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> I like that the city is generally safer than the rest of America. Coming from New Hampshire: this is just fantastically untrue. NYC is about one hundred time

> I like that the city is generally safer than the rest of America. Coming from New Hampshire: this is just fantastically untrue. NYC is about one hundred times more violent than where I live. It is so thoroughly not the same that I can usually tell when people come from cities simply based on how nervous they are. I think most people don't realize how badly it affects them, or how violent cities are versus "the rest of America". Some crime stats: https://imgur.com/a/qDKqC59 https://imgur.com/a/qDKqC59 edit: NYC has 5.8 violent crimes per 1,000 people, which is 45% more violent than the USA median (4.0). I have no idea how 45% more violent got a reputation as "safer than the rest of America" but it's not true.

FredPret 4y ago
Why would crime stats be expressed by square mile? To purposefully make NYC look bad?
- deleted 4y ago
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- neogodless 4y ago
  The other graph is Per Capita. And while this reminds me of XKCD: Heatmap[0], the density of crime also matters when it's where you live, and the actual proximity you are to frequent violent crimes. [0] https://xkcd.com/1138/ https://xkcd.com/1138/
orange_joe 4y ago
NYC is generally safer than the rest of America. NH is typically the safest region in the entire country. But the truth is that there are high numbers of relatively rural areas that are substantially more dangerous than NYC. Also, I think that crimes/mile is fairly un-instructive because of how much the legal boundaries of a city shift/as well as the amount that a person will travel in a given location (I live in NYC, and probably live/work/eat within a 1.5-2 mile range). p.s. I really like your content!
- simonsarris 4y ago
  > NYC is generally safer than the rest of America. I don't think that's true: NYC is at 5.8 violent crimes per 1,000, and the national median sits at 4.0. That's 45% more violent than the median. That's not small! I feel like some PR firm must have implanted this idea in everyone's minds that NYC is somehow magically safer, but it's not showing up in the stats, and if the stats are skewed by reporting its almost certainly worse, not better.
  - nanidin 4y ago
    I don’t think the relative percent is a good way to compare 5.8 per 1000 vs 4.0 per 1000. It can easily be flipped to show that NYC is only 0.18% less safe than the national median.
  - function_seven 4y ago
    I have a sneaking suspicion that New Yorkers who think NYC is safe are comparing it to 1980s NY, rather than contemporary $other_region. Or maybe they're only comparing themselves to Chicago and Rio de Janeiro?
    - bobthepanda 4y ago
      I’ve heard this stat before, but comparing to large cities. NY is generally safer than Chicago, LA, Seattle, Boston, and Fort Worth; Wikipedia places it in 59th place for most violent crime per capita amongst the nation’s largest 100 cities.
      - ghaff 4y ago
        The problem with any of these comparisons is that cities are very heterogeneous. In Boston, the Back Bay != Roxbury and in NYC, the West Village != the South Bronx. However, at least absent a doorman, I probably wouldn't leave a door unlocked or an accessible window ajar the way I routinely do in my (only) semi-rural home in New England. When I visit people in cities, I have to consciously remember that they'll be unhappy if I am casual about such things like I am at home.
vjk800 4y ago
Indeed. I come from a rural village where I could leave my bicycle unlocked over night at the center of the village and it wouldn't get stolen. When I moved to a city, one realization I made was that cycling is just a lot less convenient if you have to worry about your bicycle getting stolen. Also I can't leave my home door unlocked when I go somewhere (and thus have to remember to take the keys with me). I think small stuff like this just adds to your total anxiety without you even realizing it. It's really sad how difficult it is to live in extremely safe, small villages like my childhood home nowadays.
- googlryas 4y ago
  There are big city fixes for this. For example, most big cities offer bikeshares with docking stations all over the most popular places. So you can just use one of those bikes and not have to worry about theft.
  - hamandcheese 4y ago
    In SF those aren't very cheap, and you also replace the anxiety of "will my bike be stolen" with "will there be any bikes left when I need one?" and "will there be any docking stations available near my destination?" I use bike shares opportunistically, but they are not a reliable mode of transport.
    - Jcowell 4y ago
      In NY I’ve yet to see this happen. Rather it’s an issue of , is there anywhere to dock the bike. The outer boroughs are also experimenting with Electric Scooters.
    - filmgirlcw 4y ago
