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

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

#891

I'm so sick of crime in the Bay. We need to be way tougher on crime. Immediate life sentences without parole for murder, ending catch+release for property theft. The mere thought of stealing, or attacking a stranger, or dealing drugs illegally, must become so unappetizing that they simply refuse to do it even when they have no other options.

It turns out that there's a pesky problem with our judicial system in that it requires people to be charged and then tried by a court before sentencing them to life in prison.

One difficult aspect of violent crime is that you have to have a suspect before you can bring them to trial. And it's funny because the murder clearance rate seems to match the police funding rate. And the police funding rate is on par with taxes collected nationally and locally.

So sure... you can have police investigating murders, or you can have a zero-tax libertarian utopia, but it appears that you can't have both.

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

#892

I'm so sick of crime in the Bay. We need to be way tougher on crime. Immediate life sentences without parole for murder, ending catch+release for property theft. The mere thought of stealing, or attacking a stranger, or dealing drugs illegally, must become so unappetizing that they simply refuse to do it even when they have no other options.

Capital punishment for murder. You take a life, yours is gone. On top of justice, you don’t stick the taxpayer with lifelong care of a murderer.

meh. lotsa people have religious objections to this concept.

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

#893

San Francisco is a lost cause for a generation. The political machine that controls it does not care at all about the life of the average person. They live in gated communities on private streets. They even screwed over the guy who bought the private street and started charging them tolls. https://news.yahoo.com/rich-san-francisco-residents-got-1754... I wish a political party existed in the United States that repres…

Or you could look at the data. Houston's crime rate is about 50% higher (than San Francisco.) Strangely... Chicago... that everyone talks about being "high crime" is about 50% lower.

When I was a kid, we walked 5 miles in the middle of the night to avoid being killed by rebels. So... I mean... things can always get worse. Maybe stop watching Fox News and read some data.

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

#894

I'm so sick of crime in the Bay. We need to be way tougher on crime. Immediate life sentences without parole for murder, ending catch+release for property theft. The mere thought of stealing, or attacking a stranger, or dealing drugs illegally, must become so unappetizing that they simply refuse to do it even when they have no other options.

Capital punishment for murder. You take a life, yours is gone. On top of justice, you don’t stick the taxpayer with lifelong care of a murderer.

> Capital punishment for murder. You take a life, yours is gone. On top of justice, you don’t stick the taxpayer with lifelong care of a murderer.

One problem with that idea is that even murder convictions are not even close to 100% accurate, so you'd end up killing lots of innocent people.

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

#895
post #882

I'm so sick of crime in the Bay. We need to be way tougher on crime. Immediate life sentences without parole for murder, ending catch+release for property theft. The mere thought of stealing, or attacking a stranger, or dealing drugs illegally, must become so unappetizing that they simply refuse to do it even when they have no other options.

Few criminals consider the consequences of their actions. As crappy as it feels, harsher sentences just don't work.

Among other reasons, imprisonment is used for reasons of incapacitation, deterrence and rehabilitation. It should be fairly easy to see how light or no sentencing has compromised those goals.

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

#896

Its a real bummer with SF, but the problems are totally self inflicted. If the politics were of a different breed I could see it being one of the best cities to live in the US, let alone the world. Having worked there for close to a decade the stuff I have seen was really depressing. I visited my cousin who works at Ouster nearby for lunch one day and was wondering what all these white casings were littering the grou…

> until residents in SF start voting different The author here confesses his disconnect with the majority of people in San Francisco. This assessment is correct - the author and his views are disconnected from those of the majority of working people in San Francisco. The magnitude of the wealth disparity in San Francisco is almost hard to comprehend. Many in this thread have advocated militarizing the city, and clean…

European nations can be even more inequitable than the US without the same issues. The Netherlands have even more wealth disparity, and is much safer without these kinds of problems. I have no doubt wealth inequality can exacerbate the issue, but I don’t think it’s the cause. It’s ultimately one of culture, and American culture is violent and borderline sociopathic, certainly more so than that of many of the European and Asian nations people point to as examples to emulate. Those countries also don’t have issues prosecuting people who commit crime for fear of being prejudicial.

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

#897

I'm so sick of crime in the Bay. We need to be way tougher on crime. Immediate life sentences without parole for murder, ending catch+release for property theft. The mere thought of stealing, or attacking a stranger, or dealing drugs illegally, must become so unappetizing that they simply refuse to do it even when they have no other options.

The event that sparked all this conversation is the homicide of Bob Lee. If we're talking about the problem of car break-ins, robberies, or vandalism, that's one thing. But on the matter of homicide, SF (6.35)¹ tracks closely to the national average (7.8)². Property crime is what substantially contributes to the image that SF is an unsafe city. --- [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...…

I think it's the fact that most of the people in the comments section here weren't alive in the 80s to have a point of reference. 6 homicides per 100,000 per year? That's high? You should have been here or NYC in the 80s.

That being said... yes... 6 homicides per 100,000 is 6 homicides per 100,000 too many.

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

#898

I'm so sick of crime in the Bay. We need to be way tougher on crime. Immediate life sentences without parole for murder, ending catch+release for property theft. The mere thought of stealing, or attacking a stranger, or dealing drugs illegally, must become so unappetizing that they simply refuse to do it even when they have no other options.

Yeah. Makes total sense. That's why the wild west was crime free, because everyone feared the retributive punishments... People don't pull out a knife then think "wait, but I'll be punished" and put the knife away. What you are proposing feels good but in no way lines up with the reality of society in a contemporary city. If you want there to be less crime you have to treat it as the social class problem it is and fi…

Just curious. Where are you getting your data that the wild west was crime free? (or... is this satire / sarcasm? it's hard to recognize sometimes.)

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

#899
post #671

Speaking as an immigrant - Worked in SF most of last decade. Left in 2018. Crime was on a steady uptick while I was there. Once in the Bart, a young man grabbed a cellphone from the guy seated right next to me & bolted out of the train. The train started, and the cellphone owner gave chase. The Bart police arrived soon after, with guns pointed straight at the passengers. The robber was fast and jumped over the turnst…

> The left wanted to integrate the youth into the tech community by offering free coding classes so they wouldn't rob cellphones. The left-left argued for free iphones for everybody. I was like, hey how about catching the robber & some jailtime

For what it’s worth, these are solving two different problems. The reported train discussion was a disagreement on a solution to the systemic problem. Jailing the perpetrator only treats the problem with that specific person. Both problems need solutions.

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

#900

I'm so sick of crime in the Bay. We need to be way tougher on crime. Immediate life sentences without parole for murder, ending catch+release for property theft. The mere thought of stealing, or attacking a stranger, or dealing drugs illegally, must become so unappetizing that they simply refuse to do it even when they have no other options.

The event that sparked all this conversation is the homicide of Bob Lee. If we're talking about the problem of car break-ins, robberies, or vandalism, that's one thing. But on the matter of homicide, SF (6.35)¹ tracks closely to the national average (7.8)². Property crime is what substantially contributes to the image that SF is an unsafe city. --- [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...…

Part of the issue might be how the murders are distributed. Some cities with high murder rates have a very small segment of the population killing each other (eg drug dealers/gang members), whereas normal people go on mostly untouched save for stray bullets. Maybe SF murders are more randomly distributed among the general population?
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