Joe Eskenazi, the author of this piece, is a solid journalist who helps run the tiny donation-funded Mission Local. They've done incredible reporting on corruption in the SF city government and punch
way above their weight in the stories they break. I have respect for how Joe refused to join in reporting this murder as evidence of a violent crime epidemic, while still reporting on homelessness and property crime.
The top part of Joe Eskenazi’s earlier article https://missionlocal.org/2023/04/bob-lee-crazy-bob-mobilecoi... was good (where he reported evidence that the Bob Lee killing was not a robbery), but I agree with Garry Tan that the bottom part of the article (where he makes a broader commentary on whether San Francisco is “safe” unrelated to Bob Lee) is gaslighting and reductionist. It makes many claims and implications that are questionable: e.g., that rampant property crime does not make you unsafe (despite the fact that many thieves are armed), that festering drug addiction does not make you unsafe (which may have been a contributing factor to the car not stopping for the victim), that the problem with crime is “feelings” rather than real risk, and that those who are concerned about crime must have come from sheltered “suburbs”. And there’s no mention of anti-Asian robberies that got the previous DA recalled.
Eskenazi is a well-connected journalist, but he is also arrogant and often presents only one side of issues. For example, virtually nothing that he wrote in this article (anonymously sourced from disgruntled politicians) about the magnet school Lowell High school ended up being true (magnet schools do not violate state code as claimed, and the school did return to test-based admission which he claimed would not happen) https://missionlocal.org/2022/02/lowells-old-merit-based-adm.... So while his reporting is mostly good, you have to be aware of his bias.
I think you are trying to pigeonhole Eskenazi's argument into the standard "progressives don't care about crime" punditry that's popular on the right. I would suggest re-reading the column with a more open mind. His argument is that feeling safe is as important, if not more important from a policymaking perspective, as empirical measures of safety ("real risk") such as violent crime rate. He is in fact arguing the exact opposite of what you are characterizing him as arguing ("rampant property crime does not make you unsafe", "festering drug addiction does not make you unsafe"), and seems to have advised politicians to ignore these issues at their own peril.
The problem is that just like violent crime rates don't fully explain feelings of safety, things that make one feel unsafe don't fully explain all violent crime. Since Bob Lee's murder did not seem to be a result of either drug-induced psychosis or a mugging gone wrong, Joe made the correct call that the murder was likely unrelated to either of those issues.
That all being said, it appears that you have issues with him based on unrelated reporting on an issue you seem to care deeply about. A good of a time as any to examine any potential biases you might have when receiving new information so you don't accidentally embarrass yourself on Twitter!
> I think you are trying to pigeonhole Eskenazi's argument into the standard "progressives don't care about crime" punditry that's popular on the right. I would suggest re-reading the column with a more open mind. His argument is that feeling safe is as important, if not more important from a policymaking perspective, as empirical measures of safety ("real risk") such as violent crime rate.
From the article:
> But the city’s violent crime rate is at a near-historic low, and is lower than most mid-to-large-sized cities.
> Lee’s death, however, was packaged in the media and on social media into a highlight reel of recent San Francisco misfortunes and crimes: large groups of young people brawling at Stonestown; the abrupt closure of the mid-market Whole Foods, leaving San Franciscans just eight other Whole Foods within city limits; the severe beating of former fire commissioner Don Carmignani in the Marina District, allegedly by belligerent homeless people — it all adds up to a feeling of a city coming undone.
> This manner of coverage, however, does not capture the actual lived experience of the vast majority of San Franciscans.
I'm reading his article again.. where is his argument that feeling safe is important?
He states that violent crime is low, and that newspapers shouldn't be cherry-picking and sensationalizing how bad it is, and that he knows this is not the actual experience for the vast majority of San Franciscans.
> His argument is that feeling safe is as important, if not more important from a policymaking perspective
I’ll set aside his smear that opponents of crime come from suburbs and his strawman that those who oppose crime only want “more cops, stiffer sentences and a return to the Gov. Reagan-era incarceration of the mentally ill”.
