Most dangerous cities

These numbers are misleading, because the crime statistics are a composite of the whole city. A city like D.C. has some crime-ridden neighborhoods and very safe neighborhoods. It sucks if you live in a high crime area, but you can also live in D.C. and have a very safe environment.

So the label "most dangerous" is kind of meaningless for larger cities. In smaller cities like Camden or Gary, the label probably better gauges the risks associated with crime.

The increase in crime came despite an 11.3 percent decrease in murders, from 53 in 2004 to 47 in 2005

Compare to Saint Louis, a similarly sized city:

In St. Louis, the number of murders jumped from 113 in 2004 to 131 last year

see also: city of compton compared to city of los angeles (including the parts of south central that belong to l.a. city proper, and other rough areas -- balanced out by rich and middle-class neighborhoods elsewhere in the city)

-- jhoshea (totalwizar...), Today 9:50 PM. (scoopsnoodle)

Except that your argument would be ridiculous in Oakland's case as it is the second largest (by area) city in the bay area. It's hard to "rope off" 80 square miles (not to mention Richmond scored higher than Oakland @ #11). This is not a "city of quartz" zoning issue like in LA.

http://freelargephotos.com/000313_l.jpg

i dont think ive ever heard of richmond, ca

dunno about the others -- but camden, nj has always been its own city, not a roped-off part of any town. not that any nearby town would actually WANT it, mind you.

and while newark ain't safe, the nearby cities of irvington, nj and east orange, nj are far worse.

As someone above pointed out, or at least implied, there are far worse parts of L.A. than Compton, although Compton isn't too great. There are worse citys in the 562 than Compton, too.. (Inglewood, I forget which Bell city.. Bellflower, Bell, Bell Gardens -- one of those is *crosses fingers to ward off evil*)

Wilmington -- neighhorhood of L.A. between Long Beach and the San Pedro neighborhood ("WILMASS") -- is probably the worst part of SoCal I've ever been in, as far as "I'm kinda looking around fearing for my life to some degree" kinda way. I had to help escort a couple out of the neighborhood one time after seeing a show at the PCH club because a man was following their car because the man in the car was staring at her, demanding she get surrendered to him.

Even then, some claim the block of Pico Blvd. where Jabberjaw used to be was the worst. Having heard gunshots every third time I've been there, I wouldn't debate it. (Then again, at Koo's in Santa Ana in O.C., I'd hear distant gunshots often, though the Koo's area was pretty much a DMZ area mainly a haven for hookers at worst.)

Anyway...

At first it would seem easy to say so, but they did have nearly 100 murders in 2004, and the city is only around 200,000-250,000 people.

Also the Richmond CA/VA controversy is cracking me up, I kind of hope they did just randomly pick Richmond VA is 5th most dangerous city in the US because that would be completely great :D

Where I lived in Dallas I would hear gunshots daily. no joke. You could be in the grocery store parking lot, hear gunshots nearby (like in the same shopping center) and no one would react. What's really scary is how rarely you heard sirens after those shots.

Based on the cities on that list that I've spent time in, I think it's a pretty accurate list (as much as they can be). Yeah and Gary is one fucked up place. . .

my point is that if these stats were based on metro areas rather than arbitrary city boundaries oakland would be grouped with the rest of the bay and the stats would look very different. i don't see how its bigness changes this.

dunno about the others -- but camden, nj has always been its own city, not a roped-off part of any town. not that any nearby town would actually WANT it, mind you.

hmmm seems awfully close to philadelphia. no connection there? just that little river between the two. you could make an argument that brooklyn is like totally it's own place - but it's clearly part of the same population as the other boroughs, north jersey, south conn, and a lot of li.

Also insane: the ppl claiming Baltimore and Oakland are not their own cities in their own right (you know that B'more is AN HOUR AWAY from the city you've decided it is part of, correct?).

well i did say bmore/dc was iffy. but they're generally grouped together in population studies. their downtowns are about 40 miles apart but their suburbs are completely merged. the only reason they're an hour away from each other is because there are so many people inbetween. if there was no one there, it'd only take a half an hour.

oakland, on the other hand is clearly part of the same place as sf, berkeley, hayward, etc (sj maybe).

Compton and San Bernardino are definitely cities. They are part of the greater L.A. basin, but they each have a city hall, mayor, and all that.

when a bunch of people live in proximity they're part of the same ecosystem. one guy lives in compton another lives in beverly hills, they both work in hollywood, they both bought their tires at the same shop and the guy from compton's cousin cleans the guy from beverly hill's house. they depend on each other. if beverly hills fell into the sea compton would be strongly affected and vice versa.

of course city boundaries dictate the quality of services in the city - a poor city is less desirable because it has less police, worse roads, etc. that's a relatively small part of the equation though.

