Comment by mattlondon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mattlondon | Hacker News Reader

FWIW I had the option of relocating to SF a few years ago (2015 perhaps? Thereabouts). I went over on an extended visit to the local SF office for a few weeks and my wife came with me to "try it out".

The reasons in the article were largely the same as ours for deciding hell no and staying in London. Apart from stepping over human excrement in the street and the pervasive stench of piss everywhere and seeing the police point guns at homeless people on the streets for basically zero-provocation, the real decision-maker was my wife telling me one day when I got back from the office how she was verbally abused and then had a glass bottle thrown at her by the homeless people near the apartment we were renting in what felt like should have been a nice and safe central neighborhood near Market Street and Union Square.

That has never happened to us anywhere in Europe (or elsewhere in the US for that matter), unless you go out of your way to find an off-the-beaten-path sketchy neighborhood, not the common central places where tourists go and stay.

We had a really nice vacation though! :)

Mid-market street is an open-air insane asylum and probably the very last place that I would ever consider renting an apartment. Hard to tell that from glancing at a map, of course.

I have lived here for ten years and have never seen a cop pull a gun and actually threaten someone without provocation.

Pulling a gun is one thing, actually threatening to use it is another. It’s a difference in how police are in the US vs UK.

That said, I keep considering moving to Europe myself. I pay crazy taxes for shit in the streets, half assed mass transit, high college tuition, etc.

The US also has other cities. Even California has more than just SF. But europe is nice too, though with lots of old, outdated and difficult to upgrade building and houses. (I'm not a fan of steam radiator heating).

> Pulling a gun is one thing, actually threatening to use it is another. It’s a difference in how police are in the US vs UK.

Well the most salient difference is that UK police don't carry guns at all.

Most "officers on the beat" don't carry guns, but perhaps as a sorry sign of the times it is not uncommon to see officers packing what appear to be quite heavy weapons (at least to my eyes) - e.g.:

https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/04/26/11/22FFD9CC000005... https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-0fe4637f8d1b1f981c7786...

You'll see them at busy places like stations, shopping centres, airports, busy public squares etc. At least in London - perhaps not so much elsewhere. I guess half of it is deterrent & reassurance, and the other half if to stop any "active shooter" type things before they happen.

There is also SO15 which are the sort of para-military dedicated anti-terror type people who don't patrol but are stationed around the place and use motorbikes to cut through traffic and down pedestrian areas, e.g.:

https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2017/09/28/10/44C62468000005...

I think the main difference in the UK is, when the situation deteriorates enough to require police with guns turn up, the guns aren't there for show to try and subdue/persuade you. They'll usually shoot to kill from what I've seen/read/heard.

Get outside of central London (and possibly some other big cities like Birmingham? I don't know, I never go there) and you'll never see armed police anywhere. I grew up in a small British town in the Southeast and I can't think of a single time in my entire childhood that I saw a police officer with a gun (or for that matter, anyone else with a gun) anywhere near my hometown, except perhaps for my rare visits to touristic hotspots in London. And again, it's only in central London, at least as far as I can tell. I live in non-central London now (Zone 3) and I never see armed police anywhere near where I live. Come to think of it, I rarely see any police at all around here, at least not on foot.

I can remember going on holiday to France as a kid and being unable to take my eyes off the guns I saw on the hips of French police, because it was such an unusual sight for someone born and raised in middle England.

I think in the UK we're so used to the idea of unarmed police that we forget how astonishingly unusual it is. In most countries the idea of unarmed police is unimaginable. We've really achieved something special by managing it, at least in most parts of the country most of the time.

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