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Arrest made in SF killing of Bob Lee – alleged killer also worked in tech

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Re: Arrest made in SF killing of Bob Lee – alleged killer also worked in tech

#661

Post by mochomocha »

dmode wrote: post #323

Am I the only one who does NOT feel unsafe in SF at all ? I mean, I choose not to walk in TL and SOMA at night. But why would anyone feel unsafe in North Beach, Marina, Russian Hill, Richmond, Sunset, GG park, Lower Haight, Valencia etc. I have spent many nights walking in Valencia and took Uber home at 2am. Doesn't feel remotely unsafe.

I've also lived in San Francisco for many years, in different neighborhoods. Now with my family including 2 young kids. The usual media narrative around SF is also very foreign to me and doesn't match my personal experience. Living in SoMa has very little in common with living anywhere west of Twin Peaks.

Therefore the need to rely on data to find more objectivity when debating public policies. Yes data can be twisted and most of the time is poorly reported and interpreted by people, but it's better than relying on personal anecdotes.

Re: Arrest made in SF killing of Bob Lee – alleged killer also worked in tech

#662

Post by NoImmatureAdHom »

zenlikethat wrote: post #632
dmode wrote: post #323

Am I the only one who does NOT feel unsafe in SF at all ? I mean, I choose not to walk in TL and SOMA at night. But why would anyone feel unsafe in North Beach, Marina, Russian Hill, Richmond, Sunset, GG park, Lower Haight, Valencia etc. I have spent many nights walking in Valencia and took Uber home at 2am. Doesn't feel remotely unsafe.

No, you're not the only one. While I don't like the depressing level of homelessness, mental illness, and drug addiction, I generally haven't felt nearly as unsafe as people always play up. If there's a volatile situation around, GTFO, and don't walk in dark neighborhoods at night, de-escalate, that kind of thing helps a lot of course. Also, why do we never factor gun violence into these conversations about safety? I…

I don't know where you got your gun injuries / death stats, but there are two things to be careful of here:

1) substitution effects. As a hypothetical example, we could have one city that has 30 gun murders per 100k and another that has 130 per 100k, but both have the same murder rate (because you can murder with things other than guns). IMHO the important rate is the murder rate, and how much of it is with guns vs. other stuff is an aside.

2) Make sure your numbers don't include suicides. If they include suicides, they're not informative.

Re: Arrest made in SF killing of Bob Lee – alleged killer also worked in tech

#663

Post by mikeryan »

joemazerino wrote: post #571
virgildotcodes wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The linked article specifically shows that violent crime in SF is at an all time low, and lower than most other comparably sized cities.

Not "all time low" but a 40 year low. Its easy to fuzz numbers when you start extremely high.

San Francisco has had a relatively low, and consistent violent crime rate for about 20 years.

Conversely it’s also had a consistently higher property crime rate.

Re: Arrest made in SF killing of Bob Lee – alleged killer also worked in tech

#664

Post by sowbug »

iudqnolq wrote: post #621
sowbug wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arrests sure better be public record in a free country.

The UK is a good example of a generally* similarly free country without guaranteed public access to arrest records. This balances the potential benefit to the public from knowing against the definite harm to the accused. (*There are definitely significant ways each is less free than the other and there's no rigorous way to say which is worse)

Yes, it's a balance. I don't want my government hustling people into vans and disappearing, but I don't want minor indiscretions to become media-amplified scarlet letters, either.

A reasoned discussion begins with an acknowledgment that the public has a right to monitor its government, and that individuals have a right to privacy. Unfortunately, the USA PATRIOT Act substantially dimmed the sunlight on government law-enforcement activity, and the Dobbs decision severely weakened privacy as an emergent constitutional right.

Edit: As I was writing this reply, I came up with an interesting legal theory. The right to publicity is traditionally understood as a celebrity's right to control the commercialization of his or her image. Might we say that the modern attention economy has turned everyone into a potential celebrity, and thus that everyone should be allowed to control the commercial publicity of their persona? This would draw a potentially meaningful line between the public's right to know (which I expect is popular) and the media's right to commercially exploit the salacious details of an accused's crime (which is, sadly, extremely popular; otherwise, it wouldn't be as prevalent as it is today). I'm sure attorneys and legal scholars have already explored this idea.

Re: Arrest made in SF killing of Bob Lee – alleged killer also worked in tech

#665

Post by JumpCrisscross »

sgt wrote: post #566
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> were both gay men Bob wasn’t gay. (EDIT: Never mind!) A man can have hooked up with guys and not be gay as much as a gay man can have hooked up with women and not be straight or bi. More importantly, we don’t have any evidence they were lovers.

