Extremely rural, appalachian Virginia here. Do I feel safe? Of course, we haven’t locked the doors for years (either home or car). The nearest neighbor is a fair distance away.
On the other hand, being that isolated can change your behavior patterns. Several months back someone knocked on our door! Startled us out of our socks. Just a messanger looking for Ol’ Man Lineberry’s place up the road but it felt like, you know, someone had just done something totally unexpected.
And the nearest town of any size (Purcellville) had a murder/suicide last year. First murder since 1911.
Do I feel safe here? Yeah, I do. I think I may have more of an exaggerated sense of safety, though. I’ve been the victim of some sort of violent crime on two occasions. Each one happened when I was out of state. April 1991 I was mugged at knifepoint in Miami, Florida. A few years later I was jumped by two men in a nightclub in Athens, Georgia (that one was racially motivated. I’m a white boy who accidentally went in to what turned out to be an exclusive black club, and two drunked gentlemen beat me bloody, the whole time using derogatory terms. Stitches, had to have knee surgery, etc. Every one just stood around and watched while these two gents beat me senseless in the middle of the dance floor. I’d like to say I fought my way out. I didn’t. I slithered out of there, and ran into the parking lot. Not being my town, I’d completely lost my sense of direction, so I had no idea of where the hotel was. Because of the damage done to my knee, I couldn’t run. I hobbled through the parking lot when I heard the door slam open behind me, and the gentlemen yelling to find me. Knowing that now they’d worked themselves into such a rage that they’d kill me if they found me, and not being able to run, I hid in the bed of a pickup truck for about 20 minutes, which seemed like about six hours. They finally gave up, and I managed to limp back to my hotel.
We’re walking distance from two colleges and bike distance from two others. Four blocks south is Summit Avenue, home of million-dollar mansions. Six blocks north is The Midway, home of prostitutes and drug dealers. There’s a freeway between us and the Midway, so we have the illusion of security. Our kids play out on the street after dark, and we’re on the same street and two blocks fomr the local Dairy Queen (or O’Gara’s bar, for grown-ups), so we get lots of peaceful foot traffic. Hardly any violence ever.
My wife is constantly after me to lock the doors when I get home, which just confuses me. If we bought a house in a neighborhood where we have to worry about people coming into our home to steal our stuff, in broad daylight, when the kids are playing in the front yard and we’re at home, then we bought a house in the wrong neighborhood. I hope she’s wrong, because I’m not locking my doors. Not during the day when I’m home, anyway.
We moved here nearly two years ago, so we don’t have a very long track record. That said, we’ve found living here about like living in any other fairly large city: keeping alert, keeping out of high-risk areas, and keeping doors locked seem to be effective methods to reduce your exposure to random crimes. You need to keep this guard up at all times: some friends were robbed at gunpoint just 3 blocks from our house one night last month. (They weren’t hurt and the police caught the crook within an hour of the report.)
We hear that several years ago the situation in many neighborhoods was almost unbearable. One friend, in order to avoid injury risk from stray gunfire, slept under his dining room table each night for the entire summer of 1996. A new mayor and new police chief have done wonders at reducing random crimes, especially violent ones. Much of the violence is between gangs or between residents in high-risk, run-down areas.
In comparison, we lived in Raleigh, NC for five years, very near NC State’s campus. We had a crack dealer occupy a house across the street from us for a few months, had a few violent crimes in the city parks not too far from the house, and had to call the police at 2:00 a.m. when a goth/punk teenager went on a screaming/fighting bad acid trip in the middle of the street. Our neighborhood here (near Tulane University) is nearly tame in comparision. Of course, we haven’t been here very long and may have just hit a lull.
Mid-sized southern city hre, 'round a quarter million. I live in the second worst area of town, and I would like to say I’ve never had any problems, except that I got mugged one, right in front of my door, by a 14 year old, at 11 o’clock on a Thusday morning. (Actually, it started out as a mugging. When he held up this little fist and told me to let go of my purse, I told him no. I mean, it was a kid, and I’ve been hit before. I have siblings! At that point, he lost his nerve and turned it into a purse snatching. He never would have gotten away with it if the damn strap hadn’t broken). So while I would say that my neighborhood overall is safe, the fact that I have myself had a vaugely criminal experience kinda makes me nervous. Though it says alot for the crime rate in my my town that when I called the cops they had two cars there in about 90 seconds.
We do have alot of night traffic around here–it is a poor neighborhood, and people walk to the convienence stores, walk around in groups. As the neighborhood is almost 100% African American and Hispanic, I imagene that would make some people nervous. But like I said, the only actual problem I ever had was in broad daylight.
