San Francisco, which is short some 500 police officers and is inundated with auto break-ins, burglaries, mass lootings, attacks on elderly people, and tourist robberies as a result, nevertheless had sufficient cops to police changes to Elon Musk's headquarters Twitter sign.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle:
A worker began removing letters from the decade-old Twitter headquarters sign above San Francisco’s Market Street on Monday after the company’s name was changed to X. Then, the police showed up.
A police officer told The Chronicle that building management had called the police and said they weren’t informed about the sign change at 1355 Market St., and work was paused. Police then said there was a misunderstanding, and the worker continued work and removed an “i” from the “@twitter” sign, before stopping again, leaving an “er” on one side of the sign.
The city’s Department of Building Inspection later said it was trying to determine whether the company now known as X needs a building permit to modify the sign’s text.
“We received two complaints about this work and are awaiting guidance from City Planning as to whether a permit is needed to change copy (text) on an existing sign,” said Patrick Hannan, a department spokesperson. “Removing or relocating the sign would require a building permit.”
They couldn't send him a letter? They had to call in actual uniformed police officers?
In a city that has the kind of problems it has, why the hell should they or anyone care what Elon Musk does with his own street sign?
Do they not have tourist muggings to attend to? Is there not a store robbed for the eighth time that has another thief to catch? Is there not another auto break-in or home burglary or carjacking (they had a beaut on Sanchez Street) to resolve? Do they not have an entire western part of the city to police, given that it has about one or two cops for more than a hundred thousand residents?
In most of these cases, there is no police action at all, all because of a supposed lack of funds, and a lack of officers, which is probably entirely true. But somehow, they have plenty of police resources to dispatch to a single permit issue.
Which tells us the absence of policing in that city may be about more than just numbers of cops on the beat, but mismanaged priorities from the top.
Here are some choice doings going on in San Francisco on the same day, for which no police resources were available:
And if it was code enforcement that really, really, really worried them, maybe this case would have been a better one for them to be on, which they weren't:
Obviously, this is some kind of political persecution of Musk, whom they hate for ideological reasons and are right there ready to harass, and as if they don't have enough businesses fleeing that city as it is. Given the state of the city, it's downright harassment.
After all, if someone had stolen the sign, they wouldn't have lifted a finger. But if Musk changes his own sign, well then send in the SWAT team.
What kind of city allowed criminals to roam free, fails to enforce any serious violent crime as such crimes happen all around, and then becomes johnny-the-spot over a supposedly illegal change of a street sign? Only a really nutty one -- one that doesn't deserve to have big enterprises such as Twitter, or 'X' or whatever Musk wants to call it, in its midst.
Image: Twitter screen shot