Moving from SF to Miami to get away from crime is an odd choice. The SF homicide rate is 6.9 per 100,000 people and the Miami rate is 10.7. I understand SF has a severe homeless problem but are actual crime rates that high compared to other big cities?
What prior do you have to think a particular city is exceptional, such as in the types of crime?
I often hear claims like this, such as about catalytic converter theft, and I think: that happens back home in Midwest, rural Iowa. Des Moines, Iowa has a similar crime rate to San Francisco! There aren't order of magnitude differences between my small home town, where I was born, or any other town I could find.
Don't let news reports overwhelm your availability heuristic. If crime rates are roughly similar everywhere, but some cities are more dense yet share a common news or media environment, what does that suggest?
While the south has more crime, it also has less random crime. Probably California falls into the same bucket as the other northern states in having more random crime.
People make a lot of noise about SF being a place where innovation happens, but criminals aren’t doing any of that.
What you’re likely getting in SF is there being no meaningful gap between the rich areas of SF and the poor. In larger cities you aren’t going to get hyperventilating about “person driving through [high crime neighborhood] was car jacked” but you would if it was [rich low crime neighbourhood] - but the general case means that the majority of such crimes don’t get TV coverage.
What is happening in SF is you have a large swathe of rich and upper middle class folk actually living in and around lower income neighbourhoods they’ve been able to avoid when they live in other cities. They rightly go “this crime is bad”, but their reason for it being bad is that for the first time they’re directly exposed to it.
These are the people who say “we should ban homeless people”, but don’t give a shit what actually happens to them: they can remain homeless, what matters is that the homeless people don’t impact their lives.
Not "people" happen to live in high crime areas (of course people do anywhere -- crime can't occur without people!), but rich people, who write letters to newspapers that get nationally published, and complain on forums for technologists
I'm saying this is in the news because this is a case of "rich person encounters crime" vs the usual case which is "average people are victims of crime".
An extreme scenario:
When I was a student, a person broke into our flat and stole some stuff (but weirdly, despite clearly checking, none of my DVDs nor my SoundBlaster! Extigy :D). This did not even get into local news. But if someone had broken into BillG's house and judged his DVD collection to be similarly terrible that would be in the news.
If you are saying the determining factor as to whether crime happens, or a crime rate is "high", is more heavily weighted by "does this crime impact the upper class?" I'm not sure what to say.
What matters is whether it's "news worthy". BillG being robbed would be news because he's a celebrity. The news is where or why, but that it's them.
That's why the news reports on Lance Reddick dying on March 17 2023, but basic obituary search finds multiple other people in Studio City who died the same week and they did not get new reports. If we based our ideas of mortality on news reports we'll find that cities that have more celebrities have higher rates of elder mortality.
Ah, that makes sense. Is there a good study on whether this integration of high and low income people produced a meaningful reduction in the rates of poverty and crime?
Did that thief ever end up getting caught? Presumably their license plate number is right there in the video? Do they ditch the license plate and/or car?
There's a lot of performative outrage over crime in cities but it's best to treat it like noise. It's hard to know who's selling the message of fear vs. who's buying it.
It is a question of investment. You move to SF to make some cash and leave, never really investing in your neighborhood or in policies that work on a longer scale. And that each area/city functions as its own fiefdom where you can privatize gains and externalize losses (e.g. tech companies and property owners making fortunes but not putting the gains into building nearby housing or comprehensive, safe public transportation) without a need or an incentive to invest in ways that fabously wealthy cities tend to. There are cities where you feel the citizens are truly invested in. SF is not that.
Where would you consider NYC in this framework? It's a city of transplants and many people come to make their money and either leave (or move to the bedroom communities outside the city). But for the most part, laws are enforced, there are huge investments in providing shelter for people in homelessness and mental illness, violent crime isn't even in the top 50 cities per capita.
The people "in power" have a vested interest in making the most-walked parts crime-free. That is not the case in SF where the wealthy don't have a Manhattan to interact with on a daily basis.
30 comments
[ 5.4 ms ] story [ 74.6 ms ] threadhttps://www.neighborhoodscout.com/ca/mill-valley/crime#:~:te....
I often hear claims like this, such as about catalytic converter theft, and I think: that happens back home in Midwest, rural Iowa. Des Moines, Iowa has a similar crime rate to San Francisco! There aren't order of magnitude differences between my small home town, where I was born, or any other town I could find.
Don't let news reports overwhelm your availability heuristic. If crime rates are roughly similar everywhere, but some cities are more dense yet share a common news or media environment, what does that suggest?
People make a lot of noise about SF being a place where innovation happens, but criminals aren’t doing any of that.
What you’re likely getting in SF is there being no meaningful gap between the rich areas of SF and the poor. In larger cities you aren’t going to get hyperventilating about “person driving through [high crime neighborhood] was car jacked” but you would if it was [rich low crime neighbourhood] - but the general case means that the majority of such crimes don’t get TV coverage.
What is happening in SF is you have a large swathe of rich and upper middle class folk actually living in and around lower income neighbourhoods they’ve been able to avoid when they live in other cities. They rightly go “this crime is bad”, but their reason for it being bad is that for the first time they’re directly exposed to it.
These are the people who say “we should ban homeless people”, but don’t give a shit what actually happens to them: they can remain homeless, what matters is that the homeless people don’t impact their lives.
That makes it high crime in my book.
An extreme scenario:
When I was a student, a person broke into our flat and stole some stuff (but weirdly, despite clearly checking, none of my DVDs nor my SoundBlaster! Extigy :D). This did not even get into local news. But if someone had broken into BillG's house and judged his DVD collection to be similarly terrible that would be in the news.
If you are saying the determining factor as to whether crime happens, or a crime rate is "high", is more heavily weighted by "does this crime impact the upper class?" I'm not sure what to say.
What matters is whether it's "news worthy". BillG being robbed would be news because he's a celebrity. The news is where or why, but that it's them.
That's why the news reports on Lance Reddick dying on March 17 2023, but basic obituary search finds multiple other people in Studio City who died the same week and they did not get new reports. If we based our ideas of mortality on news reports we'll find that cities that have more celebrities have higher rates of elder mortality.