4 ms·

US cities are plenty safe. The fact that you think otherwise is propaganda you’ve been successfully served. I live in Nyc and visit other cities often.

Waterluvian 4mo ago
It’s hard to distil to a single comment but I think it might be a poor example given the NYPD takes about double the budget per capita to be less safe than Toronto. I think the only objective conclusion we can come to in a comments section is that going by “I visited there” vibes isn’t going to be useful.
- righthand 4mo ago
  What about the high murder rate and meth problems of middle America, lets talk about that more instead of the “oh no homeless people” rhetoric all the time.
steelbrain 4mo ago
You must live in a different New York City than the one I visited. I had the safety calibration of Tallinn, Estonia and Dubai, UAE. The subway was extremely hostile. People were regularly drugged out of their mind. I saw one guy try to drink a Coca Cola upside down and spilled it all in the bus. Another crazy chased my limited mobility Estonian friend who wanted to visit nyc alongside me when she went alone for groceries. Could it be that your frame of reference is broken and/or you’re numb to it?
- beau_g 4mo ago
  You saw someone try to drink a soda upside down and spill it? We are going to need more than a Flock cam to stop that heinous act, perhaps a Flock robot arm that could grab the criminals arm and turn it right side up, or just restrain them while the authorities are on the way.
  - steelbrain 4mo ago
    [flagged]
  - filoleg 4mo ago
    I saw a tall man on L train stomping aggressively through the car and yelling bloody murder that he is gonna "stab the next mf I see", while attempting to swing punches at random people. The whole train ended up getting evacuated, and the train line got delayed. That was last winter. Between then and now, I saw people threatening others on the subway multiple times. The most recent incident was a few weeks ago on Q train, where a seated man was screaming at the woman across from him (who was trying to do her best to ignore him), how he was gonna kill her and "the rest of her people" (whatever that means). But please tell me how stuff like this never happens. And I am not even a subway hater overall, I take it daily, and it is my preferred method of transportation. And no, I am not taking subway into deep and shady parts of bronx or brooklyn, as heavy majority of my rides are contained between Dekalb/Jay St Metrotech (aka dt brooklyn) and midtown. It just sounds like crazy talk to me, when someone claims that the safety cams in subway cars are not, at least, somewhat helpful. At least newer A/C train cars have those cams now, and, I hope, it will lead to prosecution of serial subway harassers.
- righthand 4mo ago
  These are all lies. Small towns have notiriously higher crime rates than Nyc. We should send the National Guard to your small town and place cameras every where. I dont feel safe in your small town. I moved away from middle America that’s swamped in meth, high murder rate, and racism. Sorry someone spilled a coca-cola though. Your pearls must be powder in your hands by now.
  - Waterluvian 4mo ago
    There’s possibly a fantasy mindset at play where people need a certain identity to be true. As we’ve witnessed on a national scale, humans have great capacity for fantastical thinking to support what a friend of mine calls their “binkie narrative.”
  - arjie 4mo ago
    His small town? Tallinn is comparatively tiny to NYC admittedly but Dubai is a fairly large and urban city. I think that it doesn’t quite fit the appellation.
    - iberator 4mo ago
      Tallinn might be smaller but it's the capital - so centre of organized crime and money. this does matter in terms of safety
  - tr45872267 4mo ago
    This is false. Urban areas have the highest rate of crime compared to rural and suburban. For example look at the years 2020 and 2021 from this report:[0] Table 8 Rate of victimization, by type of crime and location of residence, 2020 and 2021 Location of residence Total violent crime Violent crime excluding simple assault Total property crime 2020 2021* 2020 2021* 2020 2021* Urban 19.0 † 24.5 7.7 9.7 158.9 157.5 Suburban 16.8 16.5 5.6 5.2 90.5 86.8 Rural 13.4 11.1 4.5 4.4 65.6 57.7 You can see clearly that urban has the highest rate of crime, and this has been true for decades.[1] Also, many crimes are not recorded at all in NYC, which is why many stores have locked down all their items with a key that requires permission from a staff member to access. I haven't seen this in the small towms I've been to. [0] https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/cv21.pdf https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/cv21.pdf [1] https://ovc.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh226/files/ncvrw2018/info_flyers/fact_sheets/2018NCVRW_UrbanRural_508_QC.pdf https://ovc.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh226/files/ncvrw2018/...
- wat10000 4mo ago
  You’re describing a spilled soda as a safety issue. The other person isn’t the one with a broken frame of reference.
  - nailer 4mo ago
    No, he's describing someone so stoned out of their mind they don't know how to drink a soda. I feel most people would read his comment and understand that.
    - righthand 4mo ago