Generally a pretty safe city. I live in Northeast Denver, an area that scares suburbanites because it’s gasp got a high black & Hispanic population, which of course automatically means gangs & crazed crack addicts stealing your car at gunpoint at every intersection. :rolleyes: I rarely lock my door; though I do have two BIG dogs, one of whom is known in the 'hood as being Not That Friendly.
Actually it is a working class, older neighborhood & property was cheap when I bought my house six years ago. The crime stats by neighborhood (I’m in Montclair) are fairly low…toney Cherry Creek has a much higher crime rate. What crime there is is mainly prostitution, drugs & gang activity up & down East Colfax & the blocks where there are low-income apartment buildings. Since I don’t do drugs, prostitute myself or belong to a gang except the SDMB, I’m at pretty low risk.
The upside of living in this sort of neighborhood is I know just about everybody on my block & we look out for each other, unlike the big sterile new suburban wastelands.
I live in the near suburbs of Chicago but work downtown and prefer going downtown by L or Metra to relax on the weekend. However, my parents, who used to live on the West Side before the riots and unrest of the late 1960s, have a phobia of the city after dark. Pretty much the entire city, but especially the L system. Which translates on a weekend to panicked cellphone calls from my mother demanding I leave downtown soon so I won’t be on the subway after dark. :rolleyes: What am I, bloody Cinderella?!
While Chicago certainly has its share of unsavory neighborhoods, there are few attractions in these areas, and the L lines that run through them from one good area to another are pretty safe at most hours of the day. (Lots of people, for instance, ride the Green Line from Oak Park to downtown through the infamous West Side.) Criminals don’t seem to specially target tourists in Chicago as they do in other cities (Miami?) and someone who applies common sense and keeps track of their surroundings does not need to be paranoid.
My parents’ fear comes from a perception that nobody respectable is out after 10 or so in the city, again especially on the L. (It also comes from the fact that they left the city in the first place to get away from crime, so crime and the city are inextricably linked in their minds.) In reality, I’ve been on L platforms and trains on a Saturday or even Sunday night that were standing room only, but telling my parents this doesn’t seem to break them of a “Death Wish”-like image of a lone vulnerable person walking down a deserted ill-lit platform with figures lurking in the shadows. :eek: I think I’ll take a camera with me the next time I go downtown on a weekend to prove to them that downtown, and the L, are more like a circus than a cemetery at 11pm.
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I’m from Deer Park (small, blue-collar suburb, very safe, very dull). I’ve never really walked around Houston, since I always drive there. However, my parents and, especially, my grandparents have been watching the Houston nightly news since time began and are convinced you can’t step inside the Houston city limits without getting shot. My mom visited my grandparents once and they asked where I was. She said I was downtown.
Their reaction was “You let her go downtown! There’s [explitives] shooting people!”
I was 20 years old. It was daylight. I was at the Garden in the Heights. At a Celtic music festival. God knows that when thugs look to shoot someone they always follow the sound of bagpipes.
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I’ve found Austin pretty safe, though I live off Riverside. As I heard someone politely phrase it,“There are a lot…low-income people around here.” I don’t walk around at night by myself or otherwise tempt fate, but I’ve never felt unsafe. I rarely go downtown, but perhaps that will change once I turn 21.
I live way on the far south west side. Crime? Never heard of it. 99% of the violent crimes here happens in the inner city, some 92 blocks away. Fine with me. I don’t go there.
This city used to have a reputation as little more than a factory for producing hard-bitten thugs and crazed gang members. There’ve never been guns in the UK on anything like the scale you have in the US, and now they’re so tightly controlled that a guy could easily live all his life and never see one. That said, evil, like life, finds a way. I live in Govan, a pretty depressing place since the shipyards closed. The streets are covered in shit and the kids destroy everything, and cannot be approached because they know the law so well. A month or so ago a guy was beaten so badly by eight year-olds with baseball bats that he ended up in hospital with brain damage. The adults themselves have never presented that much of a problem to us (my wife and me). While there’s still a strong alcohol-fuelled presence on the streets at night and after soccer games, in general things seem much quieter than they were twenty years ago. The reason? Alcohol has been exchanged for drugs, and the generation which would have replaced the Hun (a famous gang of the 60s and 70s) are now too far gone on heroin and her children that they can’t get it together to organise anything more than a random slashing.
Some parts of the city are very well off, and absolutely safe - the only danger is getting lifted by the police for looking suspicious! Others have poverty levels beyond those seen in Eastern Europe (no cite - just visit Easterhouse or Possil…) Guess which ones a trainee minister has to spend all his time in?
