jail? Bus them to another city? Forcibly enroll them at a mental health facility? Improving housing costs somehow? Free housing for the homeless? Maybe walk-in drug clinics?
Some of these solutions sound inhumane. Others appear to be politically impossible at the scale needed. So what's the solution and why are the people who live there against it?
[+] [-] scoofy|3 years ago|reply
We are the boiled frog. Most here seem to think this sort of thing is normal now.
[+] [-] jorts|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] giraffe_lady|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fooblaster|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] wiseleo|3 years ago|reply
Retail theft needs to be curtailed. We have the technology for this.
[+] [-] vondur|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] guerrilla|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] verdenti|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] BryantD|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] bufferoverflow|3 years ago|reply
There are however ways that don't depend on the government. For instance, videos of looting. I've seen a riridulous number of looting videos from LA and SF (and other crimes too). No other state produces so much video of criminal activity from random observers.
[+] [-] shuckles|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quartesixte|3 years ago|reply
- How low these rates have to go to feel “safe”
- The impact singular novel and particularly violent events has on safety psychology
It’s one thing to have high rates of discrete shoplifting. But even just one daylight smash and grab is enough to rattle people.
[+] [-] kodah|3 years ago|reply
I'm not really ready to settle for either of those takes. They both seem wrong. Is there anything else that could create both of these outcomes?