There’s crime in SF but anyone whose spent significant time in SF (all of SF) would look at this crime and know that it sounded strange.
For me, the red flags were:
1. not your average tech bro
2. Rincon Hill is a weird place for a crime like this to happen - it’s relatively sleepy and the homeless population is low compared to other parts of SOMA. Not much (to none) gang/drug activity. No bars really nearby (not even high end ones - a couple of sports bars)
3. no mention of what was missing in initial reports, no hint of it being a robbery gone bad
I mean based on the discussion here when it happened I had the vision in my head that they guy was walking around the Tenderloin late at night or something.
past 5th in soma (north of freeway) and maybe I would have thought this was bad luck. (FWIW- I have rented a music space at Hyde and Eddy since 2013, so I’m well acquainted with the terrible parts of SF)
Crime is bad in SF, and the murder was obviously never a random homeless person type crime. Both are true and the obvious conclusion for any reasonable person.
"see the murderer wasn't random therefore we were right nananabooboo SF isn't a total crime infested dystopia"
Is really weird spin on a murder story. What is wrong with people?
Does anyone notice how insane spinning a story that hard from a prominent news org is? The line between NYTimes and a long overwrought reddit post is blurring
Nat Friedman who I have a ton of respect for went on a tweet spree about SF and crime rates when this happened but hasn’t tweeted anything about this revelation. Not that he has to but I do see hints of bias and now I second guess my feelings about his opinions more often.
He's human, had a home invasion in his former home in San Francisco. I'm sure that experience affects his ability to be as rational as he would be on other subjects.
Why should someone's respect for (presumably) achievements as a technologist or entrepreneur extend to opinions about events like these (or really any event outside of business/technology?)
Because any kind of significant achievement in white-collar areas presumably correlates well with intelligence which in turn presumably correlates well with the ability to understand other events better.
You can "see hints of bias" literally everywhere you look my friend. Also known in sane times as having a perspective.
Nat said nothing more than stabbings are bad and assumed it was a violent crime, a sane reasonable assumption given the information available.
What exactly is the problem? He genuinely believes violent crime is up and that this was some random hobo. I don't recall you or anybody else even theorizing this was a stabbing by somebody who knew Bob personally.
You think his opinion is wrong and therefore he is "biased"? And if this turned out to be what he thought you'd say what exactly in that case? Maybe you're the one who is biased.
At some point people got to stop playing this aha, gotcha games and agree on some base reality. Either violent crime is up or it is not. Some people like Nat are genuinely convinced it is based on their experience living there.
A wallet is reported 'stolen' in an office. Suddenly everyone is suspicious of each other. Every item formerly lost is now suspected to be stolen. You get your own wallet stolen. A month later when re-arranging your desk you find your wallet between the desk and the wall. You feel sheepish for your loud crowing about your wallet being stolen and how you too were a crime victim. You sheepishly keep quiet. Humans just act this way. The idea of what is 'a sane reasonable assumption' depends on a lot of things - information that one may or may not be processing in a completely rational manner.
From your response I can already feel what your response is going to be and I want to say I am not disagreeing with you I just think it's interesting how group think works - I myself am not immune.
I, happily, don't live in SF. Every single time I go there it seems to get worse and my personal anecdotal experience is really bad but I don't have a dog in this fight. I think it is important to communicate about these things clearly and fix problems instead of bickering.
It is alarming to me (as a not American btw) that everything gets so politicized to the point that base reality cannot be agreed on. Crime in SF should not be some democrats vs republicans or philosophical outlook thing, it should just be a local issue.
Your explanation about his behavior is quite plausibly also sane and rational. I believe you believe that and see how you can think that. I just hope you can afford him the same benefit of the doubt I am affording you so you can talk it out without games, that is all I am saying.
Well if he woke up on a random day and tweeted about it, it’d be totally fine. SF is an unsafe place and we should talk about it.
But he started his train of posts in relation to this specific incident. He tapped emotions by saying things like “Bob was someone’s father” and the city was complacent etc. So when it turns out that the city was doing something and it wasn’t a crime committed by a homeless person, I feel the responsible/neutral thing would have been to inform his followers about the truth.
He can still tweet about SF crime rates. But don’t you think someone who hasn’t been following the news but has been following only his tweets will be left with an incorrect impression of the city and the incident?
> But don’t you think someone who hasn’t been following the news but has been following only his tweets will be left with an incorrect impression of the city and the incident?
A hypothetical somebody who is very impressionable to begin with perhaps. Nat isn't news or the source of truth. If you take the Twitter bit out of it and Nat/Bob were your neighbors these are very normal human reactions and conversations. Crime is on his mind and somebody he knew got stabbed to death.
I agree that if/when he breaches the subject again he should point out that this stabbing wasn't accidental, sure, of course. I hope he does. I sense that people who disagree with his politics/conclusions hope he doesn't. That is lame.
