The Atlantic on SF: is DC too a failed city or about to be one?

[Anonymous]

A big issue is SFPD. They stopped arresting for petty crime even before Chesa was elected. This is a theme throughout many cities in the US - the police work slowdown has been real, they stop arresting (except when there’s a gun, a body, or a protest), and that ends up leading to civilians feeling helpless.

A prediction: nothing will change with Chesa gone. SFPD is still pissed off at the Mayor, the council, and the citizens who ask for respect of their rights. How do you reign in a rogue police force?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The petty crime was frustrating, but it wasn’t what lit the city up for revolution. The housing crush is miserable, but it’s been that way for more than a decade now. The spark that lit this all on fire was the school board. And the population ready to rage was San Francisco’s parents.

The city’s schools were shut for most of the 2020–21 academic year—longer than schools in most other cities, and much longer than San Francisco’s private schools. In the middle of the pandemic, with no real reopening plan in sight, school-board meetings became major events, with audiences on Zoom of more than 1,000. The board didn’t have unilateral power to reopen schools even if it wanted to—that depended on negotiations between the district, the city, and the teachers’ union—but many parents were appalled to find that the board members didn’t even seem to want to talk much about getting kids back into classrooms. They didn’t want to talk about learning loss or issues with attendance and functionality. It seemed they couldn’t be bothered with topics like ventilation. Instead they wanted to talk about white supremacy.

I grew up just south of SF and still live in the Bay Area. You are right about this, but there is another element here: anti-Asian racism and violence, and the non-response of city politicians to that racism and violence. The school board recall was driven by Asian parents who had kids who had been targeted and racially harassed (and worse) and the progressive school board members were doing nothing except tearing apart Lowell and keeping kids out of school. Kids and elderly Asians were (and are) subjected to violence and awful racism in SF. But the city progressive politicians essentially did not react.

It’s true that SFPD has also largely gone on strike. They have never cared about victims of racist violence, though, so that isn’t new.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would pay for an interview with Chessa’s parents. Curious if these SDS folk would also be fed up with SF today.

His mom died in May. She spent 22 years in jail, all of Chesa’s childhood. Although I support the recall, I’m glad she didn’t see the end.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/Kathy-Boudin-formerly-imprisoned-radical-leftist-17140432.php

[Anonymous]

The criticism of covid school closure on this thread is a breath of fresh air. Where were all of you when every other comment was "school isn't childcare!" when working parents were saying they were at their breaking point?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A big issue is SFPD. They stopped arresting for petty crime even before Chesa was elected. This is a theme throughout many cities in the US - the police work slowdown has been real, they stop arresting (except when there’s a gun, a body, or a protest), and that ends up leading to civilians feeling helpless.

A prediction: nothing will change with Chesa gone. SFPD is still pissed off at the Mayor, the council, and the citizens who ask for respect of their rights. How do you reign in a rogue police force?

This is a good point. SFPD is a department that is famously corrupt and out of control and everyone knows it. They need full time DOJ oversight.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A big issue is SFPD. They stopped arresting for petty crime even before Chesa was elected. This is a theme throughout many cities in the US - the police work slowdown has been real, they stop arresting (except when there’s a gun, a body, or a protest), and that ends up leading to civilians feeling helpless.

A prediction: nothing will change with Chesa gone. SFPD is still pissed off at the Mayor, the council, and the citizens who ask for respect of their rights. How do you reign in a rogue police force?

And with Uvalde, people no longer trust the police to take swift and appropriate action when there IS a gun involved.

Seems there's very little that's "swift or appropriate" coming from police anymore.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A big issue is SFPD. They stopped arresting for petty crime even before Chesa was elected. This is a theme throughout many cities in the US - the police work slowdown has been real, they stop arresting (except when there’s a gun, a body, or a protest), and that ends up leading to civilians feeling helpless.

A prediction: nothing will change with Chesa gone. SFPD is still pissed off at the Mayor, the council, and the citizens who ask for respect of their rights. How do you reign in a rogue police force?

This is a good point. SFPD is a department that is famously corrupt and out of control and everyone knows it. They need full time DOJ oversight.

Yes. The downward slide is all the fault of the police. That excuse played itself out since the summer of 2020 and guess what happened? Crime has skyrocketed in all major cities. DC looks like a dump in multi places - but heck - we have graffiti in the middle of a major commuting street and carjackings from the under 16 age group.

