The whistling past the graveyard kneejerk response from the media and the terminally online (Reddit, etc.) is remarkable.
To Ethan’s point, the only way change gets made - and to reward change underway - is to continue to honestly report on the dysfunction and its causes. Denying it (while often mocking those who point it out) is basically the worst response possible because it’s both ignorant and counter-productive.
the cause of this dysfunction is high housing costs. not a lack of police enforcement or whatever ethan is sort of implying here. california has the second largest prison population in the nation, the prisons are full-to-bursting there. the idea that they're "soft on crime" and that's why this is happening is mind-blowingly naive and ignorant of the actual facts.
While that is not even remotely true, but the stubbornness in sticking to failed policies is almost impressive but it ends up being merely more whistling past the graveyard.
If we're talking data science here, we should be looking at rates of incarceration, not total numbers, otherwise the largest states will be 1st in every category. And looking at rates, California is looks to be in the lower half:
why should we be looking at rates of incarceration exactly pal? you should check out some data science about crime rates in areas that have high rates of incarceration, while you're at it. go ahead, i'll wait.
You should check rates of skin cancer and sales of sun block. You'll find they are correlated, but not because sun block causes skin cancer.
You seem to be making up arguments to put in my mouth. All I'm saying is "California has the most prisoners" is not a relevant statistic. You have to look at rates per population to say anything meaningful. This is basic data analysis Forget the science part if you aren't covering something that basic.
I wouldn't expect incarceration raates to directly cause crime to go up or down, because the certainty of punishment is generally much more important than the severity. And also because states, by and large, don't really differ all that much in their sentencing.
The primary drivers of both violent crime and incarceration within the US seem to be cultural. Areas with a culture of violence tend to have more murders and lock more people up. If you compare, say, West Virgina to Mississippi to New Mexico to El Paso / RGV, these areas all have about the same levels of poverty, low housing prices and low levels of homelessness. But they have vastly different rates of crime, rates of drug overdoses and rates of alcoholism.
Written by someone who obviously isn't a long term California resident who hasn't experienced the rapid decline in quality of life, statewide, over the past 20 years.
brother i hate to break it to you but this is happening in every city in the US and Canada right now. i am seeing it happen in my own city as well. it has nothing to do with the political alignment of the local government, sorry about it.
Why are cities with low housing costs exhibiting the same symptoms of dysfunctions, ie general increases in crime, drugs and dangerous driving?
And it does seem to be cities, specifically. Stats from the CDC show large urban metros have been disproportionally hurt by rises in homicide and traffic deaths, both of which the police primarily prevent. The link below has drop downs with specific causes of death and can be sorted by "urbanness" as well as other factors:
And I can't find the link, but the NYTimes had analysis that showed many big city police depts cut traffic enforcement units by as much as 90% in response to pressures from the public in 2020.
It’s notable that the defense always boosts SF as a city generally, and never the local government specifically. I have yet to see anybody go as far as arguing that governance, civil service, and executive/admin state in SF is top notch.
I was born and raised in the Bay Area, went to high school in Oakland, and still live in the Bay. I love it. And I'm going to vote for Kamala. So it's not some politics thing. But I really don't understand how you could look at SF and say it's healthy. You walk into Safeway and there's armed guards. Toothpaste is locked up in CVS. That is not a sign of a healthy city. And the (liberal) leadership has to take some responsibility for that, they just do.
That sort of thing has been going on for years in California hasn't it - i remember being in a Pizza Hut delivery/pickup in long beach about 10 years ago and it was all behind bullet proof glass, was shitting myself waiting for that BBQ chicken pizza...
Just wanted to take the opportunity to mentioned how sick and tired I am with some people spouting the idea that crime is the reason that Oakland has lost all of it's pro sports teams.
The Warriors left because no one would turn down a deal to have a shiny new arena in downtown SF
The Raiders left because NV offered him $750 mil and Oakland prioritized the Coliseum space for the A's when they would have 81 home dates and a football stadium would be competing with Levi's for concerts and other events.
John Fisher's A's are leaving because of pretty much greed. People say Fisher backed out of a deal with Oakland for a stadium when it was on the doorstep because it was getting too close. He didn't really want to pay for a new stadium and building it would allow him less revenue sharing from MLB in such a big market. The reason he gets more revenue sharing now is because he has an old stadium. Might as well have that new stadium in a smaller market and still get more revenue sharing. Now, it seems like he's painted himself into a corner; and we'll see how things turn out in the end for him. Yes, there are some faults from the local government, but Fisher really could've kept the A's in Oakland if he really wanted to build the stadium there or sell to someone who could.