      And that isnt a crime. It’s a strawman trying to say it’s a crime.
      - billfor 4mo ago
        I didn’t read his comment as saying it was a crime. Parent was commenting about feeling unsafe. People walking around stoned and trying to drink a soda bottle upside down does make some people feel unsafe because you don’t know what their next move is. Incidents like this have become more common in the last 10 years.
      - nailer 4mo ago
        It is illegal under NY Penal Law § 240.40 to appear in public under the influence of narcotics or other drugs (to the degree that you may endanger yourself/others/property or annoy people nearby). This is a violation (not a crime/misdemeanor), punishable by up to 15 days in jail and a fine of up to $250.
nailer 4mo ago
Really? I lived in Greenwich village until last year and I’d have people threaten to kill me for politely declining to give them change. I live in Park Slope now and there’s violent people on the F line all the time. Maybe wealthy neighbourhoods are super dangerous or maybe you’re just not noticing.
naturalmovement 4mo ago
[flagged]
- righthand 4mo ago
  What about the meth heads shitting in the streets of the small town? Rampant assault and murder rates. What about all the drinking and driving killing people in America. No, no, it’s Nyc that’s scary.
  - naturalmovement 4mo ago
    [flagged]
  - sarchertech 4mo ago
    NYC is safer than many cities for sure. But there are approximately zero meth heads shitting in the streets in small towns in the US. I have never once seen a person shitting in the streets in a small town. I saw it within 24 hours of visiting Portland. I’ve never seen that in NYC either to be clear.
  - timciep 4mo ago
    Yes, crime in small towns is bad too. Do we agree?
    - righthand 4mo ago
      No because the small towns looneys aren’t on the online forums raving about the meth head they saw on the street one time in their town.
- Zigurd 4mo ago
  [dead]
derektank 4mo ago
NYC is quite safe compared to most US cities. It is still more dangerous than most major cities in the developed world.
- sarchertech 4mo ago
  I did a quick check here and it has a lower crime and a higher safety score than London and Paris. https://www.numbeo.com/crime/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+Kingdom&city1=London&country2=United+States&city2=New+York%2C+NY https://www.numbeo.com/crime/compare_cities.jsp?country1=Uni...
  - nailer 4mo ago
    [flagged]
    - sarchertech 4mo ago
      > London is a uniquely dangerous city due to Islamic terrorism and Paris due to crime. There aren’t that many comparable cities to NY. Only London and NY reach the Alpha++ world city designation. I don’t see any Islamic terror attacks in London during the year those stats are pulled from. As for Paris the crime index is high “due to crime” is a tautology.
      - nailer 4mo ago
        The point re: Paris is that most cities would look better when compared to Paris on safety. > Only London and NY reach the Alpha++ world city designation. As someone that's spent the last two decades living in both, it's a little bit of past glory. Miami is more ambitious, Lisbon is where smart international companies go. London still has great universities but they're lessened and capital goes elsewhere.
        sarchertech 4mo ago
        > Miami is more ambitious My wife grew up there, and I worked for a company based there for years, and I can’t really even come up with a good educated guess for that that means. You could argue that London is past its prime, but you could have made that argument 75 years ago. It still retains its alpha++ designation and it’s the top ranking in the global financial centers index. But regardless neither Lisbon nor Miami is a peer to NYC right now.
billfor 4mo ago
I live in NYC and I don't think it is safe, so there's one person that disagrees with you. Part of the problem in NYC is when you commit a low-level crime the social-justice warriors let the person back out on the street without charging them. This is why when somebody kills somebody in NYC you often hear that the person had been arrested for various things twelve times earlier. Just covering up the "un-safeness" by saying "it's safe" or citing crime stats doesn't change what people can see with their own eyes.
- righthand 4mo ago
  This is a bail reform propaganda. If you feel unsafe because we dont put deoderant thieves in Rikers then move.
  - naturalmovement 4mo ago
    [flagged]
    - kennywinker 4mo ago
      In your conception, the only reason any drug store is able to stay in business is because deodorant thieves are getting hard time? If enough people are stealing deodorant to put them out of business, I think there are some big social problems that jail time isn’t going to fix. Frankly, i’d 100% of the time rather bare the cost of shoplifters thru slightly higher prices than thru paying ~$100,000 year each incarcerating anyone who shoplifts. There are “low level” crimes that are predictable signs of violent crime. E.g. intimate partner violence. I’d love to see those taken more seriously, even if it’s just for the downstream effects.
      - deleted 4mo ago
        [deleted]
    - tomhow 4mo ago
      Can you please stop commenting in this inflammatory style? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

