Perhaps that somewhat accounts for your differing impressions? It's possible, but I think I'm accounting for that by basing mostly on personal acquaintances ra

Perhaps that somewhat accounts for your differing impressions? It's possible, but I think I'm accounting for that by basing mostly on personal acquaintances rather than reporting. I'm pretty sure that I know approximately the same number of people in both places, though, and I'm aware of at least 10 times the number of people who have been victims of property crime in California than in Wisconsin, and the ratio for muggings and robberies is even higher. Over about 10 years my shop is Oakland was burglarized, and my parked (and locked) car was broken into a couple times, and then in a separate incident stolen from the lot of a transmission repair shop (which I have to say, statistically must be a poor place to steal a reliable vehicle). While I personally haven't been a victim of any violence, several friends and employees have been. My impression is that this is well within the norm for the area. The county level data is interesting, and I think may go to show that the problems areas occur at a finer granularity. there are a lot of smaller areas with severe problems. The Oakland police department, in particular, is famous for (among other things) announcing that "officers would no longer be dispatched to take reports for most nonviolent crimes" and that although you are still encourages to file reports online, "There will be no follow-up investigation and the primary purpose for filing the report is for insurance purposes". http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Oakland-cops-not-coming-unless-crime-is-violent-3181544.php http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Oakland-cops-not-coming-... My point though isn't that crime isn't so much worse in Oakland than it is elsewhere, but that I have to think that the chosen approach is exacerbating some of the problems that exist, and that it's likely that the situation will continue to deteriorate unless the approach changes.