Personally, as an Oakland A's fan since I was a kid, I'm pretty much done with MLB with the way this whole thing went down. Regardless, to blame the losses of all these sports teams on a crime problem is just ignorant. China Basin was revitalized when the Giants built there. Stadiums in Detroit and Cleveland helped to revitalize their downtowns. Plus, the A's wouldn't just serve fans in Oakland, but other places like Walnut Creek, Hayward, and Fremont. In all my years going to A's games, I've thankfully never seen any horrible crime related incidents happen. The events in which disgruntled fans showed up over the last year or so (reverse boycott, Fans Fest, opening night boycott), there were tons of people and no reports of any criminal incidents. It really showed the best of what fans in Oakland, the East Bay, and Northern California have to offer, just people wanting to support their team and have a good time. With the A's, they're looking for a place to call home for decades to come whereas these problems in the city have only gotten this much worse in maybe the last 5 to 10 years, not the last 50. It had very little to do with Fisher's decisions.
Yes, I believe that crime and homelessness has gotten worse in SF and Oakland. I'm not going to lie to myself about it, and I believe something should be done about it. However, I don't believe these places are just a lost cause and that it will always be this way. I love my hometown. I love the Bay Area. I love where I grew up. It's like family to me, and you don't give up on family when they run into a few problems. I've seen the best that it has to offer, and I believe in the people to turn things around.
The dominant left/right lenses can provide insight as to why SF is the way it is. But the future of SF/Bay Area is going to be written by the children of South/East Asian immigrants who were tiger-mom'd into STEM educations and high paying STEM jobs. Legacy retail in Union Square- dead. Asian oriented food courts and retailers at Stonestown, Japantown, Serramonte- popping. This emerging group can be a political force that more effectively advocates for safety, education and business prosperity because their politics arent weighed down by the culture wars/grievances of current left/right alignment. The future of SF isnt left/right. Its Pacific Rim.
Also, when Radio Ethan gets priced out of Concord, hes definitely moving to Tracy.
If there's one thing I would hope all sides in this country can agree on it's that our criminal justice system is completely fuckin broken. We need to completely reframe the way we look to prevent crime from happening in the first place if we want our cities to have a chance to thrive. The people that want to share stats and pretend that crime isn't bad blow my mind. Yes big picture crime can be down but that doesn't change the lived experience of walking in fear through the streets of SF.
"our criminal justice system is completely fuckin broken"
Hyperbole much? If that's how you describe our justice system then how would you describe the rest of the Western Hemisphere? Or the US of 100 years ago? Or most of the rest of the world outside of the 10% of the globe or so who live in Western Europe and Japan / S Korea?
There are problems and it's well within our power to do much better in many, many respects. But I personally don't find it helpful to exaggerate our problem(s).
I’ve studied the justice system in college and have family members I’ve seen trapped in the cycle of committing crimes, being let out, committing more crimes, being let out, and on and on. Never getting help for the underlying issues, never facing real consequences. Our incarceration numbers are insanely high and so are our recidivism rates. By any definition the American criminal justice system as it currently stands is broken, it does not do what it is intended to do in any meaningful way.
Spend one day in a criminal court and watch the proceedings. Not a major trial, but the everyday BS. I'd bet you'd consider it broken, although probably not a criminal justice system.
That's not the same thing as saying the criminal justice system is broken. In Latina America, for example, they have a much more serious problem but fewer people in prison. Is that better? In much of Asia, the Middle East and Eastern Europe they generally have lower crime but at the cost of severe curtailment of individual rights. Is that better?
In any case, our root problems seem to be cultural and not easily solvable solely through criminal justice. We really only have one ethnic group with a severe crime and incarceration problem, and it's not quite who you probably expect me to say. It's not Black people, it's American Descendents of Slavery (ADOS). There are all sorts of historical and cultural and possibly economic reasons for this, but hardly anyone disagrees. It's just not often stated because it get can be very impolite and awkward to mention and the speaker always gets a certain amount of "he's probably a racist" either directly or indirectly. But it's true and necessary to keep in mind when issues of crime or jailing come up. Nigerian and Caribbean immigrants are not disproportionally sitting in prison cells, ADOS are.
