Is San Francisco safe? That depends on your definition of the word, and what you have experienced. It depends on your personality. It depends on where you live, work, shop, go to school and socialize.
Me, I can and do walk pretty much everywhere in this city. That includes the Tenderloin and South of Market neighborhoods where so much destitution is concentrated.
So far, I’m fine. As disturbing it is to be in the middle of so much misery and suffering, I have never felt in real danger. Mainly because many of the people there exist their world of addiction, half dead and sometimes fully dead. The dealers murdering the people buying the drugs are about as interested in me as the Chanel saleswoman is when I meander in. They know I’m not their customer.
Real danger
A couple of years ago a woman from my neighborhood was sexually assaulted on her way to the gym. Neighbors banded together and the man was caught and brought to justice. I was once chased up the hill, after taking photos of what I thought was a pile of garbage (I was going to call it into to the city for cleanup), then was surprised by a woman living underneath who jumped up and ran after me with a knife. I called the police and she was apprehended. Last I heard she was in jail for a number of other such episodes. Recently a madman threw garbage at me and screamed in my face, at 1:00 in the afternoon on Polk Street. Scary, but I certainly survived.
And then there are the car smash and grabs, which happens to countless citizens and visitors here but not me because I don’t have a car. Nor do I have a bicycle, so I can’t be robbed of one. Garage and home break-ins are common, but so far I’ve not experienced either.
So I’ve been lucky. Very lucky. As furious as I am about the appalling state of the city because of the drug dealing and deaths, untreated mental illness, squalor, shoplifting, and robberies, I feel safe in San Francisco.
But this time.
Gunfire at Pier 39. Out of town criminals shot at each other from their vehicles. Innocent people caught between, including a family with young children. They were not safe. No one close by was safe. I could have been there, as could any of my friends or family members.
Friends and foes
I’m sick of this. Like everyone here, I want to lay blame, put faces to the abusers and march them out of the city.
My ire can be focused on the members of the San Francisco Police Commission because they have made it unnecessarily difficult for law enforcement to function and protect people. I look at Mayor London Breed because this happened on her watch, and the city supervisors who either blocked progress or concentrated on irrelevant issues instead of crime and getting the city back up and running.
We San Franciscans have had more than enough abuse. Whispers of, “2024, the next election can’t come fast enough” are growing louder. There are some great people revving their motors. Heartening, but that’s the future.
What we have now is an epic battle. Sometimes we fight our friends, begging them to stop being so pessimistic, so angry. There are days when we are unable to hear one more bitter word because it will send us over the edge.
Typically, though, we fight those like journalist Kara Swisher who minimize the damage in snarky tweets. “Oh yeah, San Francisco is such a hellscape” they smirk, showing serene photos of parks and farmers markets. “If you can’t handle it, move to the ‘burbs.”
Yet as the havoc nears and intensifies, as their local stores and restaurants are robbed until the owners are forced to shut, they’ve faded into the distance.
Past and present
Brutality in San Francisco is nothing new here. The first dead body I saw was outside the Pagoda Theater, when I was going home from a shift as a cocktail waitress at the Savoy Tivoli. I heard the shot, moments before. A young boy, maybe 16, was laying facedown in a pool of blood. Chinatown gangs, they said.
When I was a high school teacher, the riff between the Sureños and Norteños raged. My Mission-based students told me harrowing stories. Then one day I was riding my motorcycle by 24th Street and a bullet wizzed past my face as I was waiting for the light.
Not long ago, an older cab driver told me when he grew up Hayes Valley was so dangerous that there was no way he would have gone near. Bayview, where he grew up was safer.
Times change and it’s not always organic. Sometimes by force, other times by economics and politics. Everything comes and goes in cycles. We’ve been here before.
As for me, I’m safe not safe in San Francisco. Although I still walk everywhere, talk to everyone, and feel physically secure, I have no peace of mind. Like thousands of residents, my hands are clenched. I’m ready for the swings, can deflect and dodge, and get some good ones in too. It’s a weird way to live, but that’s the way it is in Baghdad by the Bay.
Timmins Ontario is not safe. Too many homeless addicts and untreated mentall ill.
There are a lot of native reserves in northen Ontario. Life is terrible on the Reserves, so the young move to the small cities. To pay for their drug habits, they break into homes, garages and cars.
In a very small city, it is hard to avoid being a victum. No "good areas" to hide in.
Five hundred citizens showed up at a hockey arena to complain about the city's homeless shelter and safe injection site. They want the shelter to be moved out of the residental area.
You can read about it here: https://bit.ly/3CD8RQZ
Erica -
The robbery map tells a story of its own, but as is too often the case - it's not the whole story.
Imagine if SFPD or the DA's office were classifying all of these robberies to reflect who is committing them. Here's what would be eye opening - a color coding of the dots - it may require many more dots to do this - committed by;
1. Men.
2. Women
3. Under 18
4. Suspected or known drug addict
5. Out of towners = commuter criminal
6. Drug dealer
7. Break-in to Car
8. Break-in to Home
9. Break-in to Business
10. Shop Lifting
11. Use of a weapon
12. Caused injury
13. Caused death
When I write commentary seen nationally, I always do my best to support San Francisco, and debunk the nonsense claims that it is a living Hell which many non-Californians seem to take some perverted pleasure in. But I can't defend the elected officials who created and/or contributed to the core issues
of drug use, drug related crime, and drug related homelessness. The other thing that cannot be defended is the State Legislature's failure to either clarify its intent of old laws, or if need be write new laws to replace the old that enshrine quality of life as a value worth protecting in all neighborhoods.
Cities should have a right to set up refugee camps if they choose to, but only if they have locations for them which do not negatively impact the general population. The idea of putting drug use sites, and/or homeless shelters in residential areas is just counter to common sense.
The exception ought to be pharmacies, clinics, and hospitals where professional from DPH could be stationed to address the needs of walk-in patients. What has to stop is enabling all anti-social behaviors.
You made lots of good point, and I've shared many of your safe/not safe experiences growing up in San Francisco. For most people character building starts at home, goes to school, and to church in the old days. Now a very high percentage of children are being raised by a single parent, or parents with poor character issues of their own, and schools are not consistently helping. Add to that the many street gangs that SFPD and Mayor and BOS speak about almost never, and it rounds out the problem.
A retired SFPD officer from the Bayview told me the gangs exist because there are no other competitive opportunities. If true, then maybe the solution is to make them a SFPD division with a mission of public safety and assistance with pay and benefits that is high enough to make it worth them dropping the drug trade? It may sound crazy. I can't say it will work. But I know what's not working now.
For decades I've been telling anyone who would listen; safety is an illusion. Safety is a feeling we have
when we feel secure and think or convince ourselves there are no predators near us. In reality, before COVID masked everyone up, people already wore masks of a different kind. They could smile, and get close to you, and then spring on you, or pull a weapon. Lately - people can be in a crowd, and someone fires multiple shots, and by standers get hurt or killed. Everywhere is safe until its not!
And carrying defensive weapons/tools is generally not what most of us want to do. If you do that, you can't take them into government buildings etc.,
Surprisingly - no one has yet started a weapons checking service for government buildings or airports.
Like a coat check.