10 Reader Views on Crime in Their Neighborhoods

This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.

Last week I asked, “How do you perceive crime in your neighborhood? How about homelessness? Disorder? What’s your relationship to these things? How much do you think about them? How, if at all, do they affect where you live or the political candidates you support?”

The responses afford fascinating glimpses into different communities and individual psychologies.

Jay lives in San Francisco:

I strongly believe that crime, homelessness, graffiti, and excessive trash are all conflated, and that a large increase in any one of these areas without a decrease in others allows for the perception of “rot” to take hold. In San Francisco, where I’ve lived since 1989, all four areas are much more visible and omnipresent than ever. The piles of trash blowing down neighborhood streets (my own street very much included) and the uncleaned graffiti on street signs and local businesses have as much to do with the backlash against progressivism as any Walgreens shoplifter and open-air drug market in Civic Center or the Tenderloin (which are places most San Franciscans rarely go and only read about).

With recent successful school-board and D.A. recalls, I’m fairly certain that without a highly visible effort to stop “broken windows” crimes (tagging, littering, literal breaking of windows), the next target will be our mayor, London Breed, as ultimately the buck stops with her. I’m certainly not alone in my hope that she succeeds in matching her rhetoric with action.

Chris is unhappy with the reform district attorney that he helped elect in Los Angeles County:

I didn’t know a lot about George Gascón when I voted for him, but the platform he ran on was pretty sensible—holding police accountable when they violate citizens’ rights, implementing a risk-based bail system, and making rehabilitation rather than retribution the goal of enforcement for petty crimes and drug use. That’s not what we got (or, if it is what we got, it’s been completely overshadowed by his higher-profile actions).

Eliminating cash bail should not prevent those accused of committing a series of highly publicized follow-home robberies (and murders) from being detained until their trial. Gascón may not be wrong that we’ve over-criminalized some communities, but it’s intellectually dishonest to apply that label to or the five men [charged with killing] . In all of these cases, the interests of justice and