If you compare parts of Canada with parts of the US across the border with similar ethnic mixes, for example Seattle to Vancouver or NYC to Toronto or any number of smaller towns, there's little difference in crime rates after allowing for ADOS populations on the US side. The only places you'll see a disparity are where the Canadian side has large numbers of Aboriginals / Indigenous, who also have outlier crime problems that Canada hasn't figured out how to solve despite their supposedly superior criminal justice system.
On the Mexican border it's totally different. Some of the most violent cities in the world sit side-by-side with extremely peaceful US cities, despite the US cities being mostly made up of people who are only 1 or 2 or 3 generations removed from Mexico themselves. Ciudad Juarez and El Paso, for example, are close. But CJ has had the title "murder capital of the world" some years while El Paso is one of the lowest crime large cities in the US, despite also being one of the poorest.
That evidence, to me, speaks to a difference in criminal justice systems, and not one of cultures, unlike the US-Canada border, where the evidence suggests culture, not criminal justice, explains the differences. So yeah, there are far too many ADOS in prison and that ethnicity is also victimized by crime to an unacceptable extent. But would you really solely blame the current state of our criminal justice system, which seems to work OK for everyone else, for that?
i gotta ask, are you unaware of this data or do you just not believe it? because it NEVER comes up in these posts about SF. it is no coincidence that you have high rates of petty crime like for example, car break-ins, where you also have high housing costs. they are directly related, and much more strongly than for example, liberal governments and high rates of petty crime.
this is not a moral failing. it's caused by material circumstances.
There’s not enough epistemological rigor in the world to get people to agree on what is and isn’t a major issue. Much of the pushback I see from the far left anytime the theft/shoplifting in the Bay is discussed, is some iteration of “yeah but capitalism…”. There is no amount of data in the world that is going to dissuade them from the notion that the perpetrators of these crimes, are in fact, victims of their own right in a much larger or more insidious plot.
The whistling past the graveyard kneejerk response from the media and the terminally online (Reddit, etc.) is remarkable.
To Ethan’s point, the only way change gets made - and to reward change underway - is to continue to honestly report on the dysfunction and its causes. Denying it (while often mocking those who point it out) is basically the worst response possible because it’s both ignorant and counter-productive.
the cause of this dysfunction is high housing costs. not a lack of police enforcement or whatever ethan is sort of implying here. california has the second largest prison population in the nation, the prisons are full-to-bursting there. the idea that they're "soft on crime" and that's why this is happening is mind-blowingly naive and ignorant of the actual facts.
While that is not even remotely true, but the stubbornness in sticking to failed policies is almost impressive but it ends up being merely more whistling past the graveyard.
actually it's been basically proven by years of data science, but i assume you've "done your own research" on the subject?
If we're talking data science here, we should be looking at rates of incarceration, not total numbers, otherwise the largest states will be 1st in every category. And looking at rates, California is looks to be in the lower half:
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/global/2016.html
why should we be looking at rates of incarceration exactly pal? you should check out some data science about crime rates in areas that have high rates of incarceration, while you're at it. go ahead, i'll wait.
You should check rates of skin cancer and sales of sun block. You'll find they are correlated, but not because sun block causes skin cancer.
You seem to be making up arguments to put in my mouth. All I'm saying is "California has the most prisoners" is not a relevant statistic. You have to look at rates per population to say anything meaningful. This is basic data analysis Forget the science part if you aren't covering something that basic.
I wouldn't expect incarceration raates to directly cause crime to go up or down, because the certainty of punishment is generally much more important than the severity. And also because states, by and large, don't really differ all that much in their sentencing.
The primary drivers of both violent crime and incarceration within the US seem to be cultural. Areas with a culture of violence tend to have more murders and lock more people up. If you compare, say, West Virgina to Mississippi to New Mexico to El Paso / RGV, these areas all have about the same levels of poverty, low housing prices and low levels of homelessness. But they have vastly different rates of crime, rates of drug overdoses and rates of alcoholism.
Written by someone who obviously isn't a long term California resident who hasn't experienced the rapid decline in quality of life, statewide, over the past 20 years.
brother i hate to break it to you but this is happening in every city in the US and Canada right now. i am seeing it happen in my own city as well. it has nothing to do with the political alignment of the local government, sorry about it.
If only it were that easy. Just lower housing costs and crime will instantly vanish. When did you fall off of the turnip truck?
if only you were capable of not flattening every discussion into thought terminating cliches, you might be able to contribute something useful.
