Bob Lee, former CTO of Square, has died after being stabbed in San Francisco

Just in 2014, the national average was 4.5 per 100,000.

And these numbers are several times that of large European cities.

Still, this is not as bad as Oakland, with a homicide rate several times that.

[1] https://abc7news.com/feature/san-francisco-bay-area-safety-t...

[2] https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/crime-in-the-u.s.-...

I tend to refer to what's happening in SF as SF-Stockholm syndrome (I do not mean this as disrespectful, only that I don't know any other way to describe the normalization of what happens here). I grew up in Texas, spent time on the East Coast, with a reasonable stint in NYC, and spent just over a year Scotland. I really have never seen the openness and acceptance of severe substance abuse like I have on the West Coast of the United States (not just in SF).

Portland, SF, LA, Oakland, Berkeley, pretty much every major city here, there are areas of the city where serious drug use, and some crime, is effectively just tolerated. SF is particularly unique, because, by a wide margin, it's the smallest in area and most walkable. Other cities tend to be automobile-centric, so non-organized crime tends to stay in small areas of the city (though, from my understanding, this is changing in Portland for the worse).

This is combine with a fairly strong anti-police culture. I don't know the veracity or history, but people here, even perfectly law abiding people, tend to think the police forces are generally corrupt-and-racist, or have a history of corruption and racism. I'm regularly shock that everyone here seems to be disgusted with the police, but nearly nobody has any intention or desire to reform, normalize, or even overhaul the institution. Many seem to see very idea of police as just a bad thing.

Combine this with the out-of-control opiate epidemic, and what this seems to have created is a pretty nuts, but not actually abnormally dangerous, environment in San Francisco in particular. There is little enforcement of any laws, except parking enforcement. When my friends from Germany visited, they were very curious about this "opiate and crime thing" after reading about book about Fentanyl, so as part of their visit, I showed them the open drug markets around midnight at UN Plaza, at Civic Center BART station. They were horrified. It's hard to describe the scene of crowds of people, many just shuffling around, obviously high, often with pretty obvious other complications from living in squalor.

I call it Stockholm Syndrome because people have genuinely convinced themselves that this is normal. People here legitimately believe that leaving anything at all in your car, even small things, in any major city in America, will likely lead to a break in. Obviously this is incredibly untrue, and SF is an outlier in theft (to the point that the stats are laughably inaccurate because nobody even reports car break-ins to the police anymore), but people have acclimated to the culture, and just assume it's normal, if they don't leave the region on a regular basis.

Ironically, the city is actually fairly safe with regards to violent crime. Not especially safe, but the homicide figures show that things aren't "out of control" in the violent crime aspect.

The thing that's shocking is how in-your-face it all is. The signs of severe substance abuse, are ever-present in a shockingly large amount of the commercial districts of the city (though most of the city is perfectly safe, quite and residential). The city does absolutely nothing about it. They do not mandate addiction treatment, because, for the most part, the people with substance abuse issues never see a court room. Primarily, because the court system cannot handle the case load. My roommate is a Public Defender, so I'm acutely aware of the backlog of cases that are genuinely violent crime. Not that it matters, because in election-after-election, the candidates tend to be pretty much on the same page that nothing really will be done. Again, much of the populous has a very strong distaste for any policing action. I honestly believe that most people here legitimately don't like the idea of forcing people into treatment if they don't want it.

It is incredibly complex, and I've only just scratched the surface of the nuance in what's happening here. There are housing issues, inequality issues, nativist issues, agency issues, and even a bizarre idealization poverty and squalor. To cover everything would be more appropriate as an hour-long discussion over drinks at a bar where you can see what's actually happening with your own eyes, because I think most Europeans would be quite speechless at it all.

This tragedy did not happen in a bad part of town, and I honestly walk through worse areas at similar hours regularly, and it's generally fine.

  I don't really know if it's the fact that the people appearing the court
  were black and it was deemed racist or if the court were overloaded (probably
  an unhealthy mix of both), but at some point, shoplifting under a certain
  amount (was it $950? Somewhere in the $1000 ballpark) was changed from a felony
  to a misdemeanor. In practice, that means you could do that without fear of
  retribution, which predictably had awful results, and might be the disturbing
  videos you are talking about.

For comparison, I've spent maybe a month in SF put together over the last few years:

- In 30 days, I met more than 30 mentally ill people in SF. 40 Years everywhere else, I saw one old lady with dementia once in Copenhagen. And a few randoms few and far between in London. By mentally ill I mean the kind of ill where you're shouting nonsense in public.

- Then there's the guy who is aggressively threatening his imaginary friends. Seems to be a SF creature, doesn't seem drunk or stoned, just nuts. Even these guys outnumber the drunk/stoned nutters I've met in Europe in the last few years. I ran into them often, trying to stay away since you know...

- SF seemed like you were never more than 2 minutes away from someone with lower level mental health problems. I sat down in a Starbucks and realised I was hearing Cantonese from somewhere. Turned around it was some middle aged woman swearing while having a conversation with herself. But she wasn't in the category above.

- Never saw any crime but I've seen the shoplifting videos. That would not pass in Zurich. Probably not most places though I wonder if Metropolitan Police would get their act together.

- Extreme distress behavior like stealing food, never saw it anywhere else. In SF someone ran in to grab my leftovers when I was done eating. Not the same as a safety issue, but you can see how people might feel unsafe with that kind of thing happening.

- Generally an extreme level of inequality in living conditions might make people feel unsafe. I mean there were people on the street with no shoes, walking around Nordstrom department store in town centre.

Of course it's a long way between safety stats and feeling safe. I would guess if you're living in Sweden right now, you are safe despite the rocketing murder rate, providing you're not involved in organised crime. You might not feel that way and yes there's going to be innocents caught up with it. But safe means a lot of things.