His main argument is that by “objective” measures, San Francisco is safe and any increase in danger is only subjective “feelings”, but that “feelings” still affect tourism and politics. The first part (which is the same party line we have seen in the SF Chronicle) is the gaslighting. I want to distinguish between psychological feelings, and risk which can be real but not fully measurable. I hypothesize that for many residents, actual risk of injury, not just feelings, has increased over the past 5 years. There are many mechanisms by which risk may not show up in the citywide violence statistics. Crimes may shift from one neighborhood to another (e.g. to touristy places) or from one demographic to another (e.g. against Asians) while staying steady citywide. Armed robbers may primarily target wealthier people who give them what they want, but victims who have less to lose and resist are more likely to be attacked. Underage thieves may injure you through reckless driving instead of attacks. With fewer pedestrians commuting after COVID-19, a street that is more dangerous may get fewer violent incidents. Or victims may underreport crimes. The point is, when there are so many changes in behavior among commuters, thieves, and addicts, I don’t believe a couple citywide metrics give the whole picture.
> you have issues with him based on unrelated reporting on an issue you seem to care deeply about
That’s just the most egregious example. I learned to read Eskenazi’s articles skeptically because I often read him pushing one lazy narrative but not getting the details right or not getting the other side of the argument. Another example is this article on Proposition 22 https://missionlocal.org/2020/09/prop-22-chronicle-uber-lyft.... In it, he claims that “Airbnb and its ilk skirted paying hotel taxes for years… And they kept their money”, which is not true; Airbnb settled with the city to pay all the 15% hotel back taxes which exceeded their own 6% revenue during that time. And notice how overtly one-sided that article is; it makes no attempt to get the other side of the delivery issue and whether paying drivers who are are waiting at home with their app open makes any business sense for Uber or for taxi dispatch companies for that matter. Another example I recall is the reporting on HubHaus https://missionlocal.org/2019/08/san-francisco-rental-platfo... which claimed without evidence that the room share company was “exacerbating the already onerous cost of housing” and showed very little interest in what it would take to actually follow the definition of family, and whether the definition of family itself is what is exacerbating the housing crisis. He is good at ferreting out a certain kind of bureaucratic corruption (e.g. DBI), but he turns a blind eye to other kinds of corrupt rules that benefit incumbents that politicians like Arron Peskin (coincidentally one of his favorite sources) specialize in. In other words, he’s biased, and you often get only one side from his articles.
I know in Twitter everyone is inflammatory, however a CEO should exercise restraint and show leadership, and hold judgement until facts are clear, in this case he clearly failed.
Of course, I know better. He's too cowardly to come out and say what he's feeling, but just take a look at his likes from today. Apparently he thinks that journalist should be jailed for embarrassing him. https://twitter.com/garrytan/likes
This is a prime example of the growing stated perception outside of tech bubble, "tech bros killing each other and blaming the homeless". It didn't take long for people to start posting that.
Yes, street crime is itself a taking of rights and freedom of the people living and working in a place, and it is more important to contain it than to maximize the criminals' rights.
But this shows that the reputation of the tech industry is pretty much underwater, and premature postings like that don't help.
They really do some amazing reporting. Based on the fact that this is the first article I'm seeing on this topic, it seems that Mission Local may have got the scoop [1] on the Chronicle and other big newspapers on this high-profile topic. That is a big deal for journalists (if I recall correctly) because it means you're doing better original reporting and you're more connected to the neighborhood.
Any small local news organizations will almost ALWAYS get the scoop on the big ones, for local news. Because the vast majority of "big" news things are a division of some conglomerate and just regurgitate Reuters.
Things are worse than ever and reading comments like this that dismiss it genuinely confuses me. So because other cities have similar or worse crime rates, we should just accept it?
Urban decay is happening all across this country and it needs to be addressed aggressively before you or someone you know gets stabbed to death.
Things are not worse than ever. Things are slightly worse after the pandemic, but nowhere as bad as the 70's. Feel free to check the statistics.
Anyway I agree we need to get aggressive, but a lot of folks thinks that means more cops. We spend a hell of a lot on police, but police don't address the root causes of most crimes.
We need to aggressively invest in urban areas with new housing, job opportunities, drug treatment, gang disruption, violence interruption, mental health care, and other meaningful interventions in the cycles and circumstances that lead people to commit crime.
It's harder to depart from the median situation in a large geographical region one way or another. All else equal (which is never the case, consult a real criminologist), San Francisco probably can do more about its property crime than violent crime, under the very general principle of regression to the mean.