It is all too convenient and normalized these days to think of people you disagree with as slimy hypocrites with hidden agendas playing Machiavellian games. Heck, you know what, tweet at him, like a human, without the gotcha, and find out instead of assuming.
I can promise you this: if it turns out you are right about this then I will say that I was wrong. :)
Then it behooves him to say “yes I was wrong”. GP was saying they trust him less because he doesn’t feel the need to publicly admit he was wrong, meaning he could find out he’s wrong about other things but not admit it.
This feels straightforward to me. It’s easier to trust people who admit they’re wrong when they’re wrong.
Lots of commenters here were so outraged without knowing what happened [0] and are now really silent today after the arrest.
Techies killing each other is even worse than the 'SF crime' assumptions (SF still is a shithole created by techies) and outrage that happened a week ago. Not this time and this one wasn't random.
So comes the back peddling and the wall of silence. Let's see if any of these techies will stand up and act on changing the city that they said they would, rather than now running away because another tech bro killed one of their own.
And this is what I've been saying. Or trying to imply with lots of eyebrow-raised sarcasm!
Also, WholePaycheck closing is not about rough neighborhoods or theft so much as mismanagement. "Let's open a store where they won't force rich tech workers back to the office!" I'm not saying they needed to be a Digger store, but sheesh!
Crime is getting worse in SF, murder happens and people get upset, turns out not to be a random crime, but SF crime is still a problem but now the focus is on how this one crime wasn’t a random event.
Do i have that right?
This argument seems to be a massive distraction from the problem at hand.
I think this is more of a "see I told you so" type of response from people. HN Loves to bury opinions they don't like, whether it's right or wrong. More than anything there's always a sense of everyone trying to one up everyone else and "be right." Naturally, when you say they are wrong, they are going to get mad. It's typical silicon valley hubris.
Cops don't even break the top 20 most dangerous jobs. Cops have a lower on-the-job death rate than crossing guards, small engine mechanics, roofers and garbage men. The danger around the occupation is extremely exaggerated. This is especially true once you factor out suicides. In 2021 when "cities were being burned to the ground" 73 cops were maliciously killed and 56 died from accidents in the line of duty in a country of 332 million people. Being a gas station cashier is significantly more dangerous work than being a cop.
When road side maintenance workers start executing people with state sanction because they "FeAred FOr thEiR LIvEs", then maybe we can compare the two on realistic terms.
I think the point people are trying to make when they say things like this is that the reaction to "cops sometimes do dangerous things" is exaggerated. It's more dangerous to be a truck driver in the US than it is to be a cop, yet we still don't allow them to bazooka adjacent vehicles if they "reasonably perceive a threat".
I don't think that's the point of GP's statement "This is not borne out by the evidence - it's propaganda."
But to your point, I also respect truck drivers (that can do their job properly) just as I respect police officers (who can also do their job properly). Not all truck drivers and police officers are created equal amongst their peers, they are human, some specific humans with more faults than others.
No-one said it was the most dangerous job, they are saying they put their lives on the line. Which they do.
You don't know which traffic stop or interaction could be your last...
I'm glad I work in tech instead of being a cop or a soldier, or a fireman, or a trucker, or an underwater welder, etc.
Sure but my point is that no matter what kind of cop you are, you get protections that other people in other more dangerous professions don't, on the premise that your job is more dangerous. That's what op is saying is propaganda.
Legal protections but not physical protections right?
The videos I showed were officers confronted by people attacking them while doing a routine patrol.
Similar to a fireman running into a fire to save people, officers have to run into a high risk situation to diffuse it. Such as a person calling 911 against an aggressor (ie, someone robbing them, assaulting them, etc.)
You are speaking for the OP, but you've expanded far beyond what they have stated.
Legal protections are physical protections. They're designed to let officers kill people if they reasonably perceive a threat. That's why an officer with a gun is much more protected than I am with a gun, because they can shoot and kill in situations where I can't.
You keep dancing around the main point here, which is that cops get different rules based on the premise that their job is extremely dangerous, but it's not the most dangerous job, and we don't afford the same protections to others with similarly or more dangerous jobs.
We could also expand to different classes of people. Women in service industries are likely to experience multiple assaults over their careers. Queer youth are very likely to be assaulted. Immigrants (especially women and girls) from poor countries are very likely to be assaulted. What about people with known violent stalkers, people in witness protection, etc etc. Should we train, arm, and shield them from prosecution if they shoot people?
Or what if it's situational? Let's say I see a group of cops attempting to murder a Black man (recall any instances you've seen in the news), I protest and insist they stop, I think I see one of the officers reach for their weapon, I draw and fire first, killing them all and saving the man's life. Do I deserve the same legal protection? I was doing what the cops are supposed to be doing: I ran into a high risk situation in hopes of defusing it.
