[rdl]

I'm not even arguing that Oakland as a whole is dangerous; it's specific blocks in the good/high-traffic areas, and then large areas (Oakland is huge geographically) which are bad-but-no-one-goes-there. There's some street crime on top of that, but not actually much more than similar areas in SF. Way more than, say, Salt Lake City, though.

Most of the serious crime in Oakland is in places you won't accidentally go (although there's a sketch area a few blocks away from downtown, and on the other shore of Lake Merritt), by and against poor people, often one or more involved in gangs/drug entrepreneurship/whatever. Same as most cities.

[azinman2]

Except most cities aren't on that list. SF has similar places where "good rich people" avoid -- but it still isn't in the top 10.

I also don't like this implicit because it's "poor against poor" then somehow that's ok and we can ignore those statistics. Poor people are people too. Talk about gentrifying.....

[rdl]

It isn't that it is ok -- but having rich people and businesses move to Oakland, pay taxes, and thus better fund things like schools, police, and other jobs will help with poverty. Because the violence isn't uniformly distributed and thus isn't targeted at them, it is less of s deterrent.

Also, a lot of that current violence is due to war on drugs and after effects, so the best way to address it is to wind down the war on drugs.