Why are cities with low housing costs exhibiting the same symptoms of dysfunctions, ie general increases in crime, drugs and dangerous driving?
And it does seem to be cities, specifically. Stats from the CDC show large urban metros have been disproportionally hurt by rises in homicide and traffic deaths, both of which the police primarily prevent. The link below has drop downs with specific causes of death and can be sorted by "urbanness" as well as other factors:
https://theusaindata.pythonanywhere.com/avoidable_deaths_after2020
And I can't find the link, but the NYTimes had analysis that showed many big city police depts cut traffic enforcement units by as much as 90% in response to pressures from the public in 2020.
cities with low housing costs don't exhibit the same levels of homelessness and it's related issues. that's the point.
It’s notable that the defense always boosts SF as a city generally, and never the local government specifically. I have yet to see anybody go as far as arguing that governance, civil service, and executive/admin state in SF is top notch.
I was born and raised in the Bay Area, went to high school in Oakland, and still live in the Bay. I love it. And I'm going to vote for Kamala. So it's not some politics thing. But I really don't understand how you could look at SF and say it's healthy. You walk into Safeway and there's armed guards. Toothpaste is locked up in CVS. That is not a sign of a healthy city. And the (liberal) leadership has to take some responsibility for that, they just do.
"Toothpaste is locked up in CVS"
That sort of thing has been going on for years in California hasn't it - i remember being in a Pizza Hut delivery/pickup in long beach about 10 years ago and it was all behind bullet proof glass, was shitting myself waiting for that BBQ chicken pizza...
Just wanted to take the opportunity to mentioned how sick and tired I am with some people spouting the idea that crime is the reason that Oakland has lost all of it's pro sports teams.
The Warriors left because no one would turn down a deal to have a shiny new arena in downtown SF
The Raiders left because NV offered him $750 mil and Oakland prioritized the Coliseum space for the A's when they would have 81 home dates and a football stadium would be competing with Levi's for concerts and other events.
John Fisher's A's are leaving because of pretty much greed. People say Fisher backed out of a deal with Oakland for a stadium when it was on the doorstep because it was getting too close. He didn't really want to pay for a new stadium and building it would allow him less revenue sharing from MLB in such a big market. The reason he gets more revenue sharing now is because he has an old stadium. Might as well have that new stadium in a smaller market and still get more revenue sharing. Now, it seems like he's painted himself into a corner; and we'll see how things turn out in the end for him. Yes, there are some faults from the local government, but Fisher really could've kept the A's in Oakland if he really wanted to build the stadium there or sell to someone who could.
Personally, as an Oakland A's fan since I was a kid, I'm pretty much done with MLB with the way this whole thing went down. Regardless, to blame the losses of all these sports teams on a crime problem is just ignorant. China Basin was revitalized when the Giants built there. Stadiums in Detroit and Cleveland helped to revitalize their downtowns. Plus, the A's wouldn't just serve fans in Oakland, but other places like Walnut Creek, Hayward, and Fremont. In all my years going to A's games, I've thankfully never seen any horrible crime related incidents happen. The events in which disgruntled fans showed up over the last year or so (reverse boycott, Fans Fest, opening night boycott), there were tons of people and no reports of any criminal incidents. It really showed the best of what fans in Oakland, the East Bay, and Northern California have to offer, just people wanting to support their team and have a good time. With the A's, they're looking for a place to call home for decades to come whereas these problems in the city have only gotten this much worse in maybe the last 5 to 10 years, not the last 50. It had very little to do with Fisher's decisions.
Yes, I believe that crime and homelessness has gotten worse in SF and Oakland. I'm not going to lie to myself about it, and I believe something should be done about it. However, I don't believe these places are just a lost cause and that it will always be this way. I love my hometown. I love the Bay Area. I love where I grew up. It's like family to me, and you don't give up on family when they run into a few problems. I've seen the best that it has to offer, and I believe in the people to turn things around.
The dominant left/right lenses can provide insight as to why SF is the way it is. But the future of SF/Bay Area is going to be written by the children of South/East Asian immigrants who were tiger-mom'd into STEM educations and high paying STEM jobs. Legacy retail in Union Square- dead. Asian oriented food courts and retailers at Stonestown, Japantown, Serramonte- popping. This emerging group can be a political force that more effectively advocates for safety, education and business prosperity because their politics arent weighed down by the culture wars/grievances of current left/right alignment. The future of SF isnt left/right. Its Pacific Rim.
