[tazjin]

It's always strange to read these reports from American cities that sound like something out of war-torn countries. Delivery workers grouping together to defend themselves against hordes of bandits, in well-known places, with no police protection? What the ...?

This sort of thing would be unthinkable in central Moscow and most other large European city centres (the only European city I've ever felt unsafe in is Brussels, and that's still quite different from NYC).

[aerosmile]

Spoiler alert: the murder rate in Russia is 40% higher than in the US, and that's despite the very different gun laws [1][2].

Nothing ruins a good story like facts. That's also why you should always raise before you launch or enter a new market, etc. People are suckers for a story, and our brains are pre-wired to explain phenomena rather than to question them. Once you master that psychology (and manipulation) of people, you'll be better at fundraising - and apparently at journalism as well!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Russia [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States

[tazjin]

From your link:

> Either way, it represents a significant decrease over the previous 15 years (in 2001, the homicide rate was 30.5). In 2018, according to Rosstat, there were 7,067 murders, and the homicide rate in Russia fell below the United States for the first time in recent history, falling to 4.9 per 100,000 compared to the US rate of 5.0 per 100,000 in 2018.

A common thing that happens in these comparisons is that people look at the Rosstat statistic that includes attempted murder.

Also, I'm specifically making my point about the major cities. Moscow sees a huge amount of investment of course, and I would expect the same from US cities like NYC or SF.

[twic]

Could you expand on what this has to do with tazjin's point, which is specifically about delivery workers being attacked by robbers, and the police doing nothing about it, in specific cities?

[aerosmile]

He started off with "It's always strange to read these reports from American cities..."

It's strange because it's exaggerated, and it's exaggerated because it has to be - otherwise nobody would care to read the article (and then nobody would pay for this poor reporter's salary who has to hit certain monthly pageview targets, etc).

If you read something in the news and it sounds really strange, don't take it at face value.

[wan23]

I used to live by the bridge mentioned in the article as a place where people got attacked, and I believe it 100% fwiw.

[CodesInChaos]

It'd rather compare the US with Western Europe. Homicide in the US is 5x that of Germany, and 10x that of Norway.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...

[aerosmile]

My point was not to defend the crime rate in the US, but to address a question that a person from Russia asked - why does it sound like living in NYC is like watching some Western movie, whereas the same cannot be said about Moscow?

It sounded strange, because all it takes is a few YouTube searches to witness the level of violence that exists in Russia that far exceeds anything you'll see in the US. Russia really is something else in that regard, and if a Russian felt safer at home than in the US, it's simply a product of exaggerated reporting.

If someone living in Munich said that NYC is more dangerous than what they are used to, I wouldn't disagree with them.

[nzmsv]

You have never been to Russia and yet feel comfortable saying it is "something else in this regard", basing the statement on a YouTube search.

The average stats are about the same, but that's as useful a number as the average temperature of the patients in a hospital.

For the places a visitor is likely to go, Russia will definitely feel safer. Crime there is largely pushed out of the densely populated city cores and into the outskirts. In the US, it's the opposite. A downtown core looks (and smells) like a dystopia unimaginable to most citizens of the world. People are always shocked at how terrible the world cities that heard about so much look in person.

[_delibash_]

This comment of yours however does smack of that run of the mill American xenophobia, "all it takes is a few YouTube searches to witness the level of violence that exists in Russia that far exceeds anything you'll see in the US. Russia really is something else in that regard." All it takes is a few YouTube searches to find some really fucked up footage of cops violating Americans' rights every day.

[_delibash_]

Considering the US is notorious for mass shootings and gun violence, it's not at all surprising that someone would have that view. NYC is a fairly safe place, for now. So is Moscow.

[rsj_hn]

The U.S., however, does not have the demographics of Western Europe.

Just like you can't compare Western Europe to Japan (it is much more violent in comparison, but again, different demographics).

The US is maybe 50% Europe, 30% Latin America, 8% Asia, 12% Africa, and if you look at the UN intentional homicide tables and take the weighted average by continent, you'll end up with an expected intentional homicide rate of about 5 per 100,000, which is right where the US is.

So stop pretending we are Western Europe - we aren't.

[tsywke44]

There's a HUGE difference between getting murdered by your friend in a drunken argument, and getting murdered by a stranger street criminal trying to rob you....

[HeyLaughingBoy]

There is? Either way you're still dead.

[aaron-santos]

Right before that there is a huge difference.

[chowchowchow]

Ah yes, Russia. Long held as the standard to which the US should aspire to in many ways, including its murder rate.

[TapWaterBandit]

It's deceptive anyway. Healthcare is much better in the USA than in Russia, including in the treatment of potential homicides.

If you combined murder rate + ICU entry rate for both countries due to violent crime, I think the stats would tell quite a different story.

[CalRobert]

It's an issue in Dublin, Ireland too. Deliveroo riders are attacked and police seem to disregard it as an issue. Then when the riders started making maps describing which areas were dangerous the pearl-clutchers described it as "classist".

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/deliveroo...

[MrBuddyCasino]

Ah yes, status-boosting Luxury Beliefs the consequences of which the weakest have to endure. A pