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

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

#61

Post by lp4vn »

UtopiaPunk wrote: post #35
lp4vn wrote: 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 elaborate? I don't think I understand what it would mean to be "safe" statistically, but it's too dangerous to go outside. - Are you implying that the statistic data on crime is incorrect and/or falsified? - Are you including dangers besides criminality (like motor vehicle collisions or stormy weather)? - Are you implying the police make the area unsafe (the police being, practically if not literally, the opp…

I mean that the statistics sometimes don't tell the whole story.

The city might be "safe", statistically speaking, but nobody gets out of home because everybody is afraid and tries to avoid public spaces as much as possible. So you have a whole generation being raised inside apartments and closed spaces basically, this was the high price I was talking about.

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

#62

Post by colechristensen »

mortenjorck wrote: post #39

The article notes a major uptick from 2019 to 2020, and then refers to declines from 2021 to 2023. What about from 2019 to 2023? It could be simultaneously true that violent crime is dropping and that it remains above a baseline from 4-5 years ago (which would likely also affect perception). So is it?

There were more murders in the US in 2023 than in 2019.

https://www.axios.com/2023/12/28/us-murder-violent-crime-rat...

There were more murders in 2023 than any year 2009-2019.

So we're down from the COVID highs, but still higher than any other year since 2008.

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

#63

Post by wizerdrobe »

pastor_bob wrote: post #22

In NYC, you can get robbed and beat up, and the NYPD will refuse to file a report. There's your 'lack' of crime

I’m not familiar with NYC or a lack of filing per se, but I could believe an honest lack of reporting downtrends the real numbers.

I’ve been victim to several violent crimes in my city in the 2020-2022 timespan (multiple pistol brandishing in traffic, one shot out window, and a knife brandishing in a grocery store)

In the first instance I was asked if I wanted to file a report about an hour later after the man had long fled (I had only a partial plate and they couldn’t get a match based off that information.) I was told, really, no there’s not much that would come out of it but they would file if I asked they do. I thanked the officer for his time and let him know I wouldn’t bother burdening him with the paperwork.

I never bothered reporting the next several incidences.

The only report I know was filed was the knife wielding man threatening to kill me in front of my child at 5.00 PM on a Friday in a crowded grocery store. I waited 35 minutes for police to respond to the call for the sole fact that the man might be waiting in the parking lot and I didn’t intend on leaving without a police escort lest I have to shoot down a man in front of my child. Never requested a report there, but I know it was filed.

I found out because I was telling my barber about it a week later and he mentioned that story was in the local city paper’s police blotter.

I can’t say it’s particularly unique. I’ve had coworkers harassed in similar fashions, they never reported because they knew it was a waste of everyone’s time. The police officer that works security at our old church told me he had it happen once off-duty he just flashed his own pistol and badge and the fool fled.

He never filed for his own incident.

Why bother?

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

#64

Post by dvngnt_ »

tptacek wrote: post #29
dvngnt_ wrote: 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.

"Toyotas and Hondas were the most commonly stolen car make in the District in 2022, with 501 Toyotas and 413 Hondas reported stolen. Hyundai and Kia were the third and seventh most commonly stolen, respectively, with 355 Hyundais and 192 Kias reported stolen last year.

By comparison, D.C. police data show 1,468 Hyundais and 806 Kias were stolen between Jan. 1 and July 20 of this year, accounting for more than half of the nearly 4,000 car thefts in the District. An I-Team analysis shows that, on average, a Hyundai or Kia is stolen in D.C. every two hours and seven minutes."

Though, people are more worried about armed carjacking which is manufacturer agnostic

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

#65

Post by morkalork »

_Parfait_ wrote: post #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.

The problem is that if one party is arguing that the other has fallen into McNamara's fallacy, they won't have the numbers to back it up and can always be written off as just anecdotal data and outliers.

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

#66

Post by dinkblam »

colechristensen wrote: post #52
sxp wrote: post #19

"The number of murders across the country surged by nearly 30% between 2019 and 2020..." "We have data from over 200 cities showing a 12.2% decline ... in 2023 relative to 2022,...." It's so annoying that even "good" news outlets like NPR are incompetent when it comes to showing statistical data. There is no good reason to mix city rates vs country rates or speak only in percentages instead of absolute numbers. Some…

NPR is no longer a "good" news outlet. I am not aware of any "good" news outlets, unless it's one of the wire services that give you one sentence feeds per news item.

i am less dissatisfied with Reuters than with other options i've tried.

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

#68

Post by atlantic »

tptacek wrote: post #29
dvngnt_ wrote: 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.

If that were the case, carjacking numbers would be up wherever Kias circulate, which is clearly not the case. Criminality is rampant not because there are opportunities to commit crime, but because there are people willing to commit them.

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

#69

Post by snakeyjake »

dvngnt_ wrote: post #6

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

The rate of carjackings is a miniscule fraction of what it was when I was a kid learning to drive.

It's dropped from over 0.5 per 100k to around 0.1 per 100k over the last 30 years.

I don't fall into the trap of focusing on year-on-year changes, but instead I look at trends because my primary concern is "are things safer for my kids than they were for me when I was a kid".

And the answer is yes.

They are.

By a lot.

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

#70

Post by colechristensen »

pavlov wrote: post #25
pastor_bob wrote: post #22

In NYC, you can get robbed and beat up, and the NYPD will refuse to file a report. There's your 'lack' of crime

When did this change happen? Is there some evidence that it would be the cause?

In Minneapolis, police staffing is at historic lows, well below the statutory requirement for number of officers.

https://www.startribune.com/minneapolis-police-staffing-leve...

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