As the news media and twitterverse peddled the whole "crime-ridden SF" angle, I felt myself getting drawn into the same topic and agreeing with numerous friends on how much the city has declined. This is a good reminder of how we gravitate towards powerful emotional narratives, which in the moment can feel absolutely true despite an utter lack of supporting facts on an individual murder case.<p>I hope this brings some measure of peace and closure for his family and friends.
The SF-is-a-hellhole narrative is compelling, but the report that Lee was not the victim of a random crime shouldn't have been surprising. The FBI says 40+% of murders are committed by a family member or acquaintance, and 10% by total strangers:<p><a href="https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/topic-pages/expanded-homicide" rel="nofollow">https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-...</a>
Joe Eskenazi, the author of this piece, is a solid journalist who helps run the tiny donation-funded Mission Local. They've done incredible reporting on corruption in the SF city government and punch
way above their weight in the stories they break. I have respect for how Joe refused to join in reporting this murder as evidence of a violent crime epidemic, while still reporting on homelessness and property crime.
Am I the only one who does NOT feel unsafe in SF at all ? I mean, I choose not to walk in TL and SOMA at night. But why would anyone feel unsafe in North Beach, Marina, Russian Hill, Richmond, Sunset, GG park, Lower Haight, Valencia etc. I have spent many nights walking in Valencia and took Uber home at 2am. Doesn't feel remotely unsafe.
It’s pretty incredible to me that the whole community on the last thread was fixated on the fact that it must’ve been the homeless/drug addicts. What kind of place is it where you immediately dismiss premeditated murder, or even throw it up as 50-50?
I have a family member who is a police officer (investigator) in another country. I was telling them about this killing and how crazy things seemed in San Francisco during my last visit.<p>His first and only response was "well, how do you know that's even related? Most people get killed by somebody they know." and I was like "well, yeah, but San Francisco is bad right now" and the conversation moved on.
This is shocking and saddening, and should <i>also</i> be a lesson to this community: previous threads on this tragedy immediately jumped to blaming the homeless, when the overwhelming majority of violent crimes are committed by individuals known to the victim.<p>Edit: Added "violent," to preempt diversions about non-violent crimes.
People don't talk often about it, but there's quite a bit of crime (including violent crime) that goes on in the Bay's big-money sector. I guess this shouldn't be surprising (power corrupts), but it sure does seem like people feel uncomfortable talking about how many tech execs end up poisoned by heroin from a prostitute or under investigation for a 30-year-old murder or dead in a workplace shooting.
> San Francisco is home to much in the way of visible public misery, unnerving street behavior and overt drug-use. Its property crime rate has long been high, and the police clearance rate for property crimes has long been minimal. But the city’s violent crime rate is at a near-historic low and is lower than that in most mid-to-large-sized cities.
I knew this wasn’t a “random occurrence” due to drugs and homelessness. People almost never stab each other for no reason.<p>But when I suggested it in an earlier thread I was criticized and downvoted for “spreading conspiracy theories.”<p>I know we shouldn’t speculate but everyone else was speculating that it was random!
Is the "Expand IT, Inc" on the LinkedIn profile the only evidence that the "alleged killer also works in tech and is a man Lee purportedly knew."<p>There's comments is this thread of amazing journalism but the LLC shows as inactive on the Division of CA website (entity 201008110204) and the Expand IT website itself is dead. For all we know, this is a Lyft or Uber driver. Unless I'm missing some SFPD statement known to the journalist?<p><i>EDIT</i>: got an old filling; see njstraub608's comment. My mistake
This article contains stats that are pretty shocking and contrary to the overwhelming narrative coming out of the SF tech community.<p><a href="https://missionlocal.org/2023/04/bob-lee-killing-arrest-made-san-francisco/" rel="nofollow">https://missionlocal.org/2023/04/bob-lee-killing-arrest-made...</a><p>The murder rate in San Francisco is preposterously low.