The local papers I am familiar with in my region are literally (not figuratively) just re-print houses for prior-approved PR stories from local schools, businesses, and government offices.
This is great writing, "the abrupt closure of the mid-market Whole Foods, leaving San Franciscans just eight other Whole Foods within city limits". What a scoop, brilliantly delivered.
It's an expression of appreciation for the author's saracastic humor, reporting on the thinness of evidence for anti-SF commentary, a major theme of the OP article.
Sure, it's a cute jab, but 8 WFs in an entire city is not that many. Even if you have a car, there are large swaths of the city (Richmond, Sunset), where a WF is a bit of a slog during regular traffic (and worse during rush hour). And of course, many city dwellers don't have cars, so having to lug groceries up SF's famously hilly streets is not great for more than a fraction of a mile or so.
The actual city of SF is not that large. Something like 800k people. Not very big of a footprint either. 8 is no small number.
Austin TX has 964K, is where Whole Foods was founded, and has 5 according to the locator on their website.
Los Angeles has almost 4M people and has 7. (As well as ones in various other cities that are intertwined with the weird geographic footprint, but also 4 times as many people in the "official" city limits for those 7.)
This seems like a good opportunity to plug SF's great independent grocers. Please do not sleep on The Good Life Grocery, Rainbow, or the several Gus' Community Market locations around town, not to mention all the other small grocers around the city.
Some more great places in my local riding area: Midtown Market in Dogpatch (pricey but really good produce), and Glen Canyon Market, which was recently acquired by Gus. A cute small grocery store with a butcher counter just opened near Portrero, and there's also Avedano's butcher on Cortland Ave (near a Good Life) and Olivier's in Dogpatch.
Swiping my hand over a mystery panel to pay for my groceries is very cool at WF, but there's no shortage of great places to restock the fridge and pantry all over SF, and where the money you spend is going more to local places and locals.
Good thing there are other groceries and farmer's markets and Prime delivery to fill the gap left by the one WF closing then. Living in the Sunset, yes it's true if I want to go to a Whole Foods I'd have to either drive, or bike or take public transit to the one over by the Haight, the one down at Stonestown mall or the one on Upper Market. But I don't usually because the Safeway is within walking distance and that's good enough for me most of the time and if not there's Other Avenues, Sunset Super, 22nd and Irving, and Gus's all relatively close by just to name a few off the top of my head.
Haight WF is about as close as Masonic Trader Joe’s (and somehow easier to park at) for most in the richmond and sunset - though Calmart is better than both.
Andronico’s was much better than both before safeway took over
If you like this article, think about subscribing to them.
Lots of little papers like this seem healthy and then unceremoniously go out of business because they don't make enough money in ad revenue to pay their journalists like 45k/yr. That's not a typo: that's how much Bay Area reporters make.
Mission Local is great. We are blessed with a wealth of local journalism like Mission Local, Cityside, even SF Standard if I hold my nose about the fact that it is controlled by a reactionary political movement. It is why I never understood the whining about "support your local newspaper". There's no chance of me ever subscribing to the Chronicle. I donate to these other, better news outlets instead.
SF Standard has some of the city’s best journalists on staff, and you’d be hard pressed to identify how Moritz is influencing their coverage decisions.
I have not heard of the SF Standard (I'm not in CA). You seem to value SF Standard (at some level) even while disagreeing with underlying political stances. That juxtaposition seem unfortunately rare in the current era, could you expand on what value they create (for you)?
SF Standard does not seem to have an overt reporting bias. So far I find their articles informative. But they are 100% funded by a PAC the agenda of which I do not fully embrace.
Given how heavily and uncritically the initial theory of a homeless/lower class person as the killer was promoted (not least of all here on HN), I think it made a lot of sense to reveal that the actual suspect now arrested worked in the tech industry and was acquainted with the victim.
Beyond that, it's nor clear to me that revealing the actual name or other personal details of the suspect serves a legitimate purpose of advancing justice or society; however, it is not out of keeping with journalistic practice in other criminal cases in California. Suspects' names get printed in newspapers for far lower profile crimes all the time.
I can see some benefit in that potential witnesses might be more likely to come forward. If I hear of a terrible crime and it turns out my neighbor was arrested for it I might potentially have some valuable information to contribute. I'm still not sure if it's a good thing though.
