Dangerous downtowns?

FACT FOCUS: NYC crime is not worst ever, despite claims | AP News

CLAIM: Crime in New York City is the worst it’s ever been, especially in the borough of Manhattan where Trump faces criminal charges.

THE FACTS: While it’s true that major crimes in New York City rose last year compared to 2021, criminal justice experts say crime levels were significantly higher three decades ago, and that the current levels are more comparable to where New York was a decade ago, when people frequently lauded it as America’s safest big city.

The New York Police Department and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office, meanwhile, argue the recent surge is already receding. Through the first quarter of 2023, major crimes are down overall compared to the same period last year.

Nevertheless, the notion of a crime wave washing over the Big Apple has been a steady refrain on social media since Bragg’s office brought charges against former President Donald Trump, who has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts related to hush money payments during his winning 2016 campaign.​

For a bit of perspective, since you've cancelled a trip from Kentucky to New York because of a fear of violent crime:
- The violent crime rate in Louisville in 2020 was 473.4 violent crimes per 100,000 people.
- In New York City, the violent crime rate has hovered between 400 and 500 violent crimes per 100,000 people over each of the last ten years.

 

Your quoted crime rates between two cities are from 2020.
This not 2020 you need to check your cancel culture time machine.

Your post references the recent crime surge.
"The New York Police Department and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office, meanwhile, argue the recent surge is already receding"

 

Oh dear, @John321 . This doesn't paint you in a good light.

Still, let's look at the "cancel culture time machine", eh? Who's been doing the cancelling here?

Honestly, don't you just hate "cancel culture" "snowflakes"? They're awful.
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Which part of the bit in red, bold, italics and large font did you not understand?

 

Back about the time I first started buying hardcopies of the annual FBI Uniform Crime Reports, just over thirty years ago (before they were freely available on the internet), the nation was near its peak modern per capita murder rate. And New York City was running about 3X the national rate, with over 6 murders per day, over 2,000 per year. One of those years, I found that New York City (not even the state) had more murders than 26 states combined. Though it wasn't the most dangerous U.S. city, the District of Columbia's per capita rate was 8X the national average.

The national rate plummeted through the mid- and late-1990s, then generally trended down until about 2014 or so, to a rate not seen since the late 1950s, and only barely above the lowest rate ever reliably recorded in this country, earlier in the 1950s. (Lower rates claimed for the early 20th Century pre-date full national reporting and are not considered even close to reality.)

NYC's rate dropped considerably, to become more similar to the national average. But certain political memories fade slowly, and many people's memory of the really bad old days persist. Additionally, rising crime rates produce far greater headlines than do falling rates. This really shows up in many public opinion polls, from Pew and others, that commonly show widespread perceptions of rising crime over periods that it actually fell, even sharply.

Unfortunately, rates did begin rising after that mid-20-teens lull, and accelerated during the Pandemic. But the most reliable recent figures I've seen are still well below the early 1980s and also 1990-ish peaks. It is very unfortunate that when the FBI replaced the old UCR reporting system with the new NIBRS system (with years of advance notice), local agency reporting rates plummeted, rendering subsequent national reports unreliable.

Crime rates weren't bad 20 years ago. For the really bad 'modern' years, look at almost anything from about 1968 to 1990.

Local police spokespeople here have highlighted a couple new items that didn't exist 20 years ago. Within the past few days, local tribal police (Tulalip and Lummi) have said that 90% of the crimes they are dealing with now are in some manner connected to fentanyl. Earlier this month, other police said that the bulk of the area's increased violence was a guns+social-media issue among adolescents and young adults, too young for legal gun possession. The addition of social media has spread disputes much faster and wider than the old word-of-mouth. Numerous other sources have also been pointing to various toxic and deadly problems not created by the new social media, but greatly exacerbated by it.

 

Even in the good old FBI-UCR days, nationwide 2022 numbers would not yet have been published by the FBI. We had to wait another month, or two, or two-and-a-half.

The old more-reliable UCR reports end at 2019. For 2020, we have just the much less reliable FBI-NIBRS reports, in which far too many local agencies didn't participate. For 2021, we still have a hot mess.

 

Oh I fully understand our “increase” in crime is nowhere near the good old days. I mentioned the last 20 because I knew crime itself wasn’t bad then or now, comparisons to the lead fueled era would be erroneous.

as i alluded what did increase is the shock and awe type of crimes that rise to the level of people noticing which writes a narrative and of coarse non-criminal societal disfunction (which would include drugs until a higher order crime occurs) that people are finally noticing but of coarse get mad at and want to punish instead of solve.

The drastic increase in the number of “isolated young males” likely coorelates to gangs, drugs and who is doing the deed. Ready Cannon fodder. Out west youth issues is very real, north and east less so but still a bad scenario since we try to punish our way out of problems caused by punishment.

In his defense if you take crime as a per incident value a very recent realization is that
an extraordinary large percentage of “crime” is done by a couple people.

In effect it’s like 99% of higher value crime is done by 1% of arrests and this is a national trend.

The ideal that police doing police work, communicating and correlating data to find trends has apparently been mostly mythical before 2022.

We are harassing a large population of individuals equally when only a couple are causing most of the real problems.

Police don’t know what they don’t know.
Still running blind when it comes to someone professional causing trouble outside the county, some things never change.

 

That's a really broad generalization, without much in the way of data to support it.

-posted from a large metropolitan city

 

During my time living in big cities (5.3 million in the city I'm in now; 26 million in the city before that; 7.4 million in the city before that; and 8.9 million in the city before that, over a period of about 27 years), the closest that a one-on-one murder took place to me (to my knowledge) was about 4km from me, in Sydney.