[flagged]

> Society doesn't see it that way

I was wrong, he did identify as a gay man. But we're talking about biology and identity. What society thinks is separate from what is.

Re: Arrest made in SF killing of Bob Lee – alleged killer also worked in tech

#666

Post by lelanthran »

zenlikethat wrote: post #632
dmode wrote: post #323

Am I the only one who does NOT feel unsafe in SF at all ? I mean, I choose not to walk in TL and SOMA at night. But why would anyone feel unsafe in North Beach, Marina, Russian Hill, Richmond, Sunset, GG park, Lower Haight, Valencia etc. I have spent many nights walking in Valencia and took Uber home at 2am. Doesn't feel remotely unsafe.

No, you're not the only one. While I don't like the depressing level of homelessness, mental illness, and drug addiction, I generally haven't felt nearly as unsafe as people always play up. If there's a volatile situation around, GTFO, and don't walk in dark neighborhoods at night, de-escalate, that kind of thing helps a lot of course. Also, why do we never factor gun violence into these conversations about safety? I…

> there were about 130 gun injuries/deaths per 100k in a recent year -- in SF, about 30! Which is worse, getting shot, or avoiding poop on the sidewalk

San Francisco is number 23 for violent crime in the list of cities on wikipedia.

Your options are not "get shot in another city Vs avoiding poop on the sidewalk in San Francisco", it's "don't get hurt or killed in the average city Vs get hurt or killed in San Francisco".

You're equivocating "lack of gun crime" to safety, which is as incorrect as you can get while still misleading the audience

Re: Arrest made in SF killing of Bob Lee – alleged killer also worked in tech

#667

Post by NoImmatureAdHom »

Insanity wrote: post #408
dmode wrote: post #323

Am I the only one who does NOT feel unsafe in SF at all ? I mean, I choose not to walk in TL and SOMA at night. But why would anyone feel unsafe in North Beach, Marina, Russian Hill, Richmond, Sunset, GG park, Lower Haight, Valencia etc. I have spent many nights walking in Valencia and took Uber home at 2am. Doesn't feel remotely unsafe.

Depends on what your baseline is though. You are perhaps feeling safe because you're used to SF.

Yeah, I agree with this. Visiting SF from other American cities that have nothing like the scale of its problems...is jarring. I'm sure you can get used to it.

Also, we should differentiate between the feeling of comfort / safety (which is what most people care about), and actual crime statistics (which are themselves fraught, I don't think people in SF even report car break-ins these days since the police and justice systems don't work any more).

Re: Arrest made in SF killing of Bob Lee – alleged killer also worked in tech

#668

Post by js2 »

P_I_Staker wrote: post #567
virgildotcodes wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The linked article specifically shows that violent crime in SF is at an all time low, and lower than most other comparably sized cities.

Didn't SF used to be freaking scary prior to blowing up? I've heard people talk about it like they do Miami, Baltimore, Detroit, ect. An undesirable place that washed up people ended up, riddled with crime and violence. I think I might be getting the story wrong, but I recall hearing there used to be much more crime.

The crap? I grew up in Miami. It's a lovely city, not "an undesirable place that washed up people ended up, riddled with crime and violence." FFS.

Re: Arrest made in SF killing of Bob Lee – alleged killer also worked in tech

#670

Post by bilbo0s »

tsunamifury wrote: post #604
tsgagnon wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand why it can’t be both: SF is degenerating when it comes to random crime AND this murder wasn’t by some random thug. Always important to reflect on whether stances like "SF is degenerating" are based on a rational analysis of what is actually happening, versus a more emotional response to stories that might be more like the topic of this post, just with less visibility into the exact circumstances of…

You can appeal to facts and being as rational as you want, but people leave because of how they feel.

I'm not the person you're responding to but I believe the point is that people leaving, doesn't make Bay Area degeneration a fact. Only actual Bay Area degeneration, can make Bay Area degeneration a fact. We need to know who is moving, who is coming in, the economics of the region, geological suitability to population demands, needs of the larger state and nation as it relates to the region. And on and on and on.

A blog post about a guy who didn't like the dog poo in the Mission is not nearly enough data to draw the conclusions most of us were drawing. That includes myself. But after the glaring intellectual lapses I engaged in subsequent to the Asian mass shootings and the killing of the crypto exec, the inner me is attempting to reassert rational order by demanding intellectual honesty and logic. All of which is now firmly demonstrating to me that facts don't care about feelings, and will gleefully bite you in the ass if they don't align with the world view or narrative that you're emotionally comfortable with.

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