Whomever wrote the headline on this Politico piece was either smoking crack or living in an alternative reality. One of the best parts, though, is that implementing law and order, reducing crime are considered a rightward and conservative shift. So, Democrat policy stands for crime and disorder
City of peace and love votes for drug screening and more police surveillance
The liberal bastion of San Francisco pivoted rightward in Tuesday’s election as voters responded to ongoing drug, homelessness and crime crises by approving policies that bolster police and require drug-screening for welfare recipients.
The results represent a major victory for embattled Mayor London Breed, a moderate Democrat who faces a tough fight for a second full term in November. She hitched her political future to a slate of three ballot measures that aim to move a city struggling with its slow post-pandemic recovery in a strikingly more conservative direction.
Voters approved all three of her measures on Tuesday, including her proposal to screen and mandate addiction treatment for people receiving county welfare.
“We want San Francisco to be exactly what the people who live here want to see,” Breed told supporters at a jam-packed craft-cocktail bar in the Hayes Valley neighborhood. “And that is a safe, affordable place to call home.”
Per Neighborhood Scout, the city of peace and love (maybe in the 60’s and 70’s) is a 1, meaning it is safer than just 1% of US cities. 100 is safest. The violent crime rate is not as bad as you think, with a 1 in 148 chance of being a victim of a violent crime. I’ve seen cities that are much worse. The property crime is what really drives this, with a 1 in 17 chance of being a victim. Burglary is almost 3 times the US rate, same with theft and motor vehicle theft. People in SF have been complaining about car thefts for decades, and that the police almost do not bother because there’s almost no chance of recovering them.
Then there are all the actions that are not necessarily crimes or things that do not get include in a crime rate, like homeless people everywhere, poop, urine, and drug needles in the streets, all the people hassling other citizens.
John Avalos, a former supervisor and longtime progressive organizer in the city, vented about the forces trying to move San Francisco rightward as he passed out brochures to voters Tuesday morning.
“Everyone is operating on the terrain that’s set by the mayor and the billionaire class,” Avalos said, speaking to POLITICO on the phone as he walked the rain-soaked, steep streets of Bernal Heights, one of the city’s most liberal neighborhoods. “It’s a politics of fear, and we need a politics of hope. We’re losing our standing on the hope side.”
I bet he lives somewhere nice which has plenty of police patrols. And doesn’t have to deal with the constant crime in the “downtown” area, which got so bad that the federal building supervisors told their employees to work from home. Businesses are leaving the area big and small. Anti-homeless fences and devices are being erected all over the place. Is it fear to have a chance on being one of the 1 in 17?
The mayor said her shifts on crime and drug policies weren’t made lightly and weren’t motivated by her reelection. She broke down into tears Saturday as she invoked the memory of her younger sister, who died from a drug overdose in 2006. Compassionate responses to the crisis have led to more deaths in the streets, she argued.
Yeah, they have. And led to crime. In fact, the article goes on to note that a record 806 people died from overdoses last year.
The rest is about the politics of Breed running for re-election. It will be interesting to see what the Comrades of SF vote for. They went for the strong on crime policies, will they vote her back in after she pushed the policies? Of course, since the city council and so many of the citizens are hostile towards police, can they create a condition where they are able to hire enough to do the job? To do things like surge officers to areas like the downtown area and forestall criminals? Further, when they catch criminals will they be charged and prosecuted by the leftist DA’s office? Or will they be let go as usual, causing cops to not bother arresting them?
Those crime rates, are they possibly based upon reported crimes? Because my friends in San Francisco say that mostly nobody reports most any crime short of violent assault resulting in bodily harm or outright murder.
Snatch-n-Grab Robberies? Armed robberies? Physical assaults by homeless/favored group? Auto theft and auto burglary? Most residents just duck their heads and keep going on like nothing is wrong.
Auto theft and burglary crimes must have a police report if you file an insurance claim. If people that live in SF really thought it sucked you would see housing costs a lot less than they are now at 1.2 mil median.
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