Well, I grew up in DC, and my family has lived there for 35 years, so I think I'm pretty qualified to use that as an example. Plenty of neighborhoods in DC proper are very safe - AU Park, Cleveland Park, Chevy Chase (DC), Somerset, Tacoma Park, etc. etc.

On the other hand, you have neighborhoods like Anacostia that are dangerous. But Anacostia and Cleveland Park might as well be in different cities.

In the D.C. Metropolitan Police Dept's 2nd District, there were 0 homicides in 2005. In the 7th District there were 62 homicides in 2005. And that's crime in D.C. in a nutshell.

http://mpdc.dc.gov/mpdc/Lib/mpdc/info/districts/img3/district04.jpg

I'm with the idea that the Bay Area is a city, and that this weird thing of America having notionally separate cities in one metropolitan area is a weird affectation. Like Cambridge not being part of Boston.

if you'd like to group detroit and windsor together that'd be fine.

oh, really? thanks for clearing that up for me.

what jhoshea is arguing for as i understand is it as least as arbitrary as the city boundaries that he's finding fault with.

there are no borders, man.

still that is a really big lake.

but oakland seems extremely distinct from sf. baltimore and dc i cant really imagine conflating either. dc-baltimore-philly-newark-nyc i can understand as a linked megaconorbation, like the cities of the ruhr, but still much better understood as individual cities, rather than parts of a massed whole

otherwise you end with things like the city of 'the netherlands'

i wish rochester, ny was on that list though. i feel like when i lived there, i saw a murder story on the news every day!

I mean... What is up with that?

http://www.sportsevents.net/events/images/jerry_seinfeld.jpg

we have this DELIGHTFUL situation where the city police are not controlled by the mayor or any assemblage elected solely by the residents of the city...instead there is a police board appointed by the governor of Missouri. The governor is a republican and the city votes 90% democratic so you can imagine how much of a shit is given.

Despite this my neighborhood is like fucking mayberry and I will totally cheerlead this city to anyone who will listen.

otherwise you end with things like the city of 'the netherlands'

not saying that sf/oak don't aren't distinctive places - because they are. but for these crime stats it just seems a little misleading to separate them, as the people who live there all work, sleep, play, worship, etc together. how many people cross the bay bridge everyday?

people who study societies don't tend to draw the same lines as governments do.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_areas_by_population

that list sperates bmore/dc. this one combines them:

http://geography.about.com/library/weekly/aa122099b.htm

it's iffy. both combine oak/sf.

..which is weird because I spent a couple of nights there.. one in the VCU area, and another in Carytown. The latter is pretty damn safe..(college area, Plan 9 records, all that), but I had no idea about the former.. it just looked like First Hill in Seattle to me, which is pretty much worry-free to walk around at night, despite having barely any pedestrian traffic... so I was wondering why my friend hosting me was all freaking out when trying to get my stuff into their apartment nearby. Turns out two separate friends of his got robbed at gunpoint on that very block he lived the previous week or so.

I guess it's best to talk to locals in so-called dangerous cities to get a clue... because it's not as if bad neighborhoods necessarily look like "bad neighborhoods" in some of these places. Also, what is "bad" today may become "great" or "worse" the following two years. Small towns can depreciate or appreciate even quicker. (I saw Nanaimo BC go from being a quaint port town on Vancouver Island to becoming the Canadian Aberdeen, WA in the span of two years.. it was pretty harrowing.)

from Oakland? not many. they take BART.

i could have sworn it said, ca this morning.

richmond is that bad? really?

BART still crosses the bay, though, just not via the bridge.

I'm not sure where jhoshea is going with this either, but how OAK folks get across the bay shouldn't matter, re: argument's sake.

..unless you want to argue that BART's operating hours are a factor, which is a valid point, if one assumes most of the crimes in question are late night crimes.

The tires are always cheaper on the other side.

Nah, they mean Hartford. The South End has been crazy this past year.

regards,

REB

Jhoshea - it could be either two things:

-more accurate reporting
-as the crack epidemic wanes, what remains of the national drug network is fighting over turf.

I'm guessing the former in the case of a lot of violent crimes and rape.

http://www.morganquitno.com/safecity.htm

worth noting that the study is for 2005, based on 2004 data.