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

I accompanied my wife to a conference in SF a few years ago. While walking along Market Street, returning to our hotel from picking up food for the kids, one of those dishevelled guys with big coats ran at me full tilt. I was forced to run across the middle of the street into traffic to get away from him. He pursued me, pulling out a gun and pointing it at me midway across the street. After I got across the street he gave up and went back to his side.

I think the gun was probably a toy, but the only reason I think that is because he didn't fire it. It was small, but gunmetal colored and realistic. Now, I feel like I could have just as easily been Bob Lee, and my kids could have just as easily lost their father. For nothing more than flying in for a weekend and walking along a main thoroughfare.

It seems like this story is completely unremarkable in SF. Nobody in the vicinity seemed to care what was happening to me. It was obvious there was no point in calling 911 to report this. Apparently it's just normal that you take your life into your hands walking along Market Street, and some resident mentally ill guy might decide to end you because he doesn't like your face.

[flagged]

> I am genuinely curious to know how SF residents feel about this.

Based on the subreddit, which is usually a trash fire, it's what you'd expect I guess? Everyone thinks murder is bad, so we start at that baseline, and from there it's a couple classes of people arguing with eachother: those that are happy to consider san francisco "a shithole" or whatever hot reactionary word of the day the rest of the country is using to label SF as enemy #1 of traditional american values and are essentially exuberant to have a new single point of data to sling around, and those that are overcorrecting against this and diminishing the real problems in SF in an attempt to whitewash while to be fair making things seem more true to reality, that is to say, portray SF as, statistically speaking, relatively safe and boring for a US metropolitan area.

As a former SF resident I think it's really sad that someone got murdered and I'm really angry about it. I'm mad at whoever did it, what a scumbag. I'm hopeful that there will be justice. I'm also afraid that this might give ammunition to reactionaries that want to overfund or overarm the SFPD, and that this will lend further political strength to politicians like bloodthirsty DAs that get their rocks off to throwing young POC in prison for minor drug offenses.

Cynically, part of me knows that finally some of the issues SF has been facing and the various leaders have been ignoring or handling poorly will probably be handled properly now that a rich person has been murdered. Well, no, cynical me again, probably this just means the cops will be cut loose a bit more and ineffective, punitive policies will be enacted / enforced / tightened.

> Changing your habits based on a single event isn't particularly rational.

You only have to be wrong about getting murdered once.