Priorities shifted and the result is crime and looking the other way in the name of equity:

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A big issue is SFPD. They stopped arresting for petty crime even before Chesa was elected. This is a theme throughout many cities in the US - the police work slowdown has been real, they stop arresting (except when there’s a gun, a body, or a protest), and that ends up leading to civilians feeling helpless.

A prediction: nothing will change with Chesa gone. SFPD is still pissed off at the Mayor, the council, and the citizens who ask for respect of their rights. How do you reign in a rogue police force?

This is a good point. SFPD is a department that is famously corrupt and out of control and everyone knows it. They need full time DOJ oversight.

Yes. The downward slide is all the fault of the police. That excuse played itself out since the summer of 2020 and guess what happened? Crime has skyrocketed in all major cities. DC looks like a dump in multi places - but heck - we have graffiti in the middle of a major commuting street and carjackings from the under 16 age group.

Priorities shifted and the result is crime and looking the other way in the name of equity:

Rubbish. Close the police officer hiring gap and start arresting people (and not putting them back on the street); start with violent ones but for the love of … do arrest the ATV/dirt bike and all manner of other terror behavior

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A big issue is SFPD. They stopped arresting for petty crime even before Chesa was elected. This is a theme throughout many cities in the US - the police work slowdown has been real, they stop arresting (except when there’s a gun, a body, or a protest), and that ends up leading to civilians feeling helpless.

A prediction: nothing will change with Chesa gone. SFPD is still pissed off at the Mayor, the council, and the citizens who ask for respect of their rights. How do you reign in a rogue police force?

This is a good point. SFPD is a department that is famously corrupt and out of control and everyone knows it. They need full time DOJ oversight.

Yes. The downward slide is all the fault of the police. That excuse played itself out since the summer of 2020 and guess what happened? Crime has skyrocketed in all major cities. DC looks like a dump in multi places - but heck - we have graffiti in the middle of a major commuting street and carjackings from the under 16 age group.

Priorities shifted and the result is crime and looking the other way in the name of equity:

The under 16 carjacking set is still roaming the streets not because of MPD, but because of Karl Racine’s policies and philosophy on juvenile justice. Give them a hug and make them promise to do better, and back home they go.

[Anonymous]

This quote really resonates:

In February 2021, board members agreed that they would avoid the phrase learning loss to describe what was happening to kids locked out of their classrooms. Instead they would use the words learning change. Schools being shut just meant students were “having different learning experiences than the ones we currently measure,” Gabriela López, a member of the board at the time, said. “They are learning more about their families and their cultures.” Framing this as some kind of “deficit” was wrong, the board argued.

The gaslighting on the harms of the school closures from progressives is unreal.

[Anonymous]

For a failed city, it pretty impossible to buy a house there. When do all these people fleeing actually flee?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For a failed city, it pretty impossible to buy a house there. When do all these people fleeing actually flee?

When they have kids. There are very few kids in SF.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For a failed city, it pretty impossible to buy a house there. When do all these people fleeing actually flee?

When they have kids. There are very few kids in SF.

When does that reflected in real estate prices? For some wacky reason all of these places that people are fleeing seem to have incredible demand

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The criticism of covid school closure on this thread is a breath of fresh air. Where were all of you when every other comment was "school isn't childcare!" when working parents were saying they were at their breaking point?

I was advocating for school reopening but my suspicion is that a lot of people who were mad about closures and didn't say anything were dealing with two factors:

1) Parents, teachers, and admin within their school community who were arguing closures were necessary to protect vulnerable kids and families -- it's very hard to speak up when the argument is "you are trying to get poor people of color killed"

2) They were so burned out from overseeing remote education while trying to hold down a job and solve an impossible childcare problem that they had nothing left to advocate for school reopening.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The criticism of covid school closure on this thread is a breath of fresh air. Where were all of you when every other comment was "school isn't childcare!" when working parents were saying they were at their breaking point?

We were here, being told we were murderers and hated our kids, etc. And believe me, the pro-closure posters are still here. It’s just that it’s increasingly obvious they are and were delusional. 18 months ago, we might have believed a poster who claimed her kids “thrived!” in DL. Now we know they weren’t actually competent to assess whether their kids were thriving or not, let alone anyone else’s. As data about the harms of the school closures continues to accumulate, the pro-closure posters look increasingly out of touch and even more maliciously self-centered. But they are the last to see it, and they are still loud.