What a terrible comparison. There is a massive difference between identifying someone who has been charged and randomly naming brown people the killer.
In this example there is enough evidence the suspect has been arrested by police, which is a public record. Not remotely the same as the Boston bomber reddit-misidentification case.
It is every bit the same and every bit as shitty a metric. Remember Richard Jewell?
The man's only crime was being the first person to find a live bomb and help people escape it before it then detonated and killed 100+ others. The fucker was a literal goddamn hero.
But then the media implied he was a sad loser rent-a-cop who planted a bomb so he could find it and pretend to be someone important for a day. It was absolutely depraved, and that's before the FBI started harassing him.
But hey, all's fair for anyone named as a suspect by law enforcement. They always get it right the first time around. Everyone who gets arrested is later convicted. They always kick down the right door before sending the SWAT team in.
I agree, but we can't only have this discussion when someone wealthy is implicated in a crime. On any other given day the SF carceral brigade is out for blood. Just recently a prominent person was talking about bringing back lynching. So when they suddenly start waxing on about the rights of the suspects, we should absolutely press them on their change of heart.
I agree with you too, but don't think holding politicians to their lies or fixating on class warfare is really the most pressing part of the situation. He's calling for lynchings because he knows there's a receptive audience for it.
That's the part you should be most worried about, because a mob so empowered could just as easily turn its gaze to you. Good luck trying to be a nuisance to that prominent person once the mob gets a taste for blood. Before participating in doxxing frenzies or lynch mobs, nobody ever stops and thinks "what if this guy didn't actually do it?"
No expansion of the carceral state required, we'll just deputize an angry mob to play the part of Executioner.
I guess, but I see this all as connected. The person (Michelle Tandler, if you’re wondering) wasn't calling for lynching because she knew she’d get clicks. She was doing it because she thinks police are breaking the social contract: she’s a wealthy white woman, cops exist to make her feel comfortable by violently subjugating poor Black and brown people, and they’re not doing it enough for her.
So yes, vigilante justice is bad, mobs are bad. But crime is also a social construct. We literally decide what is and is not illegal - aka what is and is not “vigilante justice” — and I don’t think it’s necessarily worse to find yourself in the crosshairs of an angry mob than the crosshairs of a cabal of bloodthirsty tech execs aiming the state’s monopoly on violence at you.
> I agree, but we can't only have this discussion when someone wealthy is implicated in a crime.
We don't.
If you're serious about this, you're also responsible for not pushing for doxing of random suspects. You can't argue that there are good witch hunts and bad witch hunts.
In Germany it's not public, nor are you allowed to publish the name of a person arrested. This is to protect the individual's privacy and shield them from public retribution and prejudice, which I think is a far more enlightened stance.
In America, the stigma of an arrest follows you for the rest of your life.
I agree, especially pre-trial. I disagree post-trial. When a judgement has been made "in the name of the people", the people should be able to know the name.
But forever? Shouldn't a person who does wrong have the option to actually make things right? Should a mistake somebody makes at a young age follow them until their death, even if they have gone through the actual judicial punishment? If there's no way for them to ever "make things right" in the eyes of society, it doesn't leave many choices - which is a big contributor to the high rates of repeat criminals.
I don't think you can "make right" a murder. You can be punished for it, but that doesn't absolve you of the deed, and it shouldn't force others to forgive or accept you.
Yes, it's a tough deal, but let's be honest here: it's nothing compared to what they do to their victims. And there's really very few cases per decade that will make you a nation-wide celebrity. For the most part, moving 50km away will for all intents and purposes make you "a new man".
You can often attain forgiveness by showing regret. Many don't, which is why they aren't forgiven, and aren't happily accepted by society when they get released. Who could blame them? And why should we help them wash away their sins and treat it as a secret?
I also don't buy the excuse that recidivism is significantly driven by rejection from society. It's the easy way to explain your behavior when truth and reflection would paint a different picture, but one that's harder to accept: that we're responsible for our deeds, and (yes, with some super specific exceptions) nobody made us do them.
> You can be punished for it, but that doesn't absolve you of the deed, and it shouldn't force others to forgive or accept you.
Sure, people don't have to forgive you. But why stop at murder? Why not publish every bad thing a person does, so everyone can freely choose whether to forgive you or not? How do we decide what to publish, and what not?
