On this date in 1906 San Franciscans were awakened before dawn by two powerful temblors that crumbled thousands of buildings, burst gas lines, and destroyed the water mains that were the city's only hope of containing the ensuing fires that consumed the city.
When rain finally quelled the conflagration four days later, 700 were dead, the city was a smoldering wreck, and 250,000 people -- out of a total population of 350,000 -- were homeless. "Surrender," said writer Jack London, "was complete."
But San Franciscans don't really surrender. They cope, they regroup, they reinvent. I was born there and know that San Francisco has always incorporated waves of new immigrants and new thinking. The "City by the Bay" always seems to be on the cutting edge of political change and new social trends. Some of these movements, most notably environmental awareness and welcoming and empowering gay people, have inspired change across the country and around the world.
San Francisco has embraced less efficacious progressive fads, too, with less efficacious results. When a school board dominated by teachers' union activists deputized a bunch of woke historical illiterates to a school re-naming commission, the city was made to look ridiculous.
On a more serious note, decriminalizing theft -- and even drug dealing -- has been a disastrous social experiment. Drug users are dying at an astonishing rate, the cartels have essentially franchised fentanyl dealers, and citizens are afraid to walk the streets. Venerable businesses like Whole Foods and Walgreens have shuttered stores. The city's office vacancy rate is 30%.
Homelessness, which early 20th century locals like Jack London considered a temporary problem, is at the heart of much of San Francisco's social dysfunction. As urban areas around the country are learning, however, homelessness is a complicated social pathology that defies a simple solution.
Having said that, the two most shocking crimes in recent months -- the violent home invasion at Nancy Pelosi's house that almost cost her husband Paul his life and the stabbing death of Cash App creator Bob Lee -- were not committed by homeless perpetrators.
After Lee's killing two weeks ago, a raft of tech executives and conservative commentators lashed out at the city and its political leaders. And though it sounds macabre, San Franciscans were relieved when it turned out that Lee apparently knew his attacker. Some political leaders were more than relieved. They were irritated that their critics hadn't waited for the facts.
They have a point.
Although assaults and thefts are far too high in the city, San Francisco's murder rate is far lower than other U.S. cities of comparable size. The S.F.P.D. reported that the city recorded 56 homicides in 2022, the same number as the year before. San Francisco's population is about 875,000 people. Six other U.S. cities have comparable populations -- more than 850,000 and less than 1 million. All six of those jurisdictions (Charlotte, Indianapolis, Columbus, Fort Worth, Jacksonville, and Austin) had murder rates in 2021 and 2022 far exceeding San Francisco's.
In San Francisco, 56 people were killed in 2021 and another 56 in 2022 -- a two-year total of 112. In the same time period, nearly 500 people were murdered in Indianapolis, a city with a population nearly identical to San Francisco's. This trend was true everywhere in the country among similarly populous cities: Austin (160); Charlotte (208); Fort Worth (226); Jacksonville (238). Columbus, located in the Ohio heartland, had 204 murders last year alone. Elected officials in another "red" state capital city, Indianapolis, were congratulating themselves at the beginning of this year for bringing their homicide number down last year. But Indy still had 226 murders -- compared to San Francisco's 56, remember -- down from an all-time high of 271 the year before, which is nearly five times as many as in San Francisco.
"I know that it's natural when there's an act of violence in the community to feel fear and anxiety," San Francisco police commissioner Kevin Benedicto told Insider. "But I just hope that that fear of anxiety can be tempered by the data and be used for something productive instead of being, I think, exploited by some for political gain."
Mayor London Breed, buffeted by property crime rates that the FBI says are among the highest in the nation, was also measured when discussing the city's murder rate, and other crimes.
"People have constantly written the obituary of San Francisco, and I say to them, you better write in pencil because you're going to have to re-write what happens as a result of what we're going to see change in our city," she told a local television reporter. "But, more importantly, you're going to eat your words."
