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"The thing I have noticed is when the anecdotes and the data disagree, the anecdotes are usually right. There's something wrong with the way you are measuring it". —Jeff Bezos https://sports.yahoo.com/amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-explains-2123... >
> A Gallup poll released in November found 77% of Americans believed there was more crime in the country than the year before. And 63% felt there was either a "very" or "extremely" serious crime problem — the highest in the poll's history going back to 2000.
Violent crime is going down. The survey was about overall crime. So the premise of this article is misleading.
The dichotomies presented make more sense if you accept that overall crime is up even if violent crime is down: Police numbers can't prevent murders but they can prevent break-ins - homeless camps don't put people into danger but they do help fence stolen goods. A lot of low-level crimes are not even being reported anymore.
I won't speak for everyone, but I don't really spend most of my days worried about getting murdered or assaulted. But I do spend a lot of time worried about getting robbed or having my car broken into (again!).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
"A New York Police Department whistleblower's report that his precinct was systematically underreporting crime - an act that resulted in a suspension and time in a psychiatric ward - has been validated by an internal department investigation."
"The thing I have noticed is when the anecdotes and the data disagree, the anecdotes are usually right. There's something wrong with the way you are measuring it". —Jeff Bezos https://sports.yahoo.com/amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-explains-2123... >
The same is true of crime rates, distribution information is lost when averaging.
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.
- 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 opposite of "crime statistics")?
> There are some outliers to this trend — murder rates are up in Washington, D.C. Carjacking is also pretty rampant now
Going to be pretty interesting in 30 years when all the red states suddenly have a massive up spike in crimes and super predators
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE828187/ "A New York Police Department whistleblower's report that his precinct was systematically underreporting crime - an act that resulted in a suspension and time in a psychiatric ward - has been validated by an internal department investigation."
And even if your NYC anecdote could somehow be applied to all national crime statistics, it still wouldn't change the truth of the article, which is that crime has decreased relative to before. If crime were underreported previously, and continues to be underreported now, then the fact of the relative decrease in rates remains true.
"The thing I have noticed is when the anecdotes and the data disagree, the anecdotes are usually right. There's something wrong with the way you are measuring it". —Jeff Bezos https://sports.yahoo.com/amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-explains-2123... >
But at Level 2, I do think there's a kernel of truth to this (Jeff's statement), because sometimes it is hard to measure the same thing that people actually mean when they are talking about something like crime.
For example, in this article: There are "two really visible crises" in the downtown area: homelessness and open-air drug use. "And honestly, people conflate that with crime, with street safety," she said."
So basically the author is saying people feel unsafe about homelessness and drug use, but those aren't really crimes (people "conflate" them with crimes), and so those don't count as higher crime. So people are mistaken about the crime rate. Fair enough, but that's a technicality of what we are actually measuring, VS what people are feeling about it when you ask them about "crime" or safety or something.
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?
> "The national picture shows that murder is falling. We have data from over 200 cities showing a 12.2% decline ... in 2023 relative to 2022," Asher said, citing his own analysis of public data. He found instances of rape, robbery and aggravated assault were all down too. > A Gallup poll released in November found 77% of Americans believed there was more crime in the country than the year before. And 63% felt there w…
Getting your car broken into almost never happens for most of the USA, though it's very, very, very common in a few cities.