>> building a be moving forward. finding solutions. this is abc7 news. ♪ kristen: hi there. i'm kristen sze. you are watching "getting answers" on abc7. every day, we talk with experts about issues important to the bay area and we get answers for you in real time. today, twitter is back in the news, the san francisco bay's tech giant is making waves with a new logo and policies with regard to blue checkmarks. we will sort it all out with an expert from cnet. downtown san francisco has hit a new record high for office vacancies. the numbers are substantially higher than rates seen during 2008 and even the great recession. our media partner the substandard will be here to explain whether the city is hitting a breaking point.

first we will look at the crime narrative surrounding san francisco in the wake of bob lee being stabbed to death, some prominent said leaders -- tech leaders are declaring the city unsafe. is that fair or unsafe? lee's death has certainly captured the atten world. we have more. reporter: a memorial marking the block of the stabbing of executive bob lee. >> introducing technology in finance made it faster, safer and available for more people. that is the whole stor -- the whole story. reporter: was he considered a leader infant tech -- in

fintech? >> yes. reporter: he is very familiar with his world in fintech. calling. lee a true entrepreneur ahead of his time. he was the chief product officer at mobile coin. before his current job, he acted as cto of square and the creator of cashapp. >> he's ahead of his game because he saw that i don't have to have somebody in the middle, i can just send you the money, you will have the history of the transaction and i will have the history of the transaction. reporter: friends tell abc7 news he was back in san francisco for a business summit with mobile coin. lee's friend says the two had dinner last saturday, describing his spirits were high. >> he did not seem to have a care in the world, he was very excited about where things were going with mobile coin. it was very excited to be back in the bay for a bit. reporter: days later at 2:35 a.m. tuesday morning, police say lee dialed 911, telling dispatch

he had been stabbed but did not give them a location. friends say there were many innovative things he was still working on which would've helped people going forward. this tech expert does not doubt lee's dedication. >> people will look seriously and take it from that point and say we will fulfill his dream or legacy by going to the next level. karina: many in the -- kristen: many in the tech world are blooming his death in part on san francisco's policies. despite the fact that the investigation is in the early stages and there are many unknowns. alan alden is an investment fund portfolio manager who tweeted, "rest in peace, crazy bob. such a senseless death. i remember when he was so excited to show me cashapp for the first time. congratulations, your policies have claimed another life."

joining us to dive into the complexities of determining whether the city is becoming less safe and current policy has a role in it is insider phil matier. thanks for coming on. >> these are certainly challenging times when it comes to people's feelings about public safety not only in san francisco but around the bay area. kristen: a single incident is never a proof of any claim or narrative. you know this, i know this, even if they don't all know that on twitter. how do you begin to answer the question, is the city safe or unsafe? in a totally fact-based way? >> if we look at the statistics, the last ones we have are a couple of years back because they have a way of catching up, but the trends we see are that san francisco is not the most dangerous city in america. it's not the most dangerous city on the west coast. seattle is more dangerous for violent crime pr 100,000 people --

per 100,000 people new york is topping the list. we are not. san francisco it thought of as a land of oz, a magical place. it is a lot smaller than other cities. what happened in san francisco in recent years, it's not that necessarily have become unsafe, in terms of the total crime, although property crimes are still very high. oakland and san francisco are the top 10 cities in california topping the list. no matter where we stand on that chart you are seeing there, the fact is, it a spread around the city more in recent years. -- it has spread around the city more in recent years. whether your packages are being stolen off your porch, car broken into, or the ultimate tragedy, taking of a life. kristen: what we are seeing here are homicide rates. by that, san francisco's near the bottom. if you measure safety by that, you are feeling pretty safe. what about the fact some people don't define safety that way? you mentioned property crimes.

