[hindsightbias]

SF leads in all areas of innovation, including crime. In the Covid era, tourists are not present in the quantities required to sustain various career populations, including criminals.

Guns aren’t really necessary in SF, so there may be some gang initiation threshold.

[cecida]

I traveled to SF a number of times with work 2 years ago. I'm not trying to sound like a smug social democratic European, but I couldn't get over the homelessness, the petty vandalism, the rubbish, and the overall air of menace in the place.

[SllX]

This is a fair characterization, particularly for the parts of the city you were likely to see on any business trip. There’s both better and worse in other parts.

[tropdrop]

On an episode of 99pi, I heard even visiting New Yorkers are shocked.

[hindsightbias]

What would your social utopia be like if most of the rest your country and most the rest of the states made homelessness a crime?

Your trying to compare apples to apples. SF is an apple, but the US is one big orange.

[Khaine]

That was my sense as well, when I visited in 2019 for a conference.

My boss said it was like watching the walking dead with 'zombies' everywhere.

[Khaine]

To be clear, its absolutely tragic that 'zombies' are walking around everywhere

[proc0]

> SF leads in all areas of innovation, including crime.

Not anymore they won't. And you think criminals from outside the city/state don't know that people have no guns there? That's attractive to anyone trying to break the law.

[gumby]

Do people really travel any kind of distance to commit crimes? I thought that most crimes were committed in one's own neighborhood, then nearby ones.

[hn8788]

Public transportation is frequently used for commiting crimes around Baltimore, to the point that they've started to shut down train stops outside the city. It's sad too, because the bus and train stops were added so people in the city had wider access to employment, but violent crime rates spiked in the areas surrounding the stops, so now the people that live and work around the stops are trying to get the government to shut them down. I can't really blame them though, because a local mall added bus stops, and now the mall has guard towers throughout the parking lot because of the muggings and shootings that came along with the bus stop.

[babesh]

They often go to where it is most optimal to commit a certain crime. For instance, a bank nearby was robbed this morning. It’s close to a freeway. Another example, a bunch of cars near the freeway had their catalytic converters taken out. Lastly, package thieves are quite common in my neighborhood (the packages are dropped off in front of doors visible from the street). In all these cases, the criminals case places from their cars. Also when the police do catch them, they are usually not residents of the city but often but not always live maybe 10-20 miles away.

[tlynchpin]

I just started reading Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood"[0] - I'm only a few pages in so please no spoilers.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Cold_Blood

[liaukovv]

That would be a very bad tactic In fact touring crime seems like a better approach, you commit a bunch of crimes in a city and move on, never to be seen there again

[proc0]

Same difference, the city becomes a honeypot because authorities decided it was a good idea to advertise their intentions.

[gumby]

That's what I had assumed too, but there are several factors that dominate, statistically:

When you do a crime close to home you blend in, you are more likely to know about the opportunities, and you can more quickly/easily escape home.

Crimes of passion and opportunity are by definition done where you happen to be, which is likely to be where you typically are anyway.

Many "crimes" are really defined to control populations, so the people committing them aren't really criminals and of course such "crimes" are enforced where the target population lives.

Of course crimes are also committed by people who don't live nearby, but they seem to be a small minority of crimes, though a large majority of book/movie crimes (otherwise...how boring those stories would be)