> Yes, it's a tough deal, but let's be honest here: it's nothing compared to what they do to their victims.
Definitely, we don't have to compare "damage" or anything, the victims are obviously the worst off. But the question is: what is the purpose of life-long punishment? Just to make us feel warm and fuzzy that the bad people have it bad, without any consideration for the effect this has on them and consequently us?
> And there's really very few cases per decade that will make you a nation-wide celebrity. For the most part, moving 50km away will for all intents and purposes make you "a new man".
That doesn't matter in the slightest in our digital age. No matter where you go, no matter what you do, everyone around you can quickly find out what you've done if it's public information. Literally, if you told me your name, I could tell you in a couple of minutes. And this happens regularly, and is spread throughout social circles, meaning that once "the lid is off" you'll have to move another 50km to have another calm couple of weeks.
> You can often attain forgiveness by showing regret. Many don't, which is why they aren't forgiven, and aren't happily accepted by society when they get released.
How many? Is this based on statistics, or on a feeling?
> I also don't buy the excuse that recidivism is significantly driven by rejection from society. It's the easy way to explain your behavior when truth and reflection would paint a different picture, but one that's harder to accept: that we're responsible for our deeds, and (yes, with some super specific exceptions) nobody made us do them.
Actually, you're taking the easy route. Putting everything on personal responsibility removes any responsibility from you for the decision to punish them for life, and consequently the actions they take due to your decision. It's nice that you don't buy the excuse, but studies show time and time again that this is a big factor, especially if you compare the American legal system with more developed nations.
So you're making decisions for which we know there will be bad consequences, but your hands are clean, since you didn't do it directly! But usually people develop past this view of morality and recognize that you're not just responsible for what you do directly, but also for what your decisions lead to.
I don't know how other countries handle this, but I learned a few years ago, somewhat to my surprise, that Switzerland has in some cases provided a high profile murderer with a new identity after they served their sentence, precisely so they could go on with their life: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Günther_Tschanun
if a politician is arrested on corruption charges, are you not allowed to name them? or if someone's spouse is arrested for their murder, you can't disclose it? or that the suspect is, say, a tech worker rather than a homeless person? how can you possibly cover high-profile crimes if you're not allowed to disclose facts about the suspects?
In America most people are never declared guilty by a judge, they get held in jail until they give up and agree to the prosecutor declaring them guilty instead.
Juries, not judges, declare people guilty in the US. Prosecutors don't declare people guilty either; what you're talking about is people taking a plea bargain and pleading guilty. Bail reform can help take the pressure off of people to falsely confess to get out of jail, and we need more of it.
that exposes quite a lot more information than I expected, given OP's description of how the privacy laws work. it includes the suspects' ages, backgrounds and (very distinctive) first names. it took me a mere second to find their full names by Googling - there's not many 71-year old noblemen named "Heinrich XIII"!
so I guess it's a figleaf? good for them, I guess?
It’s fundamental to the principles of habeas corpus that the overwhelming power of the government to arrest, prosecute, and imprison someone be wielded in broad daylight.
The UK is a good example of a generally* similarly free country without guaranteed public access to arrest records. This balances the potential benefit to the public from knowing against the definite harm to the accused.
(*There are definitely significant ways each is less free than the other and there's no rigorous way to say which is worse)
I think the person you're replying to is saying that:
- If a government arrests someone, it should be forced to acknowledge both that it happened AND give the reason for arrest
- Media should have the right to report on arrests, without interference from the government.
This protects from abuses of power against for example political opponents. Of course, these same laws make arrests for common crimes problematic for the people being arrested. And I don't think it is feasible to codify an objective line between the two.
Yes, it's a balance. I don't want my government hustling people into vans and disappearing, but I don't want minor indiscretions to become media-amplified scarlet letters, either.
A reasoned discussion begins with an acknowledgment that the public has a right to monitor its government, and that individuals have a right to privacy. Unfortunately, the USA PATRIOT Act substantially dimmed the sunlight on government law-enforcement activity, and the Dobbs decision severely weakened privacy as an emergent constitutional right.