      CitiBikes in NYC are a bit different than in SF. Honestly, bike theft is an anecdotal thing and it’s def a problem in New York, but I definitely think it is worse in SF. As a pure anecdote, my husband had his bike outside in Prospect Heights for 3 or 4 years literally not moved. It had a lock but he didn’t even use the bike. It got weathered and abused and after literal years, I think it was finally stolen. In Seattle, where his has been broken into multiple times in a locked garage in our luxury building, I have no doubt that an untouched bike would have lasted a few weeks at most. But that’s all anecdotal. I can say that in the 5 years or so that I used the CitiBike system, I never had a problem either finding a bike and the pricing was also more than fair. I frequently would take a bike from near Union Square and ride across the Brooklyn Bridge home on nice afternoons. I never once had a problem getting a bike or returning it to its drop off place near my apartment. And the app/locator lets you know the status of bikes at any time so you can know if there is a bike at a specific site or not. This might have changed in the last few years, but if anything, the city had a hard time convincing people to use the bikes. The system is a lot more efficient than the Lime bike/scooter setup that a lot of other cities like Seattle have (people in Seattle also don’t know how to use bike lanes and use the fucking sidewalks like assholes, because Seattle).
irrational 4y ago
I had similar thoughts. I live on the west coast and feel so safe that I don't even lock the front door to my house, ever. I wonder if OP feels safe enough to always have their front door unlocked.
- esoterica 4y ago
  - irrational 4y ago
    The thing is, I don't live in a rural area. I live in a suburb of a major city.
  - tmh88j 4y ago
    > Whether or not you lock your door has more to do with cultural attitudes towards risk > People in rural areas don’t lock their doors for the same reason they don’t wear seatbelts and drive drunk everywhere. They just don’t care. Do you think the attitude towards risk is because they truly don't care about having their belongings stolen, or because they know there is less risk of that happening? Having lived in a rural area and in a few cities, my experience is the latter. No one wants to be robbed. Also, people in rural areas driving drunk is mostly due to lack of transportation options. I'm certainly not condoning it, but Uber doesn't travel out into the sticks and there is no bus or train to hop on.
    - lovich 4y ago
      > Also, people in rural areas driving drunk is mostly due to lack of transportation options. I'm certainly not condoning it, but Uber doesn't travel out into the sticks and there is no bus or train to hop on. I don’t think that refutes their point that they don’t care. Having come from a rural area myself, the decision was to drink at home or a friends I was staying over at rather than drive drunk. They don’t care about the consequences compared to doing what they want
      - 4y ago
AlotOfReading 4y ago
I can't find similar numbers to yours for any definition of 'violent crime' I found numbers for, but assuming they're true, it's still missing the point. Amherst is a wealthy community in a wealthy, low crime state. It'd be like pointing to a border town to make the opposite argument.
- simonsarris 4y ago
  As I mentioned down-thread, NYC has 45% more violent crime than the national median. It's simply not a "low crime" place, despite the PR.
  - esoterica 4y ago
    NYC has a lower homicide rate than America, and that is the only category of crime that is mostly consistently reported across jurisdictions. Every other category of crime basically varies by an order of magnitude from place to place depending on accuracy of reporting.
    - HFguy 4y ago
      This is important point. Apples and oranges.
  - staticassertion 4y ago
    What about Manhattan? What about lower Manhattan? The reality is that NYC is large and there's bodies of water separating huge parts of the city. Talking about crime in NYC seems really silly because you're going to be talking about tons of neighborhoods that you're just never, ever going to end up even close to.
    - simonsarris 4y ago
      We are already talking about Manhattan (New York, NY), it is where these numbers are from, and what the OP article is about. Obviously in The Bronx the numbers are much worse (9.28), and in Brooklyn they're a tiny bit better (5.43) but still well over USA median. Queens (3.25) is safer than median, though.
esoterica 4y ago
The sheer audacity of comparing crime in cities to rural areas on a per square mile basis. Parent commenter is completely correct that NYC is safer not just than the average location in America, but also the average rural area. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-06-07/is-new-york-city-more-dangerous-than-rural-america https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-06-07/is-new... Maybe your very specific neck of the woods is very rich and safe but I don’t know why you felt the need to butt in and make the conversation about you, OP never claimed that NYC was the absolute number 1 safest place in the country.
deleted 4y ago
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kristjansson 4y ago
100x is shocking, so I explored a bit. Over 2010-2020 Amherst PD reported ~5 violent crimes per year[1], in a town of ~10000, or about 50 per 100000. NYPD reported ~49k per year over the same period[ibid], on about 8.3m residents, or about about 590 per 100000. So about 11x difference in per-capita reported-to-local-PD crime. I'll admit I'm surprised it's still an order of magnitude, I share GP's sensibility that the cities are generally much safer than perceived [1] https://crime-data-explorer.fr.cloud.gov/pages/explorer/crime/crime-trend https://crime-data-explorer.fr.cloud.gov/pages/explorer/crim...
- chimeracoder 4y ago
  "Violent crime" is not a consistently defined or tracked category across cities, so it isn't comparable. The NYPD has a notoriously... loose definition of "violent crime", to the point where it counts things that no reasonable person would be thinking of when they hear that term. For this reason, researchers typically use homocides to make comparisons, because that's consistently defined and tracked across jurisdictions, and because it's harder to manipulate those statistics when recording. NYC - particularly Manhattan - has a much lower homocide rate than other places.