Also, when Radio Ethan gets priced out of Concord, hes definitely moving to Tracy.
" because their politics arent weighed down by the culture wars/grievances of current left/right alignment"
Good riddance to white guilt
If there's one thing I would hope all sides in this country can agree on it's that our criminal justice system is completely fuckin broken. We need to completely reframe the way we look to prevent crime from happening in the first place if we want our cities to have a chance to thrive. The people that want to share stats and pretend that crime isn't bad blow my mind. Yes big picture crime can be down but that doesn't change the lived experience of walking in fear through the streets of SF.
"our criminal justice system is completely fuckin broken"
Hyperbole much? If that's how you describe our justice system then how would you describe the rest of the Western Hemisphere? Or the US of 100 years ago? Or most of the rest of the world outside of the 10% of the globe or so who live in Western Europe and Japan / S Korea?
There are problems and it's well within our power to do much better in many, many respects. But I personally don't find it helpful to exaggerate our problem(s).
I’ve studied the justice system in college and have family members I’ve seen trapped in the cycle of committing crimes, being let out, committing more crimes, being let out, and on and on. Never getting help for the underlying issues, never facing real consequences. Our incarceration numbers are insanely high and so are our recidivism rates. By any definition the American criminal justice system as it currently stands is broken, it does not do what it is intended to do in any meaningful way.
Spend one day in a criminal court and watch the proceedings. Not a major trial, but the everyday BS. I'd bet you'd consider it broken, although probably not a criminal justice system.
That's not the same thing as saying the criminal justice system is broken. In Latina America, for example, they have a much more serious problem but fewer people in prison. Is that better? In much of Asia, the Middle East and Eastern Europe they generally have lower crime but at the cost of severe curtailment of individual rights. Is that better?
In any case, our root problems seem to be cultural and not easily solvable solely through criminal justice. We really only have one ethnic group with a severe crime and incarceration problem, and it's not quite who you probably expect me to say. It's not Black people, it's American Descendents of Slavery (ADOS). There are all sorts of historical and cultural and possibly economic reasons for this, but hardly anyone disagrees. It's just not often stated because it get can be very impolite and awkward to mention and the speaker always gets a certain amount of "he's probably a racist" either directly or indirectly. But it's true and necessary to keep in mind when issues of crime or jailing come up. Nigerian and Caribbean immigrants are not disproportionally sitting in prison cells, ADOS are.
If you compare parts of Canada with parts of the US across the border with similar ethnic mixes, for example Seattle to Vancouver or NYC to Toronto or any number of smaller towns, there's little difference in crime rates after allowing for ADOS populations on the US side. The only places you'll see a disparity are where the Canadian side has large numbers of Aboriginals / Indigenous, who also have outlier crime problems that Canada hasn't figured out how to solve despite their supposedly superior criminal justice system.
On the Mexican border it's totally different. Some of the most violent cities in the world sit side-by-side with extremely peaceful US cities, despite the US cities being mostly made up of people who are only 1 or 2 or 3 generations removed from Mexico themselves. Ciudad Juarez and El Paso, for example, are close. But CJ has had the title "murder capital of the world" some years while El Paso is one of the lowest crime large cities in the US, despite also being one of the poorest.
That evidence, to me, speaks to a difference in criminal justice systems, and not one of cultures, unlike the US-Canada border, where the evidence suggests culture, not criminal justice, explains the differences. So yeah, there are far too many ADOS in prison and that ethnicity is also victimized by crime to an unacceptable extent. But would you really solely blame the current state of our criminal justice system, which seems to work OK for everyone else, for that?
https://homelessnesshousingproblem.com/
i gotta ask, are you unaware of this data or do you just not believe it? because it NEVER comes up in these posts about SF. it is no coincidence that you have high rates of petty crime like for example, car break-ins, where you also have high housing costs. they are directly related, and much more strongly than for example, liberal governments and high rates of petty crime.
this is not a moral failing. it's caused by material circumstances.
Article summary: SF is not that bad and bougie
I think I’ve demonstrated that theft is a major problem in downtown SF?
There’s not enough epistemological rigor in the world to get people to agree on what is and isn’t a major issue. Much of the pushback I see from the far left anytime the theft/shoplifting in the Bay is discussed, is some iteration of “yeah but capitalism…”. There is no amount of data in the world that is going to dissuade them from the notion that the perpetrators of these crimes, are in fact, victims of their own right in a much larger or more insidious plot.