But no, I don’t feel like I’m in danger. I know I would be if I didn’t do what was right. Life here is like American werewolf in london - if you stay on the road, you’ll be fine…
Houston, Texas here. I’ve lived a good deal of my life in the Montrose, for those who are familiar. For those who are not, until downtown opened up as a new residential ($$$) area a few years ago, Montrose was an inner-city area that was a sort of Greenwich Village for Houston. Mostly older homes and variously known as the artsy part of town, or the gay neighborhood, or the alternative music ghetto, or whatever, it attracted the footloose and the fancy-free (as well as the fancy-for-a-tip). Unlike the just plain gango-shit parts of town, like Gulfton, Gulfgate, etc., Montrose has a lot of attractions for many varied folk and the aimless wanderers as well as the practicing criminals tend to find their way here. And they still do, although the area is changing with the explosion of townhomes bringing in an abundance of those post-yuppies (is there a new term?) who can’t afford downtown and get uptight about the tranny bars down the street. Much active night life can do that for an urban area.
My first call to political activism was to fight (we’ve won, so far) zoning in Houston (any of y’all in Houston remember the red and white international sign for forbidden over a Z that were around during that fight? - I printed’em out of my own pocket and distributed them - I’ve still got about 500).
So the 'hood is changing, but I’ll still walk at night. I recognize that the character of my neighborhood does tend to bring us those with loose roots, from whom springs violence the like of which is perhaps not as often seen in the master-planned communities that feed off us (Kingwood, The Woodlands, etc.). And I am therefore careful. But I’m comfy with the area and wouldn’t trade the tattoo parlors and unlicensed bars for the sterility of the north country. I do know my neighbors.
We live in rural Northeast Iowa. Very small town place. Our crime amounts to an occasionally burglary of empty farm houses, meth labs and a fair amount of drunk driving. Once in a while someone will break into a gas station and steal cigarettes and beer. There is a small town near here with two packing plants that has had a significant influx of Latinos and Russians (how’s that for a combination) and has had a fair amount of disturbing the peace type stuff. Nonetheless, few people lock their houses or cars. Most of us are armed to the teeth. Any house has one or two shotguns around and probably a .22. We aren’t big on pistols, however, and few people, if any, pack heat. Mostly it’s just quiet.
Had a murder within a hundred yards of my place when I moved in – teenage stabbing.
More recently, a downstairs neighbour was convicted of assault and was stabbed to the bone by the person he was living with.
I’m very glad that we have gun control here (Canada), for the only thing that keeps the death rate down in my neighbourhood is the lack of easy access to handguns. Lots of fights and stabbings, but very few shootings.
We used to go downtown at night to skate. It’s like a ghost town after five or six in the evening. Never saw another living soul who wasn’t on skates or a skateboard.
The city is scaled for cars, and walking around in it is like walking in the Black Forest. Your grandparents sound like the kind of people who refuse to pull up next to me at red lights because I might shoot them.
Low-income! A red herring. West Campus is a den of thieves and they have plenty of money. They’ll still steal your plants and anything else not nailed down. Do you live at the Metropolis or in one of those nondescript plexes on the northside?
I live in one of those nondescript plexes. My parents and grandparents are cool with it because it has a fence around it and some rent-a-cops. I think they’re good psychological barriers, in that they make you feel safe, but I don’t have the heart to explain to them that anyone with half a brain can enter this impregnable fortress at will.
Suburban Dublin here. I live in an 40 yr old Suburban estate on the northside of Dublin. My area is ok, except for the parks, which tend to fill with Scumbags after dark. I have 3 council estates ( our version of Projects)within a mile radius of me.
As ruadh said, It is pretty safe, but there are places that I would just not go.
Thought I’d drop in a few stats courtesy of today’s paperfor you crazy city living cats. These are just murder numbers – violent crime might be another story entirely. OK:
** Selected murder rates per 100,000 inhabitants for 1997 / 99:**
Washington DC: 50.82 (we have the worlds winner !)
Moscow: 27.47
Nu Yoirk, NY: 9.39
Amsterdam: 5.37
Belfast: 5.23
Berlin: 3.23
Dublin: 2.37
London: 2.36
Another interesting statistic is that the UK is only second behind Portugal in Europe for the number of people in prison: UK = 125 people per 100,000 of the population
US = 682 people per 100,000 of the population – about 6 times the European average.
IMHO, London’s pretty safe. You need to take sensible precautions but no more so than anywhere else.