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  - kristjansson 4y ago
    Very fair point, my comment should be read as a worst-case estimate of the comparison. In homicide terms, GP's town averages ~2 per 100k (although they haven't had one for the last few years) while NYC averages ~4 per 100k.
- bufferoverflow 4y ago
  I am not surprised. NYC gave up on violent crime. It's Democrat's policy. Same as in Chicago, SF, Los Angeles, and many other Democrat-run cities. One of the reasons I left NYC. I'm now in one of the safest neighborhoods, we have virtually no violent crime, except from the occasional visiting criminals.
Reubachi 4y ago
Also in NH, and I would say my perception is the opposite of your facts.I've spent lots of time all over the city at different times of day/year across decades. I would still say Manchester, Rochester, Nashua ETC are 10x trashier and more neglected than even the most run down alley in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens.
- tclancy 4y ago
  I think that would be stretching it, but yeah, everywhere has good and bad. I walked a lot of SF at night when visiting for work and went to some less than savory places that felt no riskier than the worst of Rochester, but that’s a low bar. That said, I shared a Lyft to the airport pre-dawn one time and where we picked up the other rider was a little more exciting than I would ever want to be.
googlryas 4y ago
Presumably OP was just talking about Manhattan or something, maybe even Manhattan below 110th st, and not the less nice parts of the Bronx or Queens or Brooklyn that they never go to.
derekdahmer 4y ago
The NYC crime rate varies wildly by neighborhood so I don't think its very useful to compare city-wide crime stats. For example, the felony assault rate is literally 10x higher in parts of the Bronx than on the UES. If you live and work in safer neighborhoods the city will appear to be very safe to you. In NYC the most dangerous areas are pretty far out from (edit: downtown) Manhattan and you'd really have to go out of your way to get there. Anecdotally I lived in Chelsea and worked in Union Square for a few years and never witnessed any real crime, violent or otherwise. By comparison I also lived in SF where the bad parts are unavoidably located in the center of the city and I've witnessed multiple violent crimes over a similar time period. The neighborhoods in a city you pass through on a day to day basis really matter in terms of defining your experience. Check out this map for stats: https://maps.nyc.gov/crime/ https://maps.nyc.gov/crime/
- bogomipz 4y ago
  >"The NYC crime rate varies wildly by neighborhood so I don't think its very useful to compare city-wide crime stats. For example, the felony assault rate is literally 10x higher in parts of the Bronx than on the UES. If you live and work in safer neighborhoods the city will appear to be very safe to you." This makes no sense. It's a mobile city. You can live on the UWS but have to go downtown to see a doctor, or work in midtown but commute in from the Bronx or Queens to go to work. The vast majority do not live and work in the same neighborhood let alone work and live in the same nice and safe neighborhood. >"Anecdotally I lived in Chelsea and worked in Union Square for a few years and never witnessed any real crime, violent or otherwise." Not only is that a walking commute but there is literally not a single bad block between anywhere in Chelsea and Union Square. >"The neighborhoods in a city you pass through on a day to day basis really matter in terms of defining your experience." Yes exactly, where do you think all of the service workers that are back bone of the city travel through on their commute, often at night? Hint, it's not Chelsea.
  - cstrahan 4y ago
    I think you and GP are on the same page. GP isn’t saying that life in the city is safe for everyone, the point is that it is safe for some, depending on where they frequent, how/where the commute, etc. If I was thinking of moving to somewhere in NYC, I would want to know just that: could I live there safely? If someone answers that topic with “well, many people are exposed to crime, and it’s really unfortunate, and change is really desired”, that’s all true, but that doesn’t answer my question. If one were to tell me “yes, it can be fairly safe if you have the means to live here, and commute over there, and mostly hang around this place”, that doesn’t somehow minimize or deny the plight of those who are less fortunate. These are two separate topics that are both worth discussing. Edit: I now live in Dallas. I don’t know about crime stats at the moment, but if you’ll allow me to speak of how safe I feel in the city: I would say that there’s no way to live in Dallas (assuming you want an active social life that involves music, drinks, shows, etc) that feels safe. The usual hangout spots in Dallas (e.g. Deep Ellum) are right next to shady overpasses, sections of street with vacant buildings with busted out windows and broken street lights. So much of the city is in a state of disrepair. I feel like I’m gambling with my life if I go anywhere remotely interesting in Dallas. When I lived in Carrol Gardens in Brooklyn, I could walk to the coffee shop, or go to dozens of great restaurants and shops, get late night tacos or pizza, and never feel like I was in a sketchy area. Granted, I was privileged to have the means to live where I did. If someone then asks me where I would prefer to live on the basis of apparent safety, I would say Brooklyn. If I was then asked if everyone feels safe in Brooklyn, I would say “no” — if you live in a low income, high crime area, you’re not going to feel safe — and that’s an unfortunate reality for many people. Both things are simultaneously true.
