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Violent crime is dropping fast in the U.S. – even if Americans don't believe it

npr.org

21–30 of 122 posts

Re: Violent crime is dropping fast in the U.S. – even if Americans don't believe it

#21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not gaslighting. The author is literally citing the disagreement of polls about the perception of crime vs the actual statistics of crime.

The title should really read: [Reported statistics indicate] Violent crime is dropping fast in the U.S. — even if Americans don't believe it

No, that would be redundant. Moreover, it's a journalist's job to qualify their sources (in this case, official crime statistics), so implying some sort of discrepancy in that data without cause would itself be a form of gaslighting.

Re: Violent crime is dropping fast in the U.S. – even if Americans don't believe it

#24
post #3

The media and certain political interests in the US have an interest in making everyone afraid of crime. The former needs it for ratings (if it bleeds it leads) and the latter to scare you into voting for them. There are a handful of cities having property crime epidemics due to bad local policies, but crime overall continues to fall.

Yes. I live in DC, which is a favorite punching bag for certain people and it’s eye-opening how few of the news stories mention two key details: the crime was mismanaged to the point where it lost accreditation and the prosecutors are federal appointees who don’t share priorities with or answer to the local government. There were so many doom-mongers going on about the city council, liberals, etc. without any mention of a multi-year disruption to any case requiring forensic analysis or even acknowledging that prosecutors were declining so many cases, much less discussing why.

It sold a ton of ad impressions, I’m sure, but had no value for improving the situation.

Re: Violent crime is dropping fast in the U.S. – even if Americans don't believe it

#26
post #7

Sometimes criminality drops but at a too high price. Some cities in Latin America are "safe" from a statistical point of view but nobody dares go out at night, or even during the day, in some neighbourhoods because it's too dangerous.

Too dangerous why?

Re: Violent crime is dropping fast in the U.S. – even if Americans don't believe it

#27
post #7

Sometimes criminality drops but at a too high price. Some cities in Latin America are "safe" from a statistical point of view but nobody dares go out at night, or even during the day, in some neighbourhoods because it's too dangerous.

Can you give an example?

Re: Violent crime is dropping fast in the U.S. – even if Americans don't believe it

#29
post #6

> There are some outliers to this trend — murder rates are up in Washington, D.C. Carjacking is also pretty rampant now

Carjacking is rampant in large part because of what Kia did, which really ought to land that company in a lake of civil liability. Carjacking, at least as it's practiced in Chicagoland, starts with a burner car that rolls up on the victim to disgorge the armed robbers. Kias, which can be hotwired with a broken USB cable, offered carjackers a literal citywide fleet of burner vehicles.

Re: Violent crime is dropping fast in the U.S. – even if Americans don't believe it

#30
Even in the face of all the data look at the early comments in this thread. For some reason these individuals want you to believe there's this high level of crime. Blatantly ignoring the good trends and focusing on the outliers, in worse cases calling anecdotes better than facts. So strange and quite frankly weird as hell.
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