Why even offer a counter-anecdote? Are you trying to give the impression to impressionable people that not every person gets threatened with murder on a regular basis here? That’s true, but it seems like you’re just trying to discount one person’s lived experience. I know women that get groped on MUNI regularly but not every woman gets groped on MUNI. People don’t usually threaten me, but I’ve stopped people from threatening others in front of me. Hell, I’ve stopped a guy from trying to roll another guy sleeping on the street into oncoming traffic. Nobody has ever stolen my phone from me, but that doesn’t mean phones have never been stolen from people.
And before you go to the stats, just remember something: lies, damned lies and statistics. If the police don’t get involved, there’s no police report. If the DA doesn’t charge a crime, there’s no “crime” even if there actually is. Homicides and property crimes tend to leave the most evidence behind, but those aren’t the only crimes that matter and even the criminal amounts of piss and shit around just the MUNI and BART stations probably isn’t generating any police reports either. Verbal harassment and threats also don’t tend to generate enough of the right kind of paperwork to make it into the stats, but it doesn’t make it less real.
Against a deliberately facetious post someone made that was a follow-on to a follow-on of somebody else’s anecdote?
Let me put it this way: needing to counter an anecdote with your own comes across as unsympathetic at worst and apathetic at best. “Yeah that happened to you, so what? It doesn’t happen to me!” kinda vibes.
It happens enough that too many people have these stories about San Francisco. They’re the kinds of things that can happen anywhere, but San Francisco is one of the places where it is talked about as happening a lot.
I think what gets me is the underlying classism that oozes out of these conversations everywhere I turn. People here (in SFBA) are oh so liberal and progressive ... as long as the undesirables aren't in _their_ neighborhood. Then suddenly everyone's pearl clutching.
For the most part they mean you no harm. Just because people are poor, doesn't mean they're dangerous.
One of the dumbest examples was when a neighbor asked me to stop putting cardboard boxes in recycling because "it attracts the bad element and then they camp in our street". Ffs man they're homeless, let them have a damn box.
The homeless people you're advocating for are the worst victims of the homeless people being criticized in this thread. You do no favors for people who happen to be poor by providing cover for the crazies.
If there were more being done about the people threatening violence, intentionally urinating on passersby, molesting women, accosting people in the streets, your neighbor would likely be less concerned about the cardboard box people.
And before you go to the stats, just remember something: lies, damned lies and statistics. If the police don’t get involved, there’s no police report. If the DA doesn’t charge a crime, there’s no “crime” even if there actually is. Homicides and property crimes tend to leave the most evidence behind, but those aren’t the only crimes that matter and even the criminal amounts of piss and shit around just the MUNI and BART stations probably isn’t generating any police reports either. Verbal harassment and threats also don’t tend to generate enough of the right kind of paperwork to make it into the stats, but it doesn’t make it less real.