nanidin 4y ago
I don’t think the relative percent is a good way to compare 5.8 per 1000 vs 4.0 per 1000. It can easily be flipped to show that NYC is only 0.18% less safe than the national median.
brandonwags 4y ago
Safety in crowds, this is a big generalization. As someone who just moved in from Chicago, I feel exponentially safer in NYC.
- filmgirlcw 4y ago
  Totally. I said this in another comment too. Being around so many other people does have a sense of safety to it. Especially late at night.
woodruffw 4y ago
Where did these numbers come from? You linked to a screenshot of a spreadsheet, but not its source. From a random search, I got 2.8 violent crimes per 1,000 people citywide, which means all 5 boroughs. For just New York county (Manhattan), the most official statistic I could find is 4.57 in 2019[2]. [1]: https://www.lx.com/community/nyc-crime-rates-how-dangerous-is-new-york-city/51473/ https://www.lx.com/community/nyc-crime-rates-how-dangerous-i... [2]: https://criminaljustice.cityofnewyork.us/individual_charts/violent-crime-rate-by-borough/ https://criminaljustice.cityofnewyork.us/individual_charts/v...
- simonsarris 4y ago
  I'm using NeighborhoodScout. Here's Manhattan: https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/ny/new-york/crime https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/ny/new-york/crime
ryandrake 4y ago
> It is so thoroughly not the same that I can usually tell when people come from cities simply based on how nervous they are. I think, at least in today's culturally polarized environment, there are a lot of people who would be understandably nervous and on guard traveling to rural America, and it has nothing to do with what crime looks like in their home city.
fritztastic 4y ago
Someone's feeling of safety/nervousness has more to do with a variety of different variables that are unique to them, the place in question, and the situation they're in. Personally, I'd rather be alone on foot in NYC than alone on foot in some small town where I'd stand out. Maybe because I grew up in a city and have traveled to many places, maybe because of my characteristics that make me feel vulnerable when I'm the outsider in a less diverse area, or maybe because I've lived in a city far more violent than NYC- so for me the things I visit for are worth the possible risk of crime. NYC isn't even on the top 50 most violent cities in the world, which is quite a feat when you consider how things used to be there in the 80s/90s.
periphrasis 4y ago
One thing this thread has reminded me of is that for all the lip service conservatives pay to toughness and manly traditional gender roles, they certainly seem to live in abject terror of being the victim of a crime.
RC_ITR 4y ago
It’s weird that “safety” in America always comes back to violent crime. There’s hospital quality, time spent in private automobiles (one of the most dangerous things Americans do), risk of natural disaster, etc etc. I think it’s very reflective of an anti-urban bias
harryh 4y ago
NYC is safer that virtually anywhere else in America when you look at both crime statistics and auto fatalities. Ignoring the 2nd is a major omission. I don't have stats for Amherst specifically, but here is a comparison between NYC and NH as a whole: NYC: 5.5 murders per 100k + 1.6 auto fatalities per 100k = 6.1 deaths per 100k NH: 1.0 murders per 100k + 8.9 auto fatalities per 100k = 9.9 deaths per 100k
abeppu 4y ago
Actually, how trustworthy are those stats as a measure of actual crime or safety? I think this effect might actually push the difference to be a bit more extreme; at least several years ago I know the NYPD had a scandal about systemically under-reporting or downgrading crimes. Has this _actually_ improved since then, or did they just "discipline" a handful of people? Do other law enforcement agencies have similar problems? However, I do also think an important question is "safe for whom?" Depending on your race, sexual orientation, gender presentation, etc, rural American communities can foster their own distinct unease. Those are the places where you keep your head down, self-censor, try not to draw attention. When is the absence of reported crimes in a state which is 92.8% white "safety" and when is it something else? https://www.reuters.com/article/us-crime-newyork-statistics/nypd-report-confirms-manipulation-of-crime-stats-idUSBRE82818620120309 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-crime-newyork-statistics/...
lkbm 4y ago
Violent crime is not what makes me unsafe. Violent negligence is: 8.35 per thousand as of 2019[0]. If you want to demonstrate that NYC is less safe (and it may well be), focus on the high risk factors, not the salient ones. [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/191720/traffic-related-injury-rate-per-100000-us-population-since-1988/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/191720/traffic-related-i...
cmonagle 4y ago
It's also worth noting that Manchester, NH, which is where an Amherst resident is likely to spend a non negligible amount of time (nearest shopping mall, hospital, etc), has a comparable (slightly higher violent, much higher property) crime rate than NYC.