Edit: As I was writing this reply, I came up with an interesting legal theory. The right to publicity is traditionally understood as a celebrity's right to control the commercialization of his or her image. Might we say that the modern attention economy has turned everyone into a potential celebrity, and thus that everyone should be allowed to control the commercial publicity of their persona? This would draw a potentially meaningful line between the public's right to know (which I expect is popular) and the media's right to commercially exploit the salacious details of an accused's crime (which is, sadly, extremely popular; otherwise, it wouldn't be as prevalent as it is today). I'm sure attorneys and legal scholars have already explored this idea.
People get arrested, their name smeared, presumed guilty, and then go to trial and it wasn't them. Lives get ruined over for crimes not committed.
IIRC, Israel doesn't publish arrests, just convictions. So it's not a new idea.
Florida's "sunshine law" mandates arrests be public record, and it's lead everyone to believe there's more crazy people in Florida than anywhere else, which just isn't true.
Sure we shouldn't have black sites where people just get nabbed and disappeared either, but "guilty until proven innocent" is just a fancy idea if your life gets ruined before the trial. Look at what happened to Rittenhouse. Kicked out of his college and then "not guilty on all counts" at trial. It's a miscarriage of justice.
1. Police secretly arrest people and toss them in jail never to be heard of again
2. People are erroneously arrested, there name is publicly attached to a crime through a bunch of reporting, then they're released before trial or found not guilty
The first is fairly clear, the 2nd is a problem because being released is generally not news, so google search or whatever forever links the persons name to a crime they didn't do. Then you have a bunch of humanisms: the person the lawyered there way out of the crime, or "they must have been involved otherwise why would they be arrested", etc. So there is a permanent cost to being publicly arrested for something you didn't do even if justice happens and you don't ever see court. That's why you some times see people in the judicial system releasing "this person is absolutely innocent" type press releases.
It's hard to believe that you're not aware the name is published by the police following an arrest, which was almost certainly the subject of a warrant application.
What? What has the race and the finances have to do with anything? He's not white, he's of Iranian descent I believe. The LinkedIn is still online. Even tho I disagree with doxing someone that might turn out not to be the victim.
I don’t know anything about Mission Local, but
reading of the article prior to reading your comment left me with the impression that the author was really invested in this being a targeted killing. The first part of the article started strong, and then it felt like the author was grinding a political axe, though I’m sure it’s in response to other articles grinding different axes. It was a well-written article to be sure, but I guess I’ve grown weary of motivated journalism.
Looks like the author had very good reason to think that this was a targeted killing, as in, if the suspect did it it was a targeted killing.
Jumping to the conclusion that some homeless guy or street thug did it, without any evidence, is also something that people with axes to grind do on a regular basis.
I’m not disputing that the killing was targeted; like I said, the first part of the article (which had already expressed the targeted nature pretty clearly) was solid. It was the subsequent axe grinding that I took issue with.
If you find it difficult to recognize a solid journalist in someone who uses language in a standard way that you dislike, that would be a problem with your own ability to exercise judgment.
I have walked around my city in the US for decades and can count on one hand the number of times, I have seen crime happen live and in person on our streets. In a recent single trip to SF that was just a few days, I can say I saw perhaps a half dozen active crimes. Also of note, i have seen public urination only once here, but saw it twice in between the airport and my hotel in SF.
Live where ya want and how you want, but let’s not pretend SF is no different than other places in the US. It is, and frankly it’s shocking and blows my mind that people pretend it’s normal.
Of course SF isn't normal it is the archetype for the city as an insane asylum created by Reaganomics.
But it seems SF shows that has nothing to do with the epidemic of murder in the US or it is least prevalent in leftist cities that decided to take over federal responsibilities that Reagan stopped honoring in a rather odd way.
Trying to make everything you can call one word one horrible new problem doesn't solve something. It makes people think there is some hopeless complex problem instead of many separate cause and effect incidents for unrelated things.
That's standard practice isn't it? If you get arrested for a newsworthy crime, the news will say your name while saying "alleged" to make it clear you haven't been convicted yet.
I don't think hiding the names of accused suspects is realistic. Instead, we should try to educate the public and remind them that people are still innocent until proven guilty.
Eh, there’s a reason we have a system where the accused has the right to make their case in court. An arrest is a strong signal but by design has a lower burden of proof than it takes to punish someone within the system. Given that being publicly accused of a heinous crime can do irreparable damage in the age of Google even if ultimately acquitted, I'd rather err on the side of caution here.
