In related news, an ABC reporter for Good Morning America recently revealed on air that he was told not to report live from the location of this mall because it wouldn't be safe.
"But it is worth mentioning that we are not at Union Square or the Westfield Mall this morning because we have been advised it is simply too dangerous to be there at this hour"
That seems insane, it’s not a dangerous neighborhood?? Unhoused people are (sometimes) mentally ill, not murderers. And why would they attack a news crew?? Baseless fear mongering
> Unhoused people are (sometimes) mentally ill, not murderers.
It is true that the mentally ill are overwhelmingly not dangerous. But as the number of mentally ill people in one place goes up, so do your odds of encountering that minority of mentally ill who are aggressive. In most of the world, you might see one mentally ill person in a day and they are harmless. In parts of California, sometimes it feels like you see a dozen mentally ill homeless in a day, and one of them is berating passersby or worse.
San Diego County data from 2021 showed that member of the homeless population there were murdered at 19 times the rate of the non-homeless population, and were 27 times more likely to be subjected to attempted murder—as well as 12 times more likely to be assaulted and nine times more likely to be sexually assaulted.
Damn it sucks to not have a house. Maybe crime rates are high among those communities not because they’re all crazy people waiting to stab random passerby (“or worse”), but instead because the conditions are mind numbing and brutal and scary and psyche-destroying in a way few recognize. The solution is to of course… what, beat them? Jail them? For how long? Forever?
You seem to assume from your interlocutors here hostility and hate towards the homeless. Me, I simply wish there was better housing policies and better mental-health care available to the US population, such as is found in plenty of other developed countries. A mentally ill person who gets the anti-psychotic medications and psychiatric consultations he or she should, is much less likely to trouble other people in the street.
Hey fair enough, I guess "I'm too scared to walk in my city" and "I want their lives to be improved" are not mutually exclusive opinions. I don't agree with the former, but definitely was out of line by reading intent into your comment without justification.
Please accept my apologies and thanks for the level-headed response
Not to split hairs, but the murder of a pregnant (Asian) woman in Seattle’s Belltown by a mentally ill unhoused person indicates that they can be murderers as well. We are pretty shocked as a community, there is a protest going on right now actually.
Yes, the guy was well known to act violently but was mostly harmless until he wasn’t (the police dealt with him many times, but didn’t make an arrest until he killed someone p). This is the same area where that poor girl who worked at Amazon got her head bashed in a coupe of years ago by some crazy guy in supportive housing. The streets aren’t really safe these days, and it isn’t just “fear mongering”.
Sorry, emotions are running pretty high right now. If you made this comment at her vigil, it wouldn’t have ended well I think.
> If you made this comment at her vigil, it wouldn’t have ended well I think.
We're not at her vigil, nor are we talking specifically about it.
It makes the already-shitty life of the homeless even worse when folks paint them as crazed murderers. It is -in truth- no better than asserting that any other broad group (whether you group based on ethnic, racial, state-of-origin, or any number of other overly-broad categories) are crazed murders.
Every single death is a tragedy. I very sincerely believe that, and will be angry at myself until my dying day that I did nothing to help try to fix death.
However, it does the living no good to dehumanize an entire group by saying "Oh, well they're a member of $BROAD_GROUP, so they're murderers. Better stay away.".
Seattle doesn’t have a high murder rate, much of the killing is homeless on homeless, yes, when drugs are involved things get violent. Other people take note, however, when the violence starts affecting other people. Nothing new there.
The sad fact is that this person was already committing crimes, was already considered violent, but our system in place gives them a free pass unless it comes out to homicide. No, don’t dehumanize the homeless, but yes, hold them to the same standards as everyone else. You commit a crime, you get arrested and go to jail; then maybe it doesn’t have to get to murder for the system to take action.
When I think of dangerous street people, I don't think guns. I think knives. The times I've been threatened by street people, they showed me or made reference to knives. A gun seems like an expensive liability to such a person, which could be sold or traded for a substantial amount of drugs but could get them into a lot of trouble if they were caught with it. A knife though is worth basically nothing and won't get them into very much trouble if they're caught with it either. So a low rate of shootings doesn't give me much consolation. I'm more interested in the rate of stabbings and beatings, robberies and assaults... violent crime generally not specifically those done with guns. Why even single out one particular kind of weapon if you're trying to reassure somebody that a neighborhood is safe? That's weird, particularly since the people who are cause for concern are unlikely to have that kind of weapon in the first place.
"Too dangerous" obviously includes robberies and assaults, but you've neatly excluded those to narrow the focus of the conversation to murder. Where is this idea coming from, that violent crime doesn't count unless somebody is murdered (or specifically shot: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36374483)?
This attitude exemplifies the problem; that all manner of crime should tolerated from homeless unless they shoot or murder somebody. Only then does it rise to your concern. And in the case of tlogan's comment that I just linked to, even somebody getting stabbed to death doesn't count because they weren't shot. This is how you get situations as described by seanmcdirmid here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36374451 Crazy guy known to be violent is tolerated by local authorities because he hasn't yet killed anybody. No big deal until he murders somebody, only then do people care. This is why the electorate of these cities is the root of the problem, because the electorate don't give a shit about the crime until somebody gets killed.
Please don't perpetuate flamewars on HN. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
You broke the site guidelines badly and repeatedly in this thread. Please don't do that again. Fortunately it doesn't look like you've been in the habit of doing it before, so it should be easy to fix.
Ooo good one I used a term you don’t like so you zinged me. Heavily zinged. When oh when will I leave a comment convincing people like you that sometimes other people deserve life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. (Secret answer: never)
Weird. From time to time, I stomp around that part of the neighborhood late at night and also early in the morning and I disagree with this assessment.
Whenever I hear shit like this that doesn't mesh with my on-the-ground assessment, I have to wonder if there's an ulterior motive, and what that might be.
Is someone trying to get Federal funding for policing in the city? Is a group of someones trying to trigger some "I don't have to pay to break my lease because conditions around my business are 'obviously too terrible'" clause so that leaving the city is much, much cheaper? Is someone trying to prevent folks from airing yet more footage of folks sleeping on and doing drugs on the street? Something else?
"But it is worth mentioning that we are not at Union Square or the Westfield Mall this morning because we have been advised it is simply too dangerous to be there at this hour"