It sounds like this information wasn't released publicly by the local authorities.<p>The article has a link to a LinkedIn profile. The writer indicates that the name and city of the LI profile matches the information on the person they were "told" was arrested this morning. Even the name of the company of the person indicated is explicitly referenced in the article.<p>My professional world doesn't allow for ambiguity. As a journalist, how sure do you need to be about the accuracy of this information before going public?
This is perfect for a "ripped from the headlines" episode of Law and Order. They basically already did one like this <a href="https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/LawAndOrderS14E22Gaijin" rel="nofollow">https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/LawAndOrderS14E...</a>
The second act could hang on a chorus of techie bum-haters.
I haven’t been to SF in 10+ years, but I grew up in a (more) dangerous American city. I’m curious how much of the panic over public safety in the Bay Area is massively skewed by upper middle class immigrants (from safer suburban America, or from other countries) getting their first taste of American urban life. I don’t want to sound too dismissive, American cities are really dangerous and impoverished compared to what they should be, but is SF really that bad compared to comparable American cities?
People were so quick to assume the nature of the crime even when no info about a possible suspect had been publicly released. Check the quote tweets to Bob's 2019 tweet about "recognize that your black friends face challenges you don’t"<p><a href="https://www.twitter.com/crazybob/status/1181668744247930880/retweets/with_comments" rel="nofollow">https://www.twitter.com/crazybob/status/1181668744247930880/...</a>
As the old "joke" goes it is always the butler, the business partner or the spouse.<p>Anyways, really sad story, that touched a lot of us close to home.
(We still don't know what happened, these are still allegations.)<p>P.S. The other sad part for me was that passersby sped away instead of helping immediately. Moments count in these cases.
One of the first things I said when I heard about this was: "Gee, there certainly has been an unexpected number of stabbings around mobilecoin. I wonder if this has something to do with the billion dollars stolen from FTX by someone seemingly connected with mobilecoin." -- but at a glance I'm not seeing a connection with the person they arrested. Interesting.<p>I had family ask me about it, concerned for my welfare, and I told them I was confused why <i>this</i> was getting national media coverage other violent crimes in SF hadn't received, and mentioned my initial thoughts that it might have been motivate by sketchy cryptocurrency crap.<p>Yet when I saw the popular narrative that it was some random stabbing in SF I didn't really have a reason to doubt it: I've personally been chased by a crazy person with a knife in the city.
My first travel to SF was in 2010 and last one in 2018. In the 2018 trip I wasn't comfortable walking in the market street to get back to my hotel in the evening (I was staying in Hyatt Regency). Maybe I got older and more fearful for my safety, but that is a personal experience I have with SF.
And everyone (especially here) blaming the homeless and mentally ill people abandoned by the system.
The homeless-phobia of white collar individuals is the problem.
I wondered if the killer knew him. That area of city is not a sketchy one, and while random violence can happen anywhere it just seemed unlikely, esp given descriptions that he would be unlikely to resist a mugging (and provoke an escalation).<p>Glad they got their man!
I was suspicious of the "homeless killer" narrative because I worked in that neighbhorhood for a long time and there were no homeless people anywhere near there. Also, I've walked past many of the SF drug-addled homeless and none of them seemed physically robust enough to stab anyone other than another drug-addled homeless person. (the non-drug homeless around the Haight and those areas are completely different and extremely scary sometimes)
I do hope that someone notices how violent and dangerous these "tech professionals" are who have moved into our formerly peaceful neighbourhoods.
To their credit Buzzfeed mentions this, but Mission Local appears to have broken this story: <a href="https://missionlocal.org/2023/04/bob-lee-killing-arrest-made-san-francisco/" rel="nofollow">https://missionlocal.org/2023/04/bob-lee-killing-arrest-made...</a>
I recall a sad point to this case captured on surveillance video:<p>As Bob Lee was bleeding out, he went to driver for aid who ignored him and fled the scene. Shouldn't they be arrested and charged for failure to render aid? Perhaps he would've had a chance if he had arrived at a trauma ER but it's now an unknowable.
