Keeping with the anecdotal theme - sort of. Most of University City itself isn’t that unsafe - I wouldn’t go strolling around alone at night (maybe during the day), but I wouldn’t be terrified. But if you go a bit further west, you get into some really, really bad neighborhoods. My dad once worked in an office bordering on some of those neighborhoods, and said he was really, really glad for the indoor, underground, guarded parking, even during the day.
When I was a sales rep for Allen Testproducts, my territory was everything west of Broad Street. There were some neighborhoods that I developed a feeling for, e.g. must be out of here by dark. One day, talking to a shop owner about an emissions analyzer, we saw a half-dozen plain wrapper vans converge on the corner of 23rd & Jefferson Streets, doors opening while the trucks rolled, officers jumping out clad in body armor. Locals took of in every direction, usually with officers in pursuit. A uniformed officer told me point blank to get out of the neighborhood, now. The evening news explained that over 40 arrest warrants were served that day in the projects just up the street from where I’d spoken with that shop owner. The following week, he did the deal-gave me a down payment of $2K in cash. That afternoon, after dropping off the cash and order paperwork, I filed for a CCP.
I am from Louisiana and I will absolutely defend my state to the death. However, as I said, I went to college in New Orleans from 1991-1995 when it was the murder capital of the U.S. and I was truly scared at times. Most of my friends had a serious felony happen to them while they were there. One of my female friends was raped by a black guy that destroyed her bedroom window in the middle of the night and held her and her boyfriend at gunpoint well her did his thing. Another female friend was mugged three times in one week. I was put in charge of a FOAF one night to make sure he was safe. He got confused about where I was and wandered around the backwaters of the French Quarter that night and got mugged at gunpoint twice and nearly killed because he had nothing left after the first time. I was shopping in the supermarket one Sunday night when a new Tulane professor was shot and killed during an attempted carjacking. This was at a supermarket that saw fit to build an armed guard tower at the back of the parking lot but it was unmanned at the time. Another FOAF’s father came down to visit for Tulane parent’s weekend and was killed during an attempted carjacking in a parking lot on Carrollton avenue.
One of my wife’s salepeople who still lives in New Orleans was recently held at gunpoint outside of his apartment and was being forced to go into it when neighbors happened by and scared the would be robber/killer.
Those are only a portion of the stories. I was always armed with my .357 when I was away from Tulane’s campus and I absolutely never let young males approach me under any circumstances. I was walking about 20 yards behind a group of European tourists when some very young black males popped out and held them all at gunpoint. Me and my girlfriend didn’t stick around to see the outcome. I had a younger black guy charge my truck at a red light on St. Charles avenue and try to open the door but luckily it was locked.
The touristy parts of the French Quarter and the convention areas are pretty safe and heavily patrolled but there are many parts of the city where bad things are bound to happen if you don’t take proper precautions
Here in Michigan, there’s a small city called Highland Park that’s surrounded by Detroit. (I think they call cities like this “innurbs.”) Highland Park used to be the location of Chrysler’s world headquarters, but they left years ago, and the city has been wallowing in poverty ever since. Highland Park entered receivership a few years ago, and things there are pretty bad. They have NO police force. The state police do some patrols, and will answer 911 calls, but for the most part there is barely any police presence.
While at college, I did a stint as a student intern at a company that was located inside the old Chryler HQ site. The place was fenced-in with a guard at the gate, and I was damn glad for that, because Highland Park was one scary-looking place! Right across the street was a row of decrepit old houses. And I don’t mean decrepit as in “slightly shabby looking” – I’m talking about boarded up windows and holes in the walls, and a few were burned out. Even guys from Detroit were afraid of this neighborhood. It was a major pit.
I haven’t been down there in years, but I haven’t heard anything to suggest that the situation had gotten much better.
There’s a neighborhood not too far from me where you’re not safe any time of day or night. Make the wrong move, and you’re likely to be thrown into a tree by an angry bison, or fall through unstable ground into boiling water.
But if we’re talking about unsafe due to people, I was in Chicago for a conference a few years back, and a buddy and I were out walking to kill some time. I don’t remember the name of the neighborhood we ended up in, but I do remember that a police officer very unsubtly warned us that it was no place for a couple of scrawny white nerds to be, and this was in the middle of the day.
The strange thing about this to me is that the location of the OP is Chicago. Certainly there are unsafe places in Chicago…?
I should think that every mid to large sized American city has at least one unsafe area. That said, violent crimes have been on the decline in the nation as a whole for a few decades now.
It’s all perspective. Whenever I’m in the DC area there’s a club I go to on Saturdays in Southeast. You keep your head down, your eyes front, and don’t get into anybody’s bidness you’re cool.
At least the historical tables have turned. Most, if not all, of these responses are about places where white people are made to feel unsafe.
Of course that could be due to the demographic that is attracted to the SDMB; there are probably places where the reverse is true. I imagine these locales to be of the more rural, hillbilly-type redneck variety. I’ve been in some extremely upscale white neighborhoods, and no person of any description had to feel unsafe walking down the street.
