Crime Perception vs. Reality

[Mr. Ukucasha]

Yes, while murder is not the sole form of crime, it is the most objective and precise metric for crime, thus serving as the most optimal means for comparing relative safety across various cities.

[President Johnson]

I'm really surprised the murder rate in New York is so low compared to other cities. Didn't expect DC to rank that high though.

[TechbroMBA]

What this tells me is that American voters of both parties seem surprisingly tolerant of absurd developing country murder rates in a lot of these cities. Even the "safe" ones are only at global homicide average rather than sterling over performers.

We can debate the trade offs of ways to address crime, but as always the only acceptable amount of it should be: zero.

As for a current SF/former Chicago resident, SF's perceptions are driven by a total lack of enforcement on "quality of life" crimes that have basically turned entire neighborhoods into asocial places where you can't park your car, expect to walk without seeing poop, or avoid verbal harassment from a yelling (but usually harmless) drug addict. I think people are beginning to recognize that these do have victims and the biggest one is the sense of community and energy that a city is supposed to have to justify the cost of living there. What's the value of decent public transit if the zombies have turned it into a gross place that no woman would ever feel safe using.

[GP270watch]

 San Francisco is a walkable city so you see homeless people on the sidewalks and in the streets. There is a lot of homelessness in Florida and Texas but they have different places where they try to survive that are less visible than sidewalks and streets.

 In many red states if you walk around a Walmart parking lot at night you will realize that people are living in their cars or behind big-box stores looking for food and thrown away items.

 San Francisco is much safer than Dallas but you don't see FoxNews 24/7 stories about every single crime that happens in Dallas.

[Santander]

We had this thread already.

[TechbroMBA]

San Francisco is a walkable city so you see homeless people on the sidewalks and in the streets. There is a lot of homelessness in Florida and Texas but they have different places where they try to survive that are less visible than sidewalks and streets.

 In many red states if you walk around a Walmart parking lot at night you will realize that people are living in their cars or behind big-box stores looking for food and thrown away items.

 San Francisco is much safer than Dallas but you don't see FoxNews 24/7 stories about every single crime that happens in Dallas.

So? In your own statement in SF you actually run into the issue and in Dallas you don't.

Literally today I took the bus to my dentist. I own a car, but parking is annoying and expensive and the bus route would basically drop me door to door.

I got to enjoy 15 minutes of a fragrant drug addict yelling with the bus driver. Someone who's only crime was not paying fare made my day worse; if I had just driven to a dentist in suburban Dallas they wouldn't have. If I was an elderly person, a woman, had a disability - I might have been significantly more on edge that this guy could at any moment flip and come after me.

In SF you know by going in public you will be in close contact with people who are total wild cards - and if they happened to have a bad attitude and a knife who knows what could happen.

[DrScholl]

Plenty of those cities have murder rates that are mostly related to gangs (especially Chicago). Republicans are afraid of being in a drive by even if they are locked in gated communities whereas a lot of Democrats don't feel unsafe unless they are in areas that are in gang territory.

[Upper Canada Tory]

What this tells me is that American voters of both parties seem surprisingly tolerant of absurd developing country murder rates in a lot of these cities. Even the "safe" ones are only at global homicide average rather than sterling over performers.

Agreed with this. In Canada, cities like Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa have one third of the homicide rates of NYC and Boston, but in public discourse, this is being discussed as a massive spike in crime (and it is very high compared to homicide rates in Canada 10 to 15 years ago). I cannot see how Atlanta and New Orleans can be seen as safe by a majority of the public - is this due to the city being associated with a downtown area or another commonly frequented location that is safer than the rest of the city?

In fairness, crime is a tough issue to solve, but recognizing that a problem exists is better than having a false perception of safety.

[DrScholl]

What this tells me is that American voters of both parties seem surprisingly tolerant of absurd developing country murder rates in a lot of these cities. Even the "safe" ones are only at global homicide average rather than sterling over performers.

Agreed with this. In Canada, cities like Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa have one third the homicide rates of NYC and Boston, but in public discourse, this is being discussed as a massive spike in crime (and it is very high compared to homicide rates in Canada 10 to 15 years ago). I cannot see how Atlanta and New Orleans can be seen as safe by a majority of the public - is this due to the city being associated with a downtown area or another commonly frequented location that is safer than the rest of the city?

In fairness, crime is a tough issue to solve, but recognizing that a problem exists is better than having a false perception of safety.

Like I stated it is about gang violence. The people who are isolated from gang violence are going to rate safety based on how they see their neighborhood. Plus these statistics might not sample enough people who live in higher crime areas and actually do not feel safe. Those surveys probably don't reach parts of the West Side of Atlanta or the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans where people are less safe and if they do the people there aren't going to answer them.

[Pericles]

I wonder if there is a correlation with how 'segregated' these cities are. If Republican voters don't see anyone like them in a major city, then that could be their cue to see the city as unsafe.