It did strike me as really odd a 43 year-old man would be out walking around at 2:30 AM...<p>It'll be interesting when more details come out.<p>All the "SF is going downhill!" stuff that came out... seems pretty irrelevant given this wasn't a random act of violence.
Watch how fast this falls out of the news cycle because it doesn’t align with America’s view of San Francisco. So far I’ve heard it was: a homeless person, a junkie, mentally ill, violent criminal common to San Francisco.<p>Part of me felt this was personal. A stabbing you have to get fairly close. Bob Lee could know his killer. And I don’t know him well enough to know who he hung out with.
I was really betting that HN comments would all be Mission homeless complaining about how dangerous the city is with all of those ultraviolent tech bros in it.<p>Terrible prediction. This is why I never gamble.
I’m kind of annoyed at people who automatically assume that homeless commit more crimes. Is there any stats to suggest that they commit more crimes than homed people? Sure, maybe they do some petty theft (I don’t know - is there any research). Maybe. I imagine most of it is in stores and not mugging people or crimes of opportunity. Most of them are just really down on their luck for whatever reason and can’t find their way out. There’s this narrative that forms, explicitly or implicitly, that these people are in that situation because they deserve to be. The drug problem they have is the cause of their homelessness (despite all the research repeatedly showing that giving people housing they can count on and a good support system is the best way to get then rehabilitated).<p>We find the crime narrative so appealing though. It’s those dirty homeless. That’s why crime has gone up (homicides in SF at historic lows). And it’s exceedingly hard to overcome emotionally. I get it. But HN is supposed to be a logical community, not one where emotions are allowed to run rampant.<p>When I walked up to my car with broken windows, my initial reaction was to blame the homeless guy next to our on the street. But realistically, who would stay by the site of a crime? Maybe that’s what he wanted me to think, but seems unlikely and he was very afraid I’d tear into him about it because that’s probably happened to him more than once in the past. They know how other people look at them and that takes a serious mental toll on you. How could it not if the vast majority of people around you treat you like shit. I had to remember that the factual reporting on the topic seems to point that SF’s car breakins problem is an organized crime. A crime ring the SF police can’t or won’t get a handle on. Maybe an explicit deal to keep homicide rates low? It came out Toronto police had been doing that and following that violent crimes started going up quite rapidly. Drug dealers and organized crime organizations aren’t sleeping on the streets. Heck, I’m pretty sure one tried to approach me to be a mule and he was dressed upscale and definitely not homeless. Most violence is reliably either someone you know or more organized crime (eg gang initiations).<p>Sure. SF does have a really bad homeless problem. And they do cause problems but it’s mostly around there being messes everywhere which is unpleasant and is uncomfortable being around unpredictable people with mental illnesses. But I wouldn’t want to be in their shoes mostly because of how society treats them, so I at least try to have some compassion and engage with them from time to time. I know how to distinguish discomfort from feeling unsafe. I know logically and factually even crazy people walking around on the street are not going to turn into a problem (I’m surrounded by them daily in the part of the city I live). But it’s still uncomfortable to be around and even my dog is wary of people like that which speaks to the base lizard brain reacting. I accept that’s my reaction but it fundamentally is not the other person’s problem. I’m responsible for my reaction to uncomfortable feelings.<p>That’s why I made the comment I did here: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35448899&p=8#35454676" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35448899&p=8#35454676</a>. I’m not surprised I was right. I’m sad at how strong and prevalent the “it’s gotta be the homeless” crowd was, facts be dammed.<p>People really need to understand homelessness and react to it with compassion rather than treating it like a dirty thing they might infect you with if they come near and the source of societies problems. Homelessness is ultimately a reflection of the failing of our society, not a reflection of the failings of the individuals impacted by it.<p>PS: the homeless don’t get any protection on the streets from the police. Most homeless crime is homeless on homeless because the police refuse to keep them safe or because the homeless district the police / governments due to repeated cycles of abuse and victimization. Not sure what the story is in SF per se, but I can’t imagine that part is better.