I don’t recommend north St. Louis, Mo. or East St. Louis, Ill., especially the Rush City section, even at high noon in a torrential downpour on Easter Sunday. Target practice.
“at least” is an odd way of putting it. You make it sound like that’s a good thing. What it means is that the predominant way people think of “bad neighborhood” is “black neighborhood”, and that by extension African-Americans are savage and ungovernable. Hardly a perception I’d laud.
Some friends and I were not-so-politely told to get the hell out of dodge one afternoon when we stopped a cop to ask for directions in Camden, New Jersey (there were four of us in a van from Va.). He told us which way to go and said “Stop at the lights, look both ways, and run it if anyone approaches the vehicle- you won’t get pulled over, trust me”. It was somewhat strange.
The “at least” was irony.
No kidding. This is worst sort of mere anecdotal evidence, but nevertheless. . . . About ten years ago I was in N.O. for a trade show, along with several other people from my company. One of our sales reps, a fortyish guy who was only about 5’8" but was about 180 pounds or so of solid muscle (played linebacker for Vanderbilt in the early 70s, had a career as a professional dancer afterwards, still a strength training nut, etc.) – not a really likely target for a mugging – was attacked in broad daylight just on the edge of the Quarter by a couple of guys who tried to take his watch and wallet. He kicked the heck out of both of them and held one down until the cops got there; they told him that the quieter streets on the fringes on the Quarter are actually more dangerous in the daytime because there are so many fewer people out and about than at night.
I’ve got a friend who is a Chicago police officer. He used to work in the neighborhood we grew up in, Rogers Park’s 24th district. On special occasions, though, cops sometimes get moved around for various reasons. He told me a story about how, several years ago, he was assigned with a partner to patrol the Cabrini Green housing projects on New Year’s Eve/new Year’s Day overnight. The cops blocked off Division street near the projects because there was so much shooting it wasn’t safe for traffic to travel the street. He and his partner spent almost the whole night in their squad car underneath a viaduct, because it simply wasn’t safe to go out, due to the falling bullets after people shot their guns into the air to celebrate.
Fortunately, most of the Cabrini highrises have been torn down and the neighborhood is a lot safer today.
Chronos, hopefully I am not being too nosy, but who are you working with up there at MSU (are you at MSU?) and what are you working on?
Physics (specifically relativity), under Bill Hiscock. Why do you ask?
My perception of NY City is that it’s very safe. I think nothing of traveling most anywhere in the borough of Manhattan by night or day. There are some areas of the other boroughs I simply won’t go near, though. There are some areas in Queens, specifically, that I’d avoid entirely when I lived there. Even though that was nearly 10 years ago, nothing’s really changed. You couldn’t pay me enough money to go near Lefrak City with the number of shootings, robberies and drug-related violent crimes that seem to be in the paper every other day. I’d say that’s a place that’s unsafe during the day.
New Orleans has definitely been cleaned up in the last couple of years. I went down for Memorial Day 2002 and it was scary. Crack hos, unruly crowds, and one scary dude dressed only in a black garbage bag who chased me down the street. I went for another visit in summer 2003, and it was much better. A year later, August 2004, it was hardly the same city. Someone’s been cleaning Nuhwallins up, it was much safer than I remembered and didn’t stink of piss quite so much.
Me and a friend rode through some ghetto-looking neighborhoods in Philly but not a soul bothered us. I’ve also worked in some of the most godawful slums in Baltimore, where a local guy was hired to go out with us to make sure the drug dealers and such didn’t mess with us. I’ll never forget cleaning up this one park, and finding some drugs and needles stashed there. On one occassion a hooker tried to climb in the van with me, but I successfully fended her off.
Miami was getting pretty bad in the late 1990’s-I remember renting a car at the airport (this was after a Dutch woman was shot to death in a rental car, a short way from the airport). The rental car came with a safety instruction from the Miami PD-they TOLD you that if tou wereinvolved in any minor traffc accident to drive IMMEDIATELY to the nearest police station.
That said, i never had any problem in Miami (except being accosted by agrressive panhandlers in South Beach-one guy follwed me for a block, demanding money).
New Orleans: I was there in 1989, and walked from my hotel to the French Quarter for dinner. The waiter asked me where I was staying, and INSISTED on calling a cab for me-he told me that it was too dangerous to walk 4 blocks back to the Suprdome area. I took his advice-he seemed adament about it.
Later, i learned that a NO policeman was shot to death two blocks from my hotel.
Lawrence,MA: safe enough in daytime, but stay way at night-you don’t want to witness a drug transaction.
I think some of this is from the tour guilde books who put in these dire warnings to avoid litigation if someone is prancing about making a target out of themselves with flashy jewelry and expensive cameras and all kinds of touristy stuff.
Up until very recently I was doing OCT stuff at CU with Kelvin Wagner. We had a very close relationship to Babbitt and his group.