“There is a suitcase full of human s— on the corner of Isis and 13th,” the email read. “Last night, I had to threaten violence to a man smoking crystal meth on my front porch. This morning, my 2-year-old son and I watched a rat rummage through the trash in our gutter. - "Homeless camp pushes SF neighborhood to the edge", San Francisco Chronicle

San Francisco is a lawless city; not dangerous, for the most part, but lots of crime. Speaking just for myself:

• 2012: Car windows smashed out
• 2013: $500 of camping gear stolen from my car
• 2014: Car windows smashed out again
• 2014: Knife pulled on me on BART
• 2017: Guy tried to rip my computer out of my hands, but failed
• 2017: Witnessed coffeeshop laptop snatching #1 (Farley's East)
• 2018: Witnessed coffeeshop laptop snatching #2 (Peet's)
• Daily: BART farejumping, aggressive pandandling, injection drugs at Civic Center BART, used syringes on the ground

Just last night I came home to the desk agent at my building reporting a smash-and-grab. We have cameras facing the street and he caught three guys, on video, smashing a car window and walking off with a bag. I called the cops and offered them the video. Despite being a much smaller city, SF's has more of this than Los Angeles, and we're getting tired of it.

I've lived in the Bay Area seven years, and can feel attitudes shifting. I often wonder whether we'll have what I call a "Giuliani moment", some kind of catalyzing news event that gives an otherwise liberal, soft-on-crime city a much greater appetite for fixing broken windows and prosecuting farejumpers. I'm not sure whether it will happen suddenly, slowly, or not at all. But, as New York has shown, it's possible for a city to be socially liberal, a center of the Pride movement, with great museums and a thriving art scene, even while appreciating its police force.

New York figured out that "tolerance" doesn't have to include "soft on crime". I really admire that about NYC.