FredPret 4y ago

Why would crime stats be expressed by square mile? To purposefully make NYC look bad?

deleted 4y ago
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neogodless 4y ago
The other graph is Per Capita. And while this reminds me of XKCD: Heatmap[0], the density of crime also matters when it's where you live, and the actual proximity you are to frequent violent crimes. [0] https://xkcd.com/1138/ https://xkcd.com/1138/

orange_joe 4y ago

NYC is generally safer than the rest of America. NH is typically the safest region in the entire country. But the truth is that there are high numbers of relatively rural areas that are substantially more dangerous than NYC. Also, I think that crimes/mile is fairly un-instructive because of how much the legal boundaries of a city shift/as well as the amount that a person will travel in a given location (I live in NYC, and probably live/work/eat within a 1.5-2 mile range). p.s. I really like your content!

simonsarris 4y ago
> NYC is generally safer than the rest of America. I don't think that's true: NYC is at 5.8 violent crimes per 1,000, and the national median sits at 4.0. That's 45% more violent than the median. That's not small! I feel like some PR firm must have implanted this idea in everyone's minds that NYC is somehow magically safer, but it's not showing up in the stats, and if the stats are skewed by reporting its almost certainly worse, not better.
- nanidin 4y ago
  I don’t think the relative percent is a good way to compare 5.8 per 1000 vs 4.0 per 1000. It can easily be flipped to show that NYC is only 0.18% less safe than the national median.
- function_seven 4y ago
  I have a sneaking suspicion that New Yorkers who think NYC is safe are comparing it to 1980s NY, rather than contemporary $other_region. Or maybe they're only comparing themselves to Chicago and Rio de Janeiro?
  - bobthepanda 4y ago
    I’ve heard this stat before, but comparing to large cities. NY is generally safer than Chicago, LA, Seattle, Boston, and Fort Worth; Wikipedia places it in 59th place for most violent crime per capita amongst the nation’s largest 100 cities.
    - ghaff 4y ago
      The problem with any of these comparisons is that cities are very heterogeneous. In Boston, the Back Bay != Roxbury and in NYC, the West Village != the South Bronx. However, at least absent a doorman, I probably wouldn't leave a door unlocked or an accessible window ajar the way I routinely do in my (only) semi-rural home in New England. When I visit people in cities, I have to consciously remember that they'll be unhappy if I am casual about such things like I am at home.

vjk800 4y ago

Indeed. I come from a rural village where I could leave my bicycle unlocked over night at the center of the village and it wouldn't get stolen. When I moved to a city, one realization I made was that cycling is just a lot less convenient if you have to worry about your bicycle getting stolen. Also I can't leave my home door unlocked when I go somewhere (and thus have to remember to take the keys with me). I think small stuff like this just adds to your total anxiety without you even realizing it. It's really sad how difficult it is to live in extremely safe, small villages like my childhood home nowadays.

googlryas 4y ago
There are big city fixes for this. For example, most big cities offer bikeshares with docking stations all over the most popular places. So you can just use one of those bikes and not have to worry about theft.
- hamandcheese 4y ago
  In SF those aren't very cheap, and you also replace the anxiety of "will my bike be stolen" with "will there be any bikes left when I need one?" and "will there be any docking stations available near my destination?" I use bike shares opportunistically, but they are not a reliable mode of transport.
  - Jcowell 4y ago
    In NY I’ve yet to see this happen. Rather it’s an issue of , is there anywhere to dock the bike. The outer boroughs are also experimenting with Electric Scooters.
  - filmgirlcw 4y ago
    CitiBikes in NYC are a bit different than in SF. Honestly, bike theft is an anecdotal thing and it’s def a problem in New York, but I definitely think it is worse in SF. As a pure anecdote, my husband had his bike outside in Prospect Heights for 3 or 4 years literally not moved. It had a lock but he didn’t even use the bike. It got weathered and abused and after literal years, I think it was finally stolen. In Seattle, where his has been broken into multiple times in a locked garage in our luxury building, I have no doubt that an untouched bike would have lasted a few weeks at most. But that’s all anecdotal. I can say that in the 5 years or so that I used the CitiBike system, I never had a problem either finding a bike and the pricing was also more than fair. I frequently would take a bike from near Union Square and ride across the Brooklyn Bridge home on nice afternoons. I never once had a problem getting a bike or returning it to its drop off place near my apartment. And the app/locator lets you know the status of bikes at any time so you can know if there is a bike at a specific site or not. This might have changed in the last few years, but if anything, the city had a hard time convincing people to use the bikes. The system is a lot more efficient than the Lime bike/scooter setup that a lot of other cities like Seattle have (people in Seattle also don’t know how to use bike lanes and use the fucking sidewalks like assholes, because Seattle).