Waterluvian 4mo ago

It’s hard to distil to a single comment but I think it might be a poor example given the NYPD takes about double the budget per capita to be less safe than Toronto. I think the only objective conclusion we can come to in a comments section is that going by “I visited there” vibes isn’t going to be useful.

righthand 4mo ago
What about the high murder rate and meth problems of middle America, lets talk about that more instead of the “oh no homeless people” rhetoric all the time.

steelbrain 4mo ago

You must live in a different New York City than the one I visited. I had the safety calibration of Tallinn, Estonia and Dubai, UAE. The subway was extremely hostile. People were regularly drugged out of their mind. I saw one guy try to drink a Coca Cola upside down and spilled it all in the bus. Another crazy chased my limited mobility Estonian friend who wanted to visit nyc alongside me when she went alone for groceries. Could it be that your frame of reference is broken and/or you’re numb to it?

beau_g 4mo ago
You saw someone try to drink a soda upside down and spill it? We are going to need more than a Flock cam to stop that heinous act, perhaps a Flock robot arm that could grab the criminals arm and turn it right side up, or just restrain them while the authorities are on the way.
- steelbrain 4mo ago
  [flagged]
- filoleg 4mo ago
  I saw a tall man on L train stomping aggressively through the car and yelling bloody murder that he is gonna "stab the next mf I see", while attempting to swing punches at random people. The whole train ended up getting evacuated, and the train line got delayed. That was last winter. Between then and now, I saw people threatening others on the subway multiple times. The most recent incident was a few weeks ago on Q train, where a seated man was screaming at the woman across from him (who was trying to do her best to ignore him), how he was gonna kill her and "the rest of her people" (whatever that means). But please tell me how stuff like this never happens. And I am not even a subway hater overall, I take it daily, and it is my preferred method of transportation. And no, I am not taking subway into deep and shady parts of bronx or brooklyn, as heavy majority of my rides are contained between Dekalb/Jay St Metrotech (aka dt brooklyn) and midtown. It just sounds like crazy talk to me, when someone claims that the safety cams in subway cars are not, at least, somewhat helpful. At least newer A/C train cars have those cams now, and, I hope, it will lead to prosecution of serial subway harassers.
righthand 4mo ago
These are all lies. Small towns have notiriously higher crime rates than Nyc. We should send the National Guard to your small town and place cameras every where. I dont feel safe in your small town. I moved away from middle America that’s swamped in meth, high murder rate, and racism. Sorry someone spilled a coca-cola though. Your pearls must be powder in your hands by now.
- Waterluvian 4mo ago
  There’s possibly a fantasy mindset at play where people need a certain identity to be true. As we’ve witnessed on a national scale, humans have great capacity for fantastical thinking to support what a friend of mine calls their “binkie narrative.”
- arjie 4mo ago
  His small town? Tallinn is comparatively tiny to NYC admittedly but Dubai is a fairly large and urban city. I think that it doesn’t quite fit the appellation.
  - iberator 4mo ago
    Tallinn might be smaller but it's the capital - so centre of organized crime and money. this does matter in terms of safety
- tr45872267 4mo ago
  This is false. Urban areas have the highest rate of crime compared to rural and suburban. For example look at the years 2020 and 2021 from this report:[0] Table 8 Rate of victimization, by type of crime and location of residence, 2020 and 2021 Location of residence Total violent crime Violent crime excluding simple assault Total property crime 2020 2021* 2020 2021* 2020 2021* Urban 19.0 † 24.5 7.7 9.7 158.9 157.5 Suburban 16.8 16.5 5.6 5.2 90.5 86.8 Rural 13.4 11.1 4.5 4.4 65.6 57.7 You can see clearly that urban has the highest rate of crime, and this has been true for decades.[1] Also, many crimes are not recorded at all in NYC, which is why many stores have locked down all their items with a key that requires permission from a staff member to access. I haven't seen this in the small towms I've been to. [0] https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/cv21.pdf https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/cv21.pdf [1] https://ovc.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh226/files/ncvrw2018/info_flyers/fact_sheets/2018NCVRW_UrbanRural_508_QC.pdf https://ovc.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh226/files/ncvrw2018/...
wat10000 4mo ago
You’re describing a spilled soda as a safety issue. The other person isn’t the one with a broken frame of reference.
- nailer 4mo ago
  No, he's describing someone so stoned out of their mind they don't know how to drink a soda. I feel most people would read his comment and understand that.
  - righthand 4mo ago
    And that isnt a crime. It’s a strawman trying to say it’s a crime.
    - billfor 4mo ago
      I didn’t read his comment as saying it was a crime. Parent was commenting about feeling unsafe. People walking around stoned and trying to drink a soda bottle upside down does make some people feel unsafe because you don’t know what their next move is. Incidents like this have become more common in the last 10 years.
    - nailer 4mo ago
      It is illegal under NY Penal Law § 240.40 to appear in public under the influence of narcotics or other drugs (to the degree that you may endanger yourself/others/property or annoy people nearby). This is a violation (not a crime/misdemeanor), punishable by up to 15 days in jail and a fine of up to $250.