some have pegged their feelings of safety on that maybe. >> i was talking to someone at the mayor's office about the entire perception about san francisco. it starts out, it started with the open drug dealing and tents on the street. that was an image broadcast out to the world. then we had that infamous incredible video of the wall greens -- the this is another chapter. we had the woman down in the same neighborhood a couple of years back accosted and attacked by a man who is clearly out of -- was clearly out of his mind and it was caught on video. that was another one. it becomes a page in what they call the narrative. that's what the city is dealing with. anytime the city reports, we are putting more police on the streets, make it safer for shoppers, we have an incident where something just adds to the narrative.

so yes, statistics are one thing, your eyes and feelings are the other thing. which one rules the day? your eyes and feelings. kristen: and it's different for different people because people are different. in the video you talk about, those don't end up in the crime bucket. more things don't end up in the crime bucket now, right? >> that's right. when people say there's a feeling of lawlessness in the bay area or california or the state, some of that has to do with the fact that things used to be serious offenses are not serious anymore. that shoplifter you see for example, even if a policeman had stopped him, the chances are he would've just gotten a ticket because what he still is probably under the value of $950. which brings it up to a higher percentage -- charge. what we are seeing is, whether it is open drug use, shoplifting, a host of things going on, there's a feeling that it's not the same as it was a few years ago and the fact is,

it isn't. what used to be a major crime is now a lesser crime and that is what the stats don't include a lot of the times. kristen: stats are also relative when you compare to your neighbors. i want to bring in our neighborhood safety tracker. because it allows people to assess the safety of san francisco, oakland, san jose. based on the crimes that -- crime stat you choose. we are showing robberies in san francisco. 288 per 100,000 people. 265 incidents in the past 12 months. san jose, another bigger city, with more people in fact, more residents, robberies, less than half of san francisco 's and in terms of the rate less than half as well. some people may conclude, ok, if it seems like san francisco's less safe it is neighbors -- than its neighbor to the south. >> breaking into a c

stealing a catalytic converter from under a car does not put anybody necessarily at risk. however interrupting somebody while they are doing that can get you in some serious trouble. what we see here is the potential for something bad happening and the second is the statistics of when something bad happens. that is what we see. for every time there is an assault or something bad happens, how many times was there a situation where it could have gone that way? that is what people feel about safety. for example, bart, bart has a low serious crime rate. yet bart riders show one of their main concerns is not feeling safe because of the behavior they see out on it. san francisco, as i said, people at city hall said we have not going -- we have not gotten over the fact of the open drug dealing. that is the baseline. people don't feel safe with that.

they don't feel safe with the mentally ill on the street. what is different now from 15-20 years ago, it is much more random, much more random. not gang violence necessarily, random violence. you never know where it's going to pop up. you never know where something is going to happen whether it be a sideshow with a lot of people on their cars and motorcycles going crazy on an intersection in your neighborhood or a car getting broken into, let's say, out at the palace of fine arts, one of the most exclusive neighborhoods in the city, it knows no geographic bounds anymore and that is what we are seeing. kristen: bottom line, what's the impact of this high profile death here in terms of what they determined was the motive which we don't know at this point on the city at a time when it's wrestling with all those issues? >> it is not good, we so many things coming together at ones that are not good. we have tech layoffs, reduced workers in the inner core,

businesses boarding up daily, the homeless problem, all of these things coming together, we will have less money to deal with it and now we have this. it is a city that is very much -- that has very much been a success because of its image and right now that is one of its biggest challenges. kristen: phil, thank you so much. we showed you in our segment how to use our neighborhood safety tracker to look up different crimes in san francisco, oakland, or san jose. check it out for yourself on the homepage of abc7news.com. we will have much more on bob lee's coming up later today on abc7 news. iteam reporter stephanie sierra has the latest on the investigation. reporter leah melendez is digging into san francisco's homicide numbers and how many cases have been solved this year. our live team coverage continues in less than an hour on abc7 news beginning at 4 p.m. coming up -- what's trending with twitter? the giants is making headlines