I think you have to face the fact that the standard just doesn't make any sense, which is why cops in other western countries have much stricter standards than those in the US.
I would also go further and say the prevalence of firearms in the US makes these situations way more dangerous than they need to be. You're right that a lot of the things officers do can be fatal, and that's because the odds of whomever they're dealing with having a firearm are pretty high. Your guess is as good as mine as to why most cops don't support tighter gun restrictions though.
That's likely because given the publicly available information at the time, no narrative was obviously anything, because no details beyond Bob Lee being found stabbed and dead were known.
The cause could have been (with equal evidence for each case) aliens, mossad, or a cooking accident, but people were quick to project their biases onto the situation and jump into flamewars or political attacks based on literally no information other than a man having died.
But my point was that the “random crazed homeless assailant” guess (or however you want to phrase it) was every bit as much speculation, and frankly, less plausible speculation.
And now is it not only speculation, it’s conclusively just a bad and irresponsible guess.
From what I saw no-one was assuming on the specific event, but it was a fuel to let loose the stories of crime that many SF residents experienced and wanted to vent.
But yes, ideally we don't ever assume, sure. But don't let that distract from actual problems that people vocalized.
And let's also remember that this is a SUSPECT, so we are still assuming to this moment.
> And let's also remember that this is a SUSPECT, so we are still assuming to this moment.
In high profile cases like this, the prosecutor risks their entire career if the charges don't stick, so they usually have iron clad evidence or they wouldn't have made the arrest, and would've just waited for more evidence. The suspect hasn't even put in a not guilty plea during the arraignment. Mistakes do happen but I would say the odds are way in the favor of it being what is claimed.
Sure, that's the legal system which is judging the case, which we are not part of.
From an article:
> Footage retrieved by police from Millennium Tower shows Nima Momeni getting out of a white BMW Z4 after arriving at the high-rise at 8:31 p.m., according to court records. A little more than four hours later, at 12:39 a.m., Lee arrived at the tower.
> Shortly after 2 a.m., both Lee and Nima Momeni were seen on camera taking an elevator to the building's lobby before getting into the suspect’s BMW and leaving.
> Additional footage obtained by police shows Lee appearing to be stabbed under the Bay Bridge on Main Street, the documents say. The footage allegedly shows a BMW and the red glow of tail lights, suggesting the vehicle was parked. Based on the clothing they were wearing when leaving Millennium Tower, police believe Lee and Nima Momeni were the two people seen standing outside of the car.
> At one point, the pair move closer together before Lee walks away, appearing to be wounded. Nima Momeni allegedly walks to a fence—which is where police found a silver and black knife, the suspected murder weapon—before getting back in the BMW and speeding away.
> Lee was stabbed three times—once in the hip and twice in the chest, according to court records. One stab wound penetrated his heart and killed him. Police found what they believe to be the murder weapon, a 4-inch knife, in a nearby parking lot with blood on it.
> “The defendant not only drove victim to a secluded area in the opposite direction of his hotel, but also brought a kitchen knife with him,” prosecutors said in court records. “Defendant did not use some type of pocket knife, but a cooking knife from an apartment kitchen. This was a planned and deliberate attack.”
All this could very well be deepfakes I guess. Even if he's proven guilty you could say the same thing, because innocent people have been proven guilty in the past. So basically we can never ever assume who did the murder?
> The cause could have been (with equal evidence for each case) aliens, mossad, or a cooking accident, but people were quick to project their biases onto the situation and jump into flamewars or political attacks based on literally no information other than a man having died.
I’m going to push back on that. 70-80% of homicides in the US are committed by offenders known to the victims, with the small minority committed by strangers. People here are smart enough to know that and yet still pushed the "crazy homeless killer due to liberal policy" false narrative. That’s the problem.
I'm not sure I follow. So since ninety something percent of murders are committed by men aged 14-40 (not the real statistic, I'm going off of memory here) do you think we should assume with no evidence that any random murder was done by somebody from that demographic?
> The cause could have been (with equal evidence for each case) aliens ... people were quick to project their biases onto the situation
It would indicate a specific kind of commenter bias if, lacking any evidence, most comments on the original thread were about alien abductions and cow mutilations. Saying that it's weird that so many people talked about aliens doesn't necessarily mean we should suspect a human. Noting that we know a lot of murders were conducted by humans would be evidence that it was even weirder that there were so many comments about aliens.
I think you follow me just fine. We know that men commit most of these types of crimes, we know they are usually younger than 40, and we know that in the majority of cases, they are already acquainted with the victim. We also know the murder rate in Rincon Hill was zero before this happened, lending weight to the relationship between the victim and the offender. The tech narrative that blames liberal SF policies for crime were well underway before this crime occurred.
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