irrational 4y ago

I had similar thoughts. I live on the west coast and feel so safe that I don't even lock the front door to my house, ever. I wonder if OP feels safe enough to always have their front door unlocked.

esoterica 4y ago
- irrational 4y ago
  The thing is, I don't live in a rural area. I live in a suburb of a major city.
- tmh88j 4y ago
  > Whether or not you lock your door has more to do with cultural attitudes towards risk > People in rural areas don’t lock their doors for the same reason they don’t wear seatbelts and drive drunk everywhere. They just don’t care. Do you think the attitude towards risk is because they truly don't care about having their belongings stolen, or because they know there is less risk of that happening? Having lived in a rural area and in a few cities, my experience is the latter. No one wants to be robbed. Also, people in rural areas driving drunk is mostly due to lack of transportation options. I'm certainly not condoning it, but Uber doesn't travel out into the sticks and there is no bus or train to hop on.
  - lovich 4y ago
    > Also, people in rural areas driving drunk is mostly due to lack of transportation options. I'm certainly not condoning it, but Uber doesn't travel out into the sticks and there is no bus or train to hop on. I don’t think that refutes their point that they don’t care. Having come from a rural area myself, the decision was to drink at home or a friends I was staying over at rather than drive drunk. They don’t care about the consequences compared to doing what they want
    - 4y ago

AlotOfReading 4y ago

I can't find similar numbers to yours for any definition of 'violent crime' I found numbers for, but assuming they're true, it's still missing the point. Amherst is a wealthy community in a wealthy, low crime state. It'd be like pointing to a border town to make the opposite argument.

simonsarris 4y ago
As I mentioned down-thread, NYC has 45% more violent crime than the national median. It's simply not a "low crime" place, despite the PR.
- esoterica 4y ago
  NYC has a lower homicide rate than America, and that is the only category of crime that is mostly consistently reported across jurisdictions. Every other category of crime basically varies by an order of magnitude from place to place depending on accuracy of reporting.
  - HFguy 4y ago
    This is important point. Apples and oranges.
- staticassertion 4y ago
  What about Manhattan? What about lower Manhattan? The reality is that NYC is large and there's bodies of water separating huge parts of the city. Talking about crime in NYC seems really silly because you're going to be talking about tons of neighborhoods that you're just never, ever going to end up even close to.
  - simonsarris 4y ago
    We are already talking about Manhattan (New York, NY), it is where these numbers are from, and what the OP article is about. Obviously in The Bronx the numbers are much worse (9.28), and in Brooklyn they're a tiny bit better (5.43) but still well over USA median. Queens (3.25) is safer than median, though.

esoterica 4y ago

The sheer audacity of comparing crime in cities to rural areas on a per square mile basis. Parent commenter is completely correct that NYC is safer not just than the average location in America, but also the average rural area. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-06-07/is-new-york-city-more-dangerous-than-rural-america https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-06-07/is-new... Maybe your very specific neck of the woods is very rich and safe but I don’t know why you felt the need to butt in and make the conversation about you, OP never claimed that NYC was the absolute number 1 safest place in the country.

deleted 4y ago

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kristjansson 4y ago

100x is shocking, so I explored a bit. Over 2010-2020 Amherst PD reported ~5 violent crimes per year[1], in a town of ~10000, or about 50 per 100000. NYPD reported ~49k per year over the same period[ibid], on about 8.3m residents, or about about 590 per 100000. So about 11x difference in per-capita reported-to-local-PD crime. I'll admit I'm surprised it's still an order of magnitude, I share GP's sensibility that the cities are generally much safer than perceived [1] https://crime-data-explorer.fr.cloud.gov/pages/explorer/crime/crime-trend https://crime-data-explorer.fr.cloud.gov/pages/explorer/crim...

chimeracoder 4y ago
"Violent crime" is not a consistently defined or tracked category across cities, so it isn't comparable. The NYPD has a notoriously... loose definition of "violent crime", to the point where it counts things that no reasonable person would be thinking of when they hear that term. For this reason, researchers typically use homocides to make comparisons, because that's consistently defined and tracked across jurisdictions, and because it's harder to manipulate those statistics when recording. NYC - particularly Manhattan - has a much lower homocide rate than other places.
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- kristjansson 4y ago
  Very fair point, my comment should be read as a worst-case estimate of the comparison. In homicide terms, GP's town averages ~2 per 100k (although they haven't had one for the last few years) while NYC averages ~4 per 100k.
bufferoverflow 4y ago
I am not surprised. NYC gave up on violent crime. It's Democrat's policy. Same as in Chicago, SF, Los Angeles, and many other Democrat-run cities. One of the reasons I left NYC. I'm now in one of the safest neighborhoods, we have virtually no violent crime, except from the occasional visiting criminals.

