Why does San Diego have such an insanely low crime rate, and San Francisco so sky high? (Los Angeles: home, to live)

[lrmsd]

Originally Posted by ssmaster

seriously i don't think many other cities would tolerate the homicidal mentally deranged homeless the way san francisco does.imho
and i am not a fan of sd or la jolla.

I completely agree,having lived in sfo [for two fantastic years-outer richmond district,most underated area of the city at that time,IMO],and now in SD [clairemont,normal heights and now carmel valley,for 8 yrs total]...SFO's homeless crazy thing,esp. in retrospect [other major city i've lived in is boston],is,well,crazy. Between the VA hospital and the Haight,among other areas...it's a live wire place,to be sure,and the tolerance/embracing of this as part of the city's history,no longer serves the city or it's residents,IMO.

One of my friends,after morning after morning of being screamed at,at the bus stop,finally turned to the guy and screamed back at him. Never dealt with it again. Of course,she's fortunate this tactic did not result in the opposite response,too.

I have friends who grew up wealthy in the city-and that's a great experience. And we ourselves had the means to enjoy our time-but so many people are living with roomates in western addition,with crack dealers downstairs,etc just so they can afford 'the city'. For many,iv'e known them,the city is a pretty disturbing experience,but you tolerate it for all of the things you love about being there...it's an easy place to get 'stuck',i think.
It is just so compact,that the crime is not as segregated as in some larger cities.
Not sure what the point of this thread actually is,come to think of it...hmmm..is someone wondering about sfo?
in my two years there,I was jumped once,on vaness going to the bus stop with a frined,at about 8 pm,not too far south on vaness. I had nothing to steal,but was stupid to wear a backpack on my back,and generally looked like a tourist there,for sure....it as a whole weird set up of 3 people pretending not to be together nad one guy pretending to go into a seizure,laying in front of me on the ground,and the other two [incidentally,seizure guy was white,accomplice couple was black]pretending to be a drunk couple on the way home or something.
before i knew it,my backpack was unzipped,but like i said,it was empty and i managed to realize what was happening and step over the guy and rush to a more crowded area just ahead.
What the heck? I'll join in to this therapy thread...
the only other time i've been robbed in this way/semi jumped if that is what you call it-is when i lived in nairobi, kenya.[which conveniently goes by the nickname 'Nairobbery'.
so there you have it for comparison.

[llowllevellowll]

Originally Posted by gogetta

There are neighborhoods in SF that are certainly no joke. These neighborhoods are just as bad as any in Detroit in my own personal experience.

Your personal experience must be quite insignificant. I'm from Cleveland and SF doesn't have 1 neighborhood that looks like Detroit's, Cleveland, or Chicago's bad.

I was in HP the other day actually saying to myself, "this is kinda cute." You don't say that in the aforementioned cities - you get the hell out. lol

[mysticaltyger]

Originally Posted by rah

True...though SF alone already has more crime than SD in terms of raw numbers too, not just rates (except for rape):

San Diego (1,271,655):
murders - 55 (4.3/100k)
rapes - 376 (29.6/100k)
robberies - 2,019 (158.8/100k)
aggravated assaults - 3,597 (282.9/100k)
violent crime total - 6,047 (475.5/100k)

San Francisco (798,144):
murders - 99 (12.4/100k)
rapes - 166 (20.8/100k)
robberies - 4,108 (514.7/100k)
aggravated assaults - 3,801 (476.2/100k)
violent crime total - 8,174 (1,024.1/100k)

(2008 stats)

Despite having 60% the population of SD, SF had 35% more violent crimes in 2008.

Those murder stats are out of date. I think SFs murders dropped by more than half in 2009. Maybe SDs dropped as well, though.

Homicides plummet inexplicably in S.F.

53% drop in homicides - to 45 - sets a record.


Homicides plummet inexplicably in S.F. - SFGate

[gogetta]

Originally Posted by Puddy4LyF

Your personal experience must be quite insignificant. I'm from Cleveland and SF doesn't have 1 neighborhood that looks like Detroit's, Cleveland, or Chicago's bad.

I was in HP the other day actually saying to myself, "this is kinda cute." You don't say that in the aforementioned cities - you get the hell out. lol

I know what you are saying, nothing does look as bad as other cities, though looks aren't everything. You go deep into the projects in HP or in sunnydale homes and it is damn near as blighted and dangerous as those other cities.

[NorCal Dude]

San Diego did not have nearly the level of industry the bay had. And as a result not nearlly the level of urban decay.

