4 ms·
Speaking as someone who has lived in the downtown area of a dense US city for the past 8 years, US crime stats and perception are weird. Yes I live in a neighb
by Swizec 3y ago
Speaking as someone who has lived in the downtown area of a dense US city for the past 8 years, US crime stats and perception are weird.
Yes I live in a neighborhood with high crime stats. Even relatively high violent crime stats. But it feels pretty safe regardless. Random violent crime is extremely rare. Mostly what you get are violent disputes between people who know each other.
You can literally walk by a drug deal happening and be fully uninvolved. The people won’t even look at you or notice you’re there. It’s like the two parts of society live past each other.
Never leave stuff in your car tho. It will get broken into.
- etchalon 3y agoIt's incredibly hard to explain this disconnect to people who haven't lived in high-poverty/high-crime/dense places. Chicago, even the south side, never felt dangerous to me while living there. But here in Texas, people seem to think it's some wild west of violence every day.
- FireBeyond 3y agoJust as there are people who think that Portland (and Seattle) are close to some post apocalyptic wasteland after the BLM protests a few years ago. I've heard non-hyperbolic claims that BLM torched "entire city blocks".
- gotoeleven 3y agoJust like the protests were mostly peaceful, the city blocks were left mostly untorched.
- FireBeyond 3y agoShow one, just one, block in either city that was torched. A single block that was destroyed by arson. "mostly untorched" is utterly deceptive and misleading rhetoric to push a point.
- etchalon 3y agoI've got a lot of friends in Portland, and the life they live, and the city described on Fox News, are so vastly different it's almost a comedy.
- qingcharles 3y agoI'm deep in one of the most violent areas of South Side Chicago. People always telling me to be safe. Sure, there are gun battles every night, but it doesn't feel inherently unsafe in the neighborhood. The biggest risk is just living in a house near a gun battle where a stray bullet will get you. Otherwise all the shooting is gang-on-gang violence, sad as that is. Young kids just killing each other for points. As practically the only white guy in a couple-mile radius I get given a wide berth because everyone assumes I must be police.
- D13Fd 3y agoYears ago I lived on the edge of a violent area in a big city. People were sometimes shot and killed near my apartment, and I often heard gunfire. But I agree -- no one ever bothered me, and after some initial hesitation I felt fine. It was really gang members with guns shooting each other.
- joemazerino 3y agoDo you think it's safe to raise a family where drug deals are happening out in the open?
- Swizec 3y agoI'm half a block from an elementary school so how bad can it be? My nearest intersection literally has those crosswalk guards you see in the movies every morning. They always say hi when I run past them.
- joemazerino 3y agoOpen drug deals are happening near elementary schools and you're saying crossing guards make it safe?
- mlyle 3y ago> But it feels pretty safe regardless. "feels" is such a terrible metric for safety. I guess that's part of the point. Measuring one's risk of low probability events based on personal experience is inherently flawed.
- crazygringo 3y agoYup, I live in a similar spot. High homicide rates, but... also a residential neighborhood full of families and tons of community. The murders aren't from random muggings or store stick-ups or people going crazy in a church or a school. They're from dudes who have a beef with a specific other dude, and it just so happens that there are a lot of beefs. But if you just live here... none of that affects you. Everybody seems to feel perfectly safe walking down the street, going shopping, going out at night. (It's not like there are drive-by shootings with stray bullets or anything.) The degree of randomness of crime is an extremely important aspect of crime rates that, unfortunately, doesn't seem to get measured. Or if it is, it isn't publicized or part of the conversation.