nailer 4mo ago

Really? I lived in Greenwich village until last year and I’d have people threaten to kill me for politely declining to give them change. I live in Park Slope now and there’s violent people on the F line all the time. Maybe wealthy neighbourhoods are super dangerous or maybe you’re just not noticing.

naturalmovement 4mo ago

[flagged]

righthand 4mo ago
What about the meth heads shitting in the streets of the small town? Rampant assault and murder rates. What about all the drinking and driving killing people in America. No, no, it’s Nyc that’s scary.
- naturalmovement 4mo ago
  [flagged]
- sarchertech 4mo ago
  NYC is safer than many cities for sure. But there are approximately zero meth heads shitting in the streets in small towns in the US. I have never once seen a person shitting in the streets in a small town. I saw it within 24 hours of visiting Portland. I’ve never seen that in NYC either to be clear.
- timciep 4mo ago
  Yes, crime in small towns is bad too. Do we agree?
  - righthand 4mo ago
    No because the small towns looneys aren’t on the online forums raving about the meth head they saw on the street one time in their town.
Zigurd 4mo ago
[dead]

derektank 4mo ago

NYC is quite safe compared to most US cities. It is still more dangerous than most major cities in the developed world.

sarchertech 4mo ago
I did a quick check here and it has a lower crime and a higher safety score than London and Paris. https://www.numbeo.com/crime/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+Kingdom&city1=London&country2=United+States&city2=New+York%2C+NY https://www.numbeo.com/crime/compare_cities.jsp?country1=Uni...
- nailer 4mo ago
  [flagged]
  - sarchertech 4mo ago
    > London is a uniquely dangerous city due to Islamic terrorism and Paris due to crime. There aren’t that many comparable cities to NY. Only London and NY reach the Alpha++ world city designation. I don’t see any Islamic terror attacks in London during the year those stats are pulled from. As for Paris the crime index is high “due to crime” is a tautology.
    - nailer 4mo ago
      The point re: Paris is that most cities would look better when compared to Paris on safety. > Only London and NY reach the Alpha++ world city designation. As someone that's spent the last two decades living in both, it's a little bit of past glory. Miami is more ambitious, Lisbon is where smart international companies go. London still has great universities but they're lessened and capital goes elsewhere.
      - sarchertech 4mo ago
        > Miami is more ambitious My wife grew up there, and I worked for a company based there for years, and I can’t really even come up with a good educated guess for that that means. You could argue that London is past its prime, but you could have made that argument 75 years ago. It still retains its alpha++ designation and it’s the top ranking in the global financial centers index. But regardless neither Lisbon nor Miami is a peer to NYC right now.

billfor 4mo ago

I live in NYC and I don't think it is safe, so there's one person that disagrees with you. Part of the problem in NYC is when you commit a low-level crime the social-justice warriors let the person back out on the street without charging them. This is why when somebody kills somebody in NYC you often hear that the person had been arrested for various things twelve times earlier. Just covering up the "un-safeness" by saying "it's safe" or citing crime stats doesn't change what people can see with their own eyes.

righthand 4mo ago
This is a bail reform propaganda. If you feel unsafe because we dont put deoderant thieves in Rikers then move.
- naturalmovement 4mo ago
  [flagged]
  - kennywinker 4mo ago
    In your conception, the only reason any drug store is able to stay in business is because deodorant thieves are getting hard time? If enough people are stealing deodorant to put them out of business, I think there are some big social problems that jail time isn’t going to fix. Frankly, i’d 100% of the time rather bare the cost of shoplifters thru slightly higher prices than thru paying ~$100,000 year each incarcerating anyone who shoplifts. There are “low level” crimes that are predictable signs of violent crime. E.g. intimate partner violence. I’d love to see those taken more seriously, even if it’s just for the downstream effects.
    - deleted 4mo ago
      [deleted]
  - tomhow 4mo ago
    Can you please stop commenting in this inflammatory style? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.