The Demise of San Francisco Should Concern All Americans

Homeless people gather near drug dealers in the Tenderloin District of San Francisco on Feb. 22, 2023. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

Commentary

San Francisco is a dangerous place to live. If in doubt, let me point you in the direction of Darren Mark Stallcup. An artist by day and a fentanyl citizen journalist by night, the young man recently made a shocking video documenting life in San Francisco.

A resident of the Tenderloin, a drug-infested neighborhood overrun with crime, Stallcup describes himself as a witness to a “zombie apocalypse” and “fentanyl genocide.” Every morning, he must navigate his way through sidewalks littered with needles, human waste, and even dead bodies. He describes “Frisco” as “a fourth world country within a first world country.”

“Living in San Francisco has been a wild ride,” Stallcup told me. “[I have] personally witnessed the city go from being a cultural capital to the technological capital to the fentanyl capital. After the massive tech exodus, led by Elon Musk, San Francisco lost billions in tax revenue.

“Local leaders who gained an appetite from tech tax money soon found themselves desperate to quench their newfound appetite for money. The only other way for them to achieve this was to enable the homeless-industrial complex by allowing fentanyl to plague our community and corrupt various nonprofits and organizations.”

For Stallcup, his mornings and nights begin and end in an eerily similar manner: opening and closing his eyes to the sounds of people screaming for their lives and ambulances speeding by, sirens blaring.

“Sleep,” he said, “is very difficult to come by, especially living in the Tenderloin, where my apartment building has been broken into multiple times.

“It’s traumatic, to say the least—a fight for survival.” It’s quite literally a fight for survival. On more than one occasion, Stallcup has had to fight off burglars with his own bare hands.

Stallcup’s apartment building is surrounded by bodies (dead and barely alive), inordinate amounts of litter, tents, and an array of drug-related accoutrements.

“Every morning, I go out and count the bodies,” he said, “sometimes giving them a small love tap just to see if they are alive.”

It’s “Groundhog Day” meets “The Road.” Early in the morning, white vans come by his place and stack the bodies on multiple layers of metallic trays. Welcome to modern-day America.

“This humanitarian crisis,” Stallcup said, “is a fentanyl genocide.”

He’s right. It is. In San Francisco, there is a death by fentanyl overdose every 10 hours, on average.

“Theft, rape, and murder is rampant,” Stallcup told me, “with mom-and-pop shops under attack every day.” Grocery stores are ransacked. Cars and apartments are broken into regularly.

I asked him who’s to blame.

“I truly believe that I am witnessing the collapse of the Western civilization,“ he replied, and he said he believes that it’s because of corruption and people ”who profit from the chaos.”

Stallcup is particularly critical of the city’s mayor, London Breed. And for good reason. Her leadership skills have been seen as, for lack of a better word, anemic.

Stallcup isn’t the only disillusioned San Franciscan. As I write this, a number of major retail stores, including the likes of Whole Foods, Old Navy, and Nordstrom, are closing up shop and moving elsewhere. In fact, since 2019, according to a recent San Francisco Standard report, nearly 50 percent of the stores in the city’s downtown shopping district have closed.

Who can blame them?

According to Fox News, even the city’s richest neighborhoods are being plagued by “smash and grabs, robberies, burglaries, and open-air drug use.” Tracy McCray, San Francisco Police Officers Association president, noted, “The problems in the Tenderloin have escaped the Tenderloin.”

They most certainly have. To compound matters, gangs of youths, baseball bats in hand, are reportedly tormenting mothers and nannies, mugging them on their daily school runs.

Last month, in Noe Valley, once a “charming, family-friendly neighborhood,” 11 phone robberies occurred. These robberies, according to the Telegraph, “are believed to have been carried out by the same gang who are targeting women picking up children from school.”

It’s hard to believe that less than two years ago, San Francisco was named the 15th-safest city in the world—yes, 15th. Today, as is clear to see, the city has become increasingly unsafe for all citizens. Viewed as a “liberal city,” San Francisco is, first and foremost, a U.S. city. Its demise should sadden all readers, regardless of their politics.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.