Comment by blululu | Hacker News Reader

Comment by blululu | Hacker News Reader

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This is going to elude a quick explanation. The problems are very specific to San Francisco, so trying to fit this into a national narrative or attribute it to a single factor is not going to work.

* The voters sacked the old DA. He wasn't doing a great job but more importantly he had picked a fight with the police chief. The police have a tough job in the city and also they have been slacking off for the past 50 years. A security guard can't really intervene in a fight without 1.) risking their physical safety for $18 an hour, and 2.) risking a lawsuit since they don't really have any legal grounds to detain someone.

The store was on 8th and Market. I generally try to avoid that part of town for physical safety reasons based on a number of personal incidents involving some of the the more unpredictable characters in that part of town. I'm not sure what Whole Foods corporate HQ was thinking on that one. The location is just not a good place for a high end grocery store. HQ messed up. I would also point out that Rainbow foods is maybe 0.5 miles over on Folsom and Division. While Rainbow is near a lot of homeless encampments (maybe more than 8th and Market) the people are more steady and I never get the unsafe vibes in that part of town.

The location, in my mind, makes sense. It is near upcoming new-housing, and also notorious 6th, so it's likely to be cheap and popular.

And it's more central than their South-of-Market store on ... 4th & Harrison.

The Twitter building's nearby "The Market" grocery might benefit from this closure - it's suffered greatly from the Pandemic, Twitter itself shrinking, and the great Fentanyl-flooding.

> He wasn't doing a great job

The previous DA was doing a fantastic job, he had finally started focusing on violent crime instead of, “quality of life” crime like shoplifting and vandalism. Doing this is difficult because people will (as they did!) post videos online of petty theft or “unruly” people in the streets and people who do not understand how safety is actually created are never going to listen to people who are actually informed.

> he had picked a fight with the police chief.

This is not true. He prosecuted a police officer for murder and put pressure on the police, which have a long history of corruption and rampant racism, human trafficking, etc.. But police unions have a lot of power and influence, the average person thinks that police create safety (they do not! if they respond at all to anything, they respond after the fact with a pencil and paper, and their behavior is often very dangerous - e.g. speeding around the city running red lights when they clearly are not headed anywhere).

The police in SF do not have a tough job, and police everywhere, always slack off. The SFPD famously went on strike some decades ago and were basically shooting out streetlights and holding the entire city hostage, eventually culminating in a bombing on the mayor’s front lawn.

SFPD do not live in SF, almost any of them, they aren’t members of the community, they do not have the community’s best interest at heart. They are bullies who come from the suburbs and basically view all residents of SF as dirty miscreants. If you ask them for help in a violent situation, they will likely threaten you with violence or arrest yourself.

  > he had finally started focusing on violent crime instead of, “quality of life” crime like shoplifting and vandalism.

Why not both?

> security guard... risking their physical safety for $18 an hour

I never understood what's the point of hiring security at a miniscule wage. Noone sane will risk any physical confrontation for that money.

If they get stabbed, need 6 months to recover and get a $100K surgery, is employer paying all the bills?

I see this in many places - like a few badly behaved teenagers will jump over the barriers at the tube and the employees are not willing to challange them.

Like do I only pay because I am well-mannered?

> If they get stabbed, need 6 months to recover and get a $100K surgery, is employer paying all the bills?

Almost certainly. That’d fall under workers’ comp.

okay and if they never make a recovery, lose an eye, etc - what kind of compensation would they be looking it?

Depends, but there’s long-term disability, SSDI, etc. in those scenarios. I’d expect a lawsuit and settlement would be likely, as well.

> risking a lawsuit since they don't really have any legal grounds to detain someone.

No. Shopkeeper’s privilege allows detention for a reasonable time solely for the purpose of investigation of 490.5 shoplifting in the presence of probable cause.

(Dead right on the eighteen dollar bit, though).

you might want to look into a little bit more if the police is really slacking off, or if their hands are tied politically

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