This news really highlights the confirmation bias that was in full bloom throughout the "discourse" around the initial reports of Lee's murder (e.g. <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35448899" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35448899</a>). Everyone is so quick to jump on negative news about the rare violent crime in e.g. SF thanks to feelings about petty property crime that it's obviously impossible to have any kind of fact-based dialogue about policy.<p>Worth keeping in mind next time something comes along that might confirm your priors.<p>(Edit: notable that the thread linked above had _2600+_ comments on it, most of them hysterical about SF crime [of course, completely divorced from actual stats, i.e. that SF has fewer homicides per capita than almost every other American city, including current faves Austin and Miami]. I wonder how likely it is that the same population will comment here to say, "I was wrong"? )
When I moved to SF in 1996, the murder count that year was 86. Last year it was 56. I haven't been back in a very long time, but I guarantee you it's a far safer city than it was back then. I lived on Market between 6th and 7th and had knives pulled on me, and watched a car get blown up across the street underneath Hollywood Billiards, which is long gone now - according to Google Maps, they're building new apartments there.<p>I loved the Tenderloin back then, even though it was terrifying. It was full of weirdos and loonies and junkies and poverty stricken artsy types like me, who had no power or desire in gentrification - we were just poor too. But we embraced where we were and didn't try to change it. The loin changed me far more than my presence changed it - for the better. It taught me compassion and empathy and how to avoid getting knifed by a junkie in the alleyway.<p>Y'all colonized the poorest parts of the city and gave the poorest folks nowhere to go, and you still complain when they dare to pop up where you are. I hope all that authenticity and exposed brick in your offices and apartments are worth it.
> The alleged killer also works in tech and is a man Lee purportedly knew.<p>I commented below but the IT consulting LLC in the bio is inactive (both in the division of corp website and online). Is that the only evidence here for the statement above?
> San Francisco authorities hit back at Elon Musk and others who had used Lee’s killing to criticize law enforcement in the city.<p>Tagline is kinda weird... isn't murder kinda indicative of a law enforcement failure?
Wow this is crazy. Now I feel like I don't need to know anything more. He was an awesome programmer and an awesome guy. I think we can just leave it there, no?
Allegedly killed someone, but let's share his identity with everyone anyway! Who cares if we're wrong in the end, right? What kind of impact could that possibly have?
First off-- Nima is a person of interest. It doesn't mean he's guilty of anything. Even if they were in a car together, argued and Bob left the car and walked it doesn't mean Nima killed the man.<p>I assume (and hope) the police have more solid evidence like a fingerprint on that knife or Nima's own blood/DNA at the scene or on the knife as is common with stabbings.
Capital punishment is the only sane solution.<p>When you put a violent criminal to death, the crime rate is permanently and instantly lowered. If you lock them in a cage for 20 years we all pay the bills and they end up coming out and murdering again on the first day out. Total insanity.
Wasn’t it a common perception among San Francisco residents that the security in San Francisco was getting worse, as shown by the testimony of Jake Shields, a friend of Bob Lee, who said that his girlfriend was attacked by a robber, even though it was a coincidence that the one who killed Bob Lee was an acquaintance? Besides, didn’t Bob Lee himself move to Miami because of the bad security in San Francisco?
"Help!" he shouted, according to a local report. "Someone stabbed me." [1]<p>He was in the car with suspect yet he says "someone stabbed me" ??<p><a href="https://www.foxnews.com/us/cash-app-founder-bob-lee-died-pleading-with-911-for-help-report" rel="nofollow">https://www.foxnews.com/us/cash-app-founder-bob-lee-died-ple...</a><p>edit: it still doesn't make sense to me. If someone I know stabs me and I assume I have few minutes to live and call 911, I would say "help, Joe Doe stabbed me". I wouldn't say "someone", because that implies a stranger.