During my time in small towns (I spend a lot of time in a remote desert town of 17,000 now, and I grew up in a town of 35,000), the closest that a murder took place to me (to my knowledge) was 100 metres away, in the remote desert town of 17,000, last year.

That said, I was within hearing distance (and taking cover lying on the floor of a taxi distance) of a mass shooting in 1994 in which 29 people died, and that was in a city that then had a population of about 10 million.

But I definitely don't feel safer in small towns than in big cities. Like I said before, small towns are where the meth is.

 

Break out your VISA card:

• Instantly makes all downtowns safe.
• Protects schools.
• Great for outdoor concerts.
• Solves the homeless problem.
• NRA approved.
• Don't ballot, bullet

Bob Wilson

 

I appreciate humor, including dark humor, and even this.

But in doing so I can't lose sight of the fact that the joke is on us Americans. It's a fair bit of why the rest of the world thinks we are idiots.

 

Not all of you...

 

2016 called.
They want their ads and prices back.

Rifles have about as much to do with crime in the US as plastic drinking straws in do with microplastics in the western Pacific.
ALL of them, not just the ones that are black and scary.

You can make an association, but does anyone think that eliminating them will change much on the problem end of the equation???

Since less than 5% of all gun crimes are committed by everything that is not a pistol and since the "experts" out there spend much more than 50% of their energies going after that very small portion of the problem - I'm left with questions about their real motives.

Not counting suicide, almost every crime in the US is directly now DIRECTLY linked to drugs - especially if you count alky-haul as a drug.
Criminals are either trying to get them, sell them, or they are under the influence of them.
THIS IS WHY, if you are unmoored by ethics you can buy a $3000 mountain bike in the PNW for a hundred bucks...or a designer handbag a little further south for about the same price....or rent the services of a pre-teen nearly ANYWHERE in the US if you're not picky about color.

Dangerous Downtowns?
Nope.
Not really.

They're even LESS dangerous if you're white, male, have private security, live in a gated community, etc....etc....

 

Shopping downtown, she looks good to me:


Perfect for mixed company:

• The guys like the gun.
• The gals make a list of who should see the gun (see above).

Bob Wilson

 

She looks air-brushed to me.
You have to be over 18 to buy or possess a firearm - even in Alabama - unless you're in the Guard or the military.

 

Less than 1% of crimes are committed with single shot weapons. Problem solved.

as an aside, we don’t have the political will to even address mass murder
And ar-15 (and similar) fall into that category (shock and awe)
circa 2016
~700 casualties (injuries or death) were the result of mass murders.

Kids radicalized fighting wars in the streets and organized violence seems to fly over our heads also.

~26,000 suicides
21,070 murders
1470 undetermined/accidental

Mixed into the above (somewhere) are the 1200 murder suicides

Only 19% of murders are due to organized crime (mostly affecting other gangs) but a larger amount of theft can be attributed to them.

As I alluded a very small group of individuals do most of the crimes in any given area. Breaking down the organization structure is key to clearing up this problem.

Break the supply chain and less drugs, less violence, less theft.

 

That's the same idea that has failed since prohibition days. Unless you can credibly remove all supply globally simultaneously and permanently, all you're doing is increasing the market price of an alternate supply.

Treat the addicts directly, compassionately and early and the demand will go away.

 

Depends, if the government is the one supplying the clean drugs it can be taxed and regulated that breaks supply also by providing a profit motive to eliminate black markets

Treating addicts would require us to address the male loneliness epidemic which feeds most of our societal problems that are all interconnected
Homelessness
Joblessness
Relationshiplessness
Minimal education
Mental illness

I have seen nondenominational male outreach programs that put in immense effort, time charity and resources to rebuild individuals coming out of drugs or out of prison.

The idea you can give them a program and a job and it’s all better is a false narrative .

People like those on the street or from prison can take years of charity, government cheese, a free community, counseling alongside other engagement to rebuild the man, once the man is rebuilt only then can he dip his toes in easy employment. He still may fail and go back to the streets or prison.

Do you believe we can as a society are capable of the above?

I don’t think our current societal environment can even admit to most of the problems, let alone make a charitable framework to get folks back into society, just being realistic.

 

I wonder if that's why the pyramids got built, the original "new deal"?

 

Drug cartels and drug dealers seem to be quite popular with their clientele - to the point of being sought out by the end user.
How do they treat their customers? They must be doing something right, maybe they are using the techniques you described.

Typically, an addict must be highly motivated on a personal level to kick his issue or all the help he can get will most likely be unproductive.

Therein lies a major hurdle, the individual made a choice to use and continue to use, how does he reverse course? To the one gentlemen's point why did he make that choice to use? If that personal choice and reasoning doesn't change, why would he choose to change.

Statistics strongly suggest prevention is far and away the best option

Drug Rehab Statistics & Success Rates - 2023 (addictiongroup.org)

Relapse Statistics

1. About 40 to 60% of people recovering from alcohol or drug use may return to using them.4
2. Young patients with substance use face a relapse rate of 33.1% within two years and 38% within five years.8
3. Through comprehensive research on the habits of adolescent crack users, findings suggest that relapse rates soar to 65.9% within the first month and 86.4% within the third.8
4. People who use MDMA or methamphetamine have a 2.65 more relapse rate than those who use ketamine.8
5. More than two out of three persons who start treatment for substance abuse disorders are likely to experience a relapse.9
6. Over 85% of people who receive treatment for drug abuse end up relapsing within just one year.9
7. Persons with drug dependencies have a success rate of less than 25% when abstaining from marijuana and cocaine upon discharge. The numbers aren’t better for alcohol and opiate dependencies, with less than 35% of patients remaining abstinent for a year.9
8. The chances of experiencing a drug relapse within 90 days of completing treatment ranges from 65% to 70%.9
9. One study reveals that 75% experience one or more relapses over 12 years.11

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