> You don't remember the decades when SoMa and the mission were gang hotspots, with frequent shootings? During that same time, it was dangerous to wear a hoodie, or a bandana.

Oh I do. When I was a kid the rule was "Don't wear Adidas sneakers on the Muni, you'll get robbed." (Also Nike.)

We mostly hung out in the Sunset and my clique was multi-ethnic, so we had to watch out for SDI (the Sunset District Incorporated, skinheads) when we hung out in Stern Grove in the middle of the night.

The thing about gang violence is that it's mostly between gang members.

> Crime in SF is still at historic lows, especially violent crime. There's a higher perception of crime in the city right now due to a persistent media emphasis on crime _percentage_ increases.

I think the perception is due to, well, perception. Not to be snarky, what I mean is you see it everywhere, the kinds of crime that are common today. I mentioned in a sib comment that I've seen squatters break into a house across the street, and my sister's car had a window broken and things stolen from it. This has never happened before and we've lived here for about 25 years. (Park Merced.)

You can literally go downtown and see people shooting up in the gutter, or step over the human feces yourself. Downtown has always been scuzzy (at least since I was a kid) but it's getting medieval down there. Go look for yourself if you don't believe me. Just be careful.

> The biggest different in SF is the homeless population, and specifically the amount of drug addicts. Drug addicts are also the ones breaking into cars, shop lifting and stealing bikes. This is primarily thanks to the opiod epidemic, and not due to local politics. Republican cities are _not_ handling this better than liberal ones.

First of all this should not be a partisan issue I don't care about Left vs. Right when it comes to housing the homeless and treating addiction. I was homeless myself for a few years, and I've seen first hand how addiction warps people.

Second, yeah, addicts steal. They need help: stable, supportive environments (and in some cases access to substitute drugs or whatever, I don't want to get into the details of humane treatment for addicts here. I'm not an expert anyway.)

SF spends a quarter of a billion dollars per year on homelessness. Most of it goes into the pockets of people who are not themselves homeless. So on the one hand, homelessness and drug addiction should not be treated as crimes, and folks with those problems should get the help they need, while on the other hand, leaving them on the street without support to steal and take drugs is not humane.

Third, do you have data? I haven't been out in the street for a couple of decades, so my first-hand data are pretty stale. If we're going to discuss this we should do it with actual data please.

> The tenderloin has always been awful. It's named the way it is because of high crime and dirty cops. You describing it this way makes me doubt you live in the city at all.

My man, I lived in the Tenderloin for a bit in my twenties. It has always been a rough neighborhood (highest incidence of male-on-male rape in the country. Dubious distinction to put it mildly.) But it functioned for its residents. Now it's gotten so chaotic that even the dirty cops won't go in there.

> It's been a year since Boudin was recalled, and yet you're saying it's the worst it's ever been. Maybe he wasn't the issue?

Well that's the argument I made to my Progressive friends (the ones who told me to my face that the R's and the lying police bamboozled me): the police said they couldn't work with him, so now if crime doesn't go down significantly it will show that he wasn't actually the problem after all, like you say.

The recall might be a setback for the Progressives, but it was a Pyrrhic victory for the Right.

From my POV the Progressives biggest problem right now is that they have their heads up their behinds when it comes to selling their policies to the middle-Left, aka the 317k D's and the 134k undecided voters of the City.