Charles Barkley ripped the city of San Francisco on Sunday during TNT’s alternative broadcast of the NBA All-Star Game as he talked to Basketball Hall of Famer Reggie Miller.
Barkley asked Miller which he would choose: playing in the cold in Indianapolis – where Miller spent his entire 18-year NBA career – or "being around a bunch of homeless crooks in San Francisco."
Golden State Warriors star Draymond Green called Barkley "crazy" and that Barkley was not "welcome" in the city. WNBA star Candace Parker said "we love San Francisco," but Barkley offered a retort.
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"No we don’t," he said. "… You can’t even walk around down there."
Green was emphatic with his pushback.
"Yes you can walk around," he said.
Barkley clapped back saying, "Yeah, with a bulletproof vest."
Crime and drug use was at a fever pitch in San Francisco last year. Business owners in the Tenderloin neighborhood expressed concerns about their futures last month because people "don’t feel safe" walking around the district.
In November, one resident said he was stunned by what he saw.
"This is a disgrace. I've been to 50-plus countries and traveled the world. I've never seen anything like this," Jeremy Bernier told FOX News' Carley Shimkus.
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"It's just ground zero of the fentanyl crisis. You've got people literally smoking fentanyl, taking these drugs out on the streets. You've got the tents and camps while you've got a playground with children playing right nearby, and this is blocks away from the mayor's office. It's just unbelievable to me that a city and country with such immense wealth can have such blatant poverty and suffering."
San Francisco officials tried to push back on the narrative last month, saying that the city’s crime rate was "lower than any period in the last ten years" aside from 2020. The city said there was a 7% decrease in crime from 2022 and a 13% decrease in crime from 2019.
SF Gate pointed out that motor vehicle theft was up from 2022 with 6,571 reported thefts in 2023 against 6,222 in 2022. Additionally, more robberies occurred in 2023 (2,693) than in 2022. SF Gate reported it was a 14.5% increase over the last year.
"Our work around public safety is making a difference, but we’ve got more work to do," San Francisco Mayor London Breed said in a release last month. "We are not letting up on our efforts to make San Francisco a safer and enjoyable city for everyone, and this includes continuing to ramp up police staffing and giving our local enforcement agencies the resources they need to do their job.
"I want to thank our local, state, and federal public safety partners for their collaboration. Together we are sending a message that San Francisco won’t tolerate rampant crime and that there will be accountability."
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