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kristen: twitter is back in the news this week. something you may have thought of as an april fools joke is getting a lot of attention. the social media giant changed its logo from a bird to a doge, a reference to dogecoin. elon musk promised the blue verified checkmarks would be removed from accounts that didn't buy a premium twitter subscription. mind is still there and i didn't pay although the new york times

has somehow been stripped of its blue check mark this past weekend. joining us to talk about this is cnet's cultural reporter, abrar al-heeti. what was the reason behind the logo change? >> this was interesting. there was no official explanation, but there are two guesses. one twitter user said elon musk should buy twitter and change the board logo tilde dogecoin dog because he has been a huge advocate of dogecoin and he recently posted a screenshot of the conversation and said "as promised." that is one guess. another guess is he's also facing a lawsuit from dogecoin investors that say his behavior has led the price of it to drop. elon musk lawyers have tried to get the claim dismissed. and the timing kind of aligns with when he changed the logo to the doge. so it could be him trying to stick it to the man. but as with a lot of things with elon, it is anyone's guess.

kristen: all right. do you think it is temporary? >> i think it probably is temporary. i'm surprised it is still there. it has been a few days. it will probably be not long before we see things maybe go back to normal and we will see the bird again. kristen: it is a little wild, a share, a stock can search or drop based on a tweet or action by elon musk. he's done this before with other companies. >> absolutely. it's interesting to see the influence he has. when he started talking about dogecoin back in 2021, those prices really started to go up. is been interesting to see them fluctuate. that's kind of the case with cryoti. -- with crypto. but elon has a lot of influence. you are going to see that logo and you are going to look into it and it's not surprised that the price has surged

after that became the logo. when people see a random dog in the corner of the site, they are going to look into it and -- kristen: and the stock went up after they did that. everybody was prepared to lose their check mark over the weekend but apparently most of us did not lose it. why? >> i still have mine as well and don't subscribe to twitter blue. one reason is, it's possible to have been reports this is a manual process to remove those checkmarks. so it could take a little bit longer. we also have to think about the fact that twitter is a lot smaller than it used to be in terms of employees. a lot of people have been laid off or left. i could probably take longer to get around to removing the verification. a lot of people were confused. we were bracing ourselves to lose that check mark. a lot of us still have it. duchess people who were legacy verified but used to subscribe to twitter blue and stopped subscribing, they still have checkmarks, too. and might be a slow process.

he could potentially remove them later on but as of now everything is business as usual. kristen: except for the new york times -- the paper of record. first to be strict over the weekend -- stripped over the weekend. what's that about? >> elon musk has been very vocal speaking out against the new york times and any publication critical of him. the new york times has said they would not pay for twitter verification, and elon musk has really been pushing twitter blue. he really wants people to subscribe to get that extra revenue source. so when he found that the new york times said they weren't going to pay for that verification, he basically said then i will take it away and he did. that was the most high-profile example of seeing the checkmark disappear. that was an outlier in terms of everyone else has kind of cap going but the new york times did get knocked. kristen: explain to because twitter now has a rainbow of checkmarks, blue, gold, what does each mean? >> if you see a blue check mark,

it can mean one of two things, a person is legacy verified or they just subscribe to twitter blue. you have to proceed with caution and make sure that it is a source of information you want to trust. companies and brands will have the gold check mark. that is how you know that is really them. then there are great checkmarks for government organizations or political figures so you will see this on president joe biden's account or the u.n. account for example. kristen: but somebody can start an account with the twitter handle abrar al-heeti1111. and then pay for the subscription and get the blue check mark? >> i beg you not to but you totally can. [laughter] kristen: folks, be warned, make sure it's really abrar al-heeti. make sure it's really me. appreciate it. thanks for having me. kristen: coming up next -- empty office buildings in downtown san francisco. the sf standard say vacancy has hit a new level. is at a breaking point? --

kristen: san francisco's fighting many issues right now. one of them is the emptying out of downtown office buildings leading to a plunge in commercial real estate. our media partner of the sf standard has written an article about downtown san francisco vacancies hitting a record high as the city nears breaking point. joining us live now to talk about the impact is kevin truong. staff writer for the sf standard. how bad is the downtown office vacancy now? >> it is pretty bad. especially if you are looking at historical contexts. office vacancies according to real estate company cbre are around 30%. that is higher than the rate in the.com bust and great recession. kristen: what is considered normal? i know is nowhere near 30%. what is considered healthy? >> if we look into the