Reubachi 4y ago

Also in NH, and I would say my perception is the opposite of your facts.I've spent lots of time all over the city at different times of day/year across decades. I would still say Manchester, Rochester, Nashua ETC are 10x trashier and more neglected than even the most run down alley in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens.

tclancy 4y ago
I think that would be stretching it, but yeah, everywhere has good and bad. I walked a lot of SF at night when visiting for work and went to some less than savory places that felt no riskier than the worst of Rochester, but that’s a low bar. That said, I shared a Lyft to the airport pre-dawn one time and where we picked up the other rider was a little more exciting than I would ever want to be.

googlryas 4y ago

Presumably OP was just talking about Manhattan or something, maybe even Manhattan below 110th st, and not the less nice parts of the Bronx or Queens or Brooklyn that they never go to.

derekdahmer 4y ago

The NYC crime rate varies wildly by neighborhood so I don't think its very useful to compare city-wide crime stats. For example, the felony assault rate is literally 10x higher in parts of the Bronx than on the UES. If you live and work in safer neighborhoods the city will appear to be very safe to you. In NYC the most dangerous areas are pretty far out from (edit: downtown) Manhattan and you'd really have to go out of your way to get there. Anecdotally I lived in Chelsea and worked in Union Square for a few years and never witnessed any real crime, violent or otherwise. By comparison I also lived in SF where the bad parts are unavoidably located in the center of the city and I've witnessed multiple violent crimes over a similar time period. The neighborhoods in a city you pass through on a day to day basis really matter in terms of defining your experience. Check out this map for stats: https://maps.nyc.gov/crime/ https://maps.nyc.gov/crime/

bogomipz 4y ago
>"The NYC crime rate varies wildly by neighborhood so I don't think its very useful to compare city-wide crime stats. For example, the felony assault rate is literally 10x higher in parts of the Bronx than on the UES. If you live and work in safer neighborhoods the city will appear to be very safe to you." This makes no sense. It's a mobile city. You can live on the UWS but have to go downtown to see a doctor, or work in midtown but commute in from the Bronx or Queens to go to work. The vast majority do not live and work in the same neighborhood let alone work and live in the same nice and safe neighborhood. >"Anecdotally I lived in Chelsea and worked in Union Square for a few years and never witnessed any real crime, violent or otherwise." Not only is that a walking commute but there is literally not a single bad block between anywhere in Chelsea and Union Square. >"The neighborhoods in a city you pass through on a day to day basis really matter in terms of defining your experience." Yes exactly, where do you think all of the service workers that are back bone of the city travel through on their commute, often at night? Hint, it's not Chelsea.
- cstrahan 4y ago
  I think you and GP are on the same page. GP isn’t saying that life in the city is safe for everyone, the point is that it is safe for some, depending on where they frequent, how/where the commute, etc. If I was thinking of moving to somewhere in NYC, I would want to know just that: could I live there safely? If someone answers that topic with “well, many people are exposed to crime, and it’s really unfortunate, and change is really desired”, that’s all true, but that doesn’t answer my question. If one were to tell me “yes, it can be fairly safe if you have the means to live here, and commute over there, and mostly hang around this place”, that doesn’t somehow minimize or deny the plight of those who are less fortunate. These are two separate topics that are both worth discussing. Edit: I now live in Dallas. I don’t know about crime stats at the moment, but if you’ll allow me to speak of how safe I feel in the city: I would say that there’s no way to live in Dallas (assuming you want an active social life that involves music, drinks, shows, etc) that feels safe. The usual hangout spots in Dallas (e.g. Deep Ellum) are right next to shady overpasses, sections of street with vacant buildings with busted out windows and broken street lights. So much of the city is in a state of disrepair. I feel like I’m gambling with my life if I go anywhere remotely interesting in Dallas. When I lived in Carrol Gardens in Brooklyn, I could walk to the coffee shop, or go to dozens of great restaurants and shops, get late night tacos or pizza, and never feel like I was in a sketchy area. Granted, I was privileged to have the means to live where I did. If someone then asks me where I would prefer to live on the basis of apparent safety, I would say Brooklyn. If I was then asked if everyone feels safe in Brooklyn, I would say “no” — if you live in a low income, high crime area, you’re not going to feel safe — and that’s an unfortunate reality for many people. Both things are simultaneously true.