Mix that it with demographics that really are not a high crime crowd -monied retirees, yuppie surf dads and skate moms, and a massive amount of military folks

[rah]

Originally Posted by xGrendelx

I don't know man. Having seen some of the worst Baltimore has to offer personally, I agree with matt that SF doesn't have a neighborhood comparable. If he's used to Bmore's roughest, than SF probably is a pretty safe city to him. SF has its rough neighborhoods, that's for sure. Many of which are more dangerous than I prefer or feel comfortable in. With that in mind, I'd still think twice before labeling SF as a "dangerous city" myself. It's a city, so with it comes city crime, and there is a high amount of unstable people walking around which can be nerve-racking for those not expecting it. It's got higher amounts of crime in some regards (robbery) and lower in others (rape), but in my opinion, stats aside, there's nothing like East or West Baltimore in San Francisco.

I never said SF was as bad as Baltimore....but Baltimore and those other cities aren't so much worse in terms of crime than SF so as to make SF seem "laughably" un-dangerous. There's nothing those cities have that SF doesn't in terms of criminals and shady activity, and there are many more cities with lower violent crime rates than SF than are cities with higher violent crime rates.... That's all i was getting at there.

Originally Posted by mysticaltyger

Those murder stats are out of date. I think SFs murders dropped by more than half in 2009. Maybe SDs dropped as well, though.

Homicides plummet inexplicably in S.F.

53% drop in homicides - to 45 - sets a record.


Homicides plummet inexplicably in S.F. - SFGate

SF's murder rate did drop that much in 2009...it was the lowest murder rate since 1963 (and yes, many other US cities had similar drops). But that doesn't change the fact that SF has been averaging 86 murders a year since 1985. 2009 could be signaling a trend in SF, or it could have just been a fluke, its too early to really tell.

Also numbers from 2008 are not outdated. Those are the most recent FBI crime stats...nothing has been released for 2009 yet, and i was talking about violent crime rates not just murder rates alone.

Originally Posted by Puddy4LyF

Your personal experience must be quite insignificant. I'm from Cleveland and SF doesn't have 1 neighborhood that looks like Detroit's, Cleveland, or Chicago's bad.

I was in HP the other day actually saying to myself, "this is kinda cute." You don't say that in the aforementioned cities - you get the hell out. lol

As gogetta said, Looks aren't everything. I do find it funny how everyone says that SF's bad areas can't possibly be as bad parts of a place like Detroit in terms of crime though, yet when someone who has lived in SF and Detroit as well as Flint says they're basically the same, you still say it's not true..

And you think HP is "cute"? Give me a break. I've been to east, west, and North Oakland, South Berkeley, the Crest in Vallejo, the supposedly shady area east of Downtown SJ, bad parts of SD and LA, as well as north Philly. None of those areas are "cute," and HP is not "cute" either. HP is worse than anything i've experienced in SD or SJ, at least as bad as what i'v experienced in Oakland, Vallejo, and LA, and while it posses way fewer run down and abandoned buildings than North Philly (residential...HP actually has a good amount of abandoned industrial buildings), it has that same sort of desolate "ghetto" feel in many parts.

Originally Posted by NorCal Dude

San Diego did not have nearly the level of industry the bay had. And as a result not nearlly the level of urban decay.

this too.

[Radical347]

Originally Posted by tstieber

San Diego is largely suburban and safe, and SF will never be able to do anything to change the nature of being a big, dense city.

Maybe it can't do anything to change the nature of being a "big, dense city" but that doesn't mean it's not possible to do anything about its crime rate. NYC did.

[rah]

Comparing 2008 stats to 1992 stats, NYC's violent crime rate was 73% lower. LA's was 72% lower, and SF's was 44% lower. SF has already dropped it's crime rate nearly by half since 1992 as you can see, but it just hasn't been able to cut it down by the huge amount that NYC and LA have been able to.

[Gentoo]

Originally Posted by Sassberto

If you normalized San Diego to it's urban, just-postwar boundaries, you would end up with a similar population (about 750k) and a much higher per-capita crime rate. As Kettlepot said, San Diego's city limits include many far-flung suburbs with net zero effective crime and relatively high populations, which dilute the per-capita crime rates.

This is very true sass. SF has nothing like Rancho Bernardo which, despite being nearly 30 miles from downtown SD is still part of the city of SD proper.

[Gentoo]

Originally Posted by gogetta

There are neighborhoods in SF that are certainly no joke. These neighborhoods are just as bad as any in Detroit in my own personal experience.

The same could be said about certain areas of SD; Logan Heights, Mountain View, Shelltown, Sherman, and Lincoln Park to name a few.