TJ Walker argues San Francisco's crime narrative is wrong. Burglaries dropped 28%, homicides hit multi-decade lows at 3.1 per 100,000, and the city is seeing a $15B Salesforce investment and 12% rent increases. Shreveport, Louisiana has a homicide rate nearly seven times higher.
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If you watch Fox News, if you read the New York Post, you're always going to hear about how crime is spiraling out of control and big cities controlled by Democrats. Why are we hearing this again and again and again? Dig deeper. Ask yourself what's the, what's the ideological agenda? San Francisco, San Francisco rebound according to the Wall Street Journal. Wall Street Journal, Rupert Murdoch own conservative publication. But straight news. According to the Wall Street Journal, San Francisco has pulled off one of the most remarkable comebacks in recent urban history. Crime has dropped to its lowest levels in decades. Let me say that again because some of you are putting your finger in your ear saying, well, that's not right. Obviously TJ messed up. Obviously what he meant to say is crime is going crazy and spiraling out of control in Sam. We all know that, right? Well, no, turns out that's wrong. Again, don't take my wor word for it. Listen to a respectable, by any definition, centrist, mainstream or even conservative media outlet like the Wall Street Journal. This is based on their reporting. So according to the Journal, crime has dropped to the lowest level in decades. Burglaries are down 28%. Homicides are at a 70 year low. Let me say that again. When it comes to bang bang, you're murdered. In San Francisco, the rate is lower than it has been in 70 years. The city that once symbolized urban decay is now being revived by the AI boom. Salesforce just announced a $15 billion investment and companies like OpenAI and Databricks are expanding downtown. But perception hasn't caught up with reality. While conservative pundits still talk about lawless San Francisco, the numbers tell a very different story. In Shreveport, Louisiana, part of House Speaker Mike Johnson's district, the violent crime rate is roughly seven times higher than in San Francisco. Let me state that again in Mike Johnson, the MAGA Republican speaker of the House in his district in Louisiana, the violent crime rate is seven times higher than in San Francisco. That's 700% higher. It's pretty significant. San Francisco's homicide rate is 3.1, which is too high, 3.1 per 100,000 people. But in Shreveport it's 21.7. 21.7 people are killed, are murdered for every 100,000 people in Shreveport. Now San Francisco's reality defies its reputation. Streets are cleaner, tech firms are hiring and tourism is rebounding. The so called doom loop was really a data distortion. When facts replace fear, San Francisco looks not like a failed experiment, but like one of America's most successful urban turnarounds. What's the real message here. You have been fed a lie. The idea that San Francisco is out of control, dangerous murder everywhere. No, the homicide rate is lower than it's been in 70 years. You really want to avoid danger? You really want to avoid something bad happening to you. Avoid. Avoid Mike Johnson's district in Shreveport, Louisiana. Violent crime is 700% higher there than it is in San Francisco. Let's dig a little bit deeper and look at the facts. Get San Francisco homicides, 27 projected lowest since the 1950s. Shreveport homicide, much, much smaller place, 52 in 2024, seven times higher. Burglaries down 28%. Now, there are exceptions if you happen to be Speaker Pelosi's husband. Yeah, violent crime has been up. Can't exactly blame that one on the liberals or the Democrats, can we? Salesforce investing $15 billion into an AI hub. Are the streets of San Francisco still. I won't kid you. Now, I haven't been in a few years. It is one of my favorite cities. And yeah, there are streets, especially in the Tenderloin district, where you do see more homeless than you do in a lot of towns. More so than in my hometown of Charlotte, North Carolina. If you're just on the main thoroughfares, you do see homeless. You do see needles on the street. I'm not going to tell you it's perfect, but it's relative to where it was. It's getting better. That's all you can ask for when it comes to holding elected officials accountable. Did you make things better? It's better than it's been in 70 years. The rents are up 12% now. Maybe you don't like that if you're paying the rent, but it's certainly a sign of growth and vibrancy in a city. What you don't want is a place like Detroit where you can't even give away buildings. Or you're giving away buildings for a dollar. Forget trying to rent them. You can't even give them away. So San Francisco is safer and richer and more resilient than critics claim. Now, here's the fascinating thing. Rupert Murdoch is the guy behind the Wall Street Journal. He's also the guy behind Fox News and the New York Post. If you watch Fox News, if you read the New York Post, you're always going to hear about how crime is spiraling out of control in big cities controlled by Democrats. San Francisco, Chicago, New York City. Why are we hearing this again and again and again? Dig deeper. Ask yourself, what's the. What's the ideological Agenda, and the agenda is very clear. The Wall Street Journal is such a big, well respected brand, has so much of its reputation in mainstream business community. Rupert Murdoch, to his credit, has not given marching orders to the reporters to skew the news. Wall Street Journal didn't just tell Americans that Donald Trump won the election in 2020, whereas Fox did face it and certainly implied it. So there's a difference there. The New York Post is kind of a rag and Fox News is basically a tabloid on TV screens. So he's happy to use that as a political instrument. He helps his allies, he helps Republicans who will cut his taxes and allow him to merge and acquire and do what he wants. And it's a way of attacking Democrats. Now, are there problems with, with Democratically run cities? Yes. Democrats, in my view, have done an absolutely horrific job of providing housing for people, especially young people. So I'm not here in San Francisco is among the worst. New York City is among the worst. So I'm not here as some Democratic apologist saying, wow, Democratic cities are always better than Republicans. No, I play it to you straight. I'm here as a sane, sensible centrist. So, yes, Democrats do deserve blame for how they've handled issues of housing and permitting and letting developers build things in a way that it doesn't take 12 years out of their life and 159 lawsuit resolutions. So Democrats deserve blame for that. That. But they do not deserve blame for crime spiraling out of control when there's been almost systematic improvement not every year, but the trend line over the last 30 years, my goodness, New York City went from 2,000 murders a year in the early 90s and almost that many when Giuliani the Republican was mayor, down to a few hundred today. So if you consider yourself a sane, sentient human being who wants accurate information about deciding, okay, what politicians should we reward, which ones should we punish, who's doing a good job? You have to have accurate information. And that's why I wanted to put a spotlight on this. Is crime too high? Sure. I wish we could be more like Japan. A lot of other countries where the crime is, you know, we have more crime in one hour in a big city sometimes than a country like Japan has in a year. So it's still too high. But that's not the same thing as spiraling out of control and getting worse and worse and worse and worse. It's just not happening. If you believe that there is a reason for it, you have been played the fool. You have been lied to by ideological actors who are trying to create a political landscape that supports their party, that will let them take over, not worry about antitrust and cut their taxes. And that really is the bottom line there.