nanidin 4y ago

I don’t think the relative percent is a good way to compare 5.8 per 1000 vs 4.0 per 1000. It can easily be flipped to show that NYC is only 0.18% less safe than the national median.

brandonwags 4y ago

Safety in crowds, this is a big generalization. As someone who just moved in from Chicago, I feel exponentially safer in NYC.

filmgirlcw 4y ago
Totally. I said this in another comment too. Being around so many other people does have a sense of safety to it. Especially late at night.

woodruffw 4y ago

Where did these numbers come from? You linked to a screenshot of a spreadsheet, but not its source. From a random search, I got 2.8 violent crimes per 1,000 people citywide, which means all 5 boroughs. For just New York county (Manhattan), the most official statistic I could find is 4.57 in 2019[2]. [1]: https://www.lx.com/community/nyc-crime-rates-how-dangerous-is-new-york-city/51473/ https://www.lx.com/community/nyc-crime-rates-how-dangerous-i... [2]: https://criminaljustice.cityofnewyork.us/individual_charts/violent-crime-rate-by-borough/ https://criminaljustice.cityofnewyork.us/individual_charts/v...

simonsarris 4y ago
I'm using NeighborhoodScout. Here's Manhattan: https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/ny/new-york/crime https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/ny/new-york/crime

ryandrake 4y ago

> It is so thoroughly not the same that I can usually tell when people come from cities simply based on how nervous they are. I think, at least in today's culturally polarized environment, there are a lot of people who would be understandably nervous and on guard traveling to rural America, and it has nothing to do with what crime looks like in their home city.

fritztastic 4y ago

Someone's feeling of safety/nervousness has more to do with a variety of different variables that are unique to them, the place in question, and the situation they're in. Personally, I'd rather be alone on foot in NYC than alone on foot in some small town where I'd stand out. Maybe because I grew up in a city and have traveled to many places, maybe because of my characteristics that make me feel vulnerable when I'm the outsider in a less diverse area, or maybe because I've lived in a city far more violent than NYC- so for me the things I visit for are worth the possible risk of crime. NYC isn't even on the top 50 most violent cities in the world, which is quite a feat when you consider how things used to be there in the 80s/90s.

periphrasis 4y ago

One thing this thread has reminded me of is that for all the lip service conservatives pay to toughness and manly traditional gender roles, they certainly seem to live in abject terror of being the victim of a crime.

RC_ITR 4y ago

It’s weird that “safety” in America always comes back to violent crime. There’s hospital quality, time spent in private automobiles (one of the most dangerous things Americans do), risk of natural disaster, etc etc. I think it’s very reflective of an anti-urban bias

harryh 4y ago

NYC is safer that virtually anywhere else in America when you look at both crime statistics and auto fatalities. Ignoring the 2nd is a major omission. I don't have stats for Amherst specifically, but here is a comparison between NYC and NH as a whole: NYC: 5.5 murders per 100k + 1.6 auto fatalities per 100k = 6.1 deaths per 100k NH: 1.0 murders per 100k + 8.9 auto fatalities per 100k = 9.9 deaths per 100k

abeppu 4y ago

Actually, how trustworthy are those stats as a measure of actual crime or safety? I think this effect might actually push the difference to be a bit more extreme; at least several years ago I know the NYPD had a scandal about systemically under-reporting or downgrading crimes. Has this _actually_ improved since then, or did they just "discipline" a handful of people? Do other law enforcement agencies have similar problems? However, I do also think an important question is "safe for whom?" Depending on your race, sexual orientation, gender presentation, etc, rural American communities can foster their own distinct unease. Those are the places where you keep your head down, self-censor, try not to draw attention. When is the absence of reported crimes in a state which is 92.8% white "safety" and when is it something else? https://www.reuters.com/article/us-crime-newyork-statistics/nypd-report-confirms-manipulation-of-crime-stats-idUSBRE82818620120309 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-crime-newyork-statistics/...

lkbm 4y ago

Violent crime is not what makes me unsafe. Violent negligence is: 8.35 per thousand as of 2019[0]. If you want to demonstrate that NYC is less safe (and it may well be), focus on the high risk factors, not the salient ones. [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/191720/traffic-related-injury-rate-per-100000-us-population-since-1988/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/191720/traffic-related-i...

cmonagle 4y ago

It's also worth noting that Manchester, NH, which is where an Amherst resident is likely to spend a non negligible amount of time (nearest shopping mall, hospital, etc), has a comparable (slightly higher violent, much higher property) crime rate than NYC.