pre-pandemic times, 2019, we were seeing vacancies at under 5%. we have seen things go up by 600%. that is quite an increase. kristen: i'm sure prices have come way down, too. that's another bad indicator, the sublease market. what is that and how bad is that? >> the sublease market is when companies decide they want to vacate office buildings, but they are technically still leased. they will try to offload the space on the sublease market, basically try to find somebody to take at a lower price. we saw that come to record levels in early 2021 and the more concerning part is that number hasn't really dipped. it stayed around 10% of the entire market showing that folks are not really grabbing those up in a way to make in any larger office market. kristen: what factors have led to this vacancy epidemic? >> i would say two major

the pandemic and the way the pandemic has taught a lot of folks in the bay area to work from home. that sort of hybrid work, remote work, and your work culture has led to folks really leaving the traditional office building. kristen: no doubt, that's a major factor. but part of the whole how people are feeling about san francisco -- obviously this week we reported heavily on the high-profile stabbing death of a tech executive. is the question about safety a factor that comes up as you interview tech workers? >> yes. when i talked to real estate brokers and companies who are trying to make determinations on whether they should lease space, a lot of folks mention some of the public safety concerns, really leading to a bit of a divergence in the types of neighborhoods where companies are going into. places like midmarket, the civic center have seen a real decline in interest whereas you have places like the financial district which are actually

seeing more interest than some of those others. kristen: different neighborhood to neighborhood. what is the vacancy issue at 30% mean for the evaluation of these properties? >> essentially, if you think about a building, it is valued based off of its income flows. the amount of revenue that comes in from folks paying rent. if you have less folks paying rent, or no folks paying rents, that really cuts the value of the buildings. you have some buildings going at 50% of what they were going in the pre-pandemic era and i've heard of one building that is actually getting bids at a quarter of its pre-pandemic price. kristen: when like that, what does that mean for the city? why is it so important to the city? >> a lot of where the city gets its revenue from and the way that it pays for social services and other services that we enjoy every day is through taxes. a big portion of that is

property tax and business tax. business tax cuts decreased when businesses pull out of san francisco or choose to work less in san francisco. property tax decreases when the value of the building goes down. those are the major factors helping to float the budget. you can see why we are in a bit of a budget deficit. kristen: i see. if my building used to be worth $10 million and now it is worth $5 million, i'm paying half the property taxes that i used to and that is half the money that is not ending up in city coffers for social services. we've got to go. how does this trickle down -- i want to get to this one because it's very important, two supervisors in san francisco introduced measures to streamline what would be the conversion of some of these vacant offices to residential units. would that help the economy or not? >> if you are going to take these buildings which are mostly empty or vacant and transform them into something that can make the neighborhood more

vibrant, more livable, and bring folks into downtown where we have really seen a hollowing out, i can only see that is a good thing. kristen: sf standard reporter kevin truong, thank you so much. appreciate it. you can check out more of the san francisco standard's other original reporting on their website, sfstandard.com. we'll be right back.

kristen: thank you so much for joining us today for "getting answers." we will be here every weekday at 3:00 p.m. answering questions with experts from around the bay area. coming up at 4 p.m., the very

latest on the investigation into the death of tech executive bob lee. "world news tonight" with david muir is next. have a great day. ♪ ♪ >> tonight, several developing stories as we come on the air. @the heated showdown at the stae capital in tennessee, a vote to expel three democratic lawmakers by the republican-controlled house is now underway after protesting for gun reform in the wake of the deadly school shooting in nashville. if the speaker of the house accuses them of trying to insight and insurrection. all three lawmakers defiantly walking into the state capital today cheered on by the supporters. alex perez is in nashville. also tonight, there government report america's chaotic report from -- withdrawal from afghanistan. evacuations from kabul should have happened sooner and faster. 13 u.s. service members died in the final days of the 20-year war. the afghan government immediately fell to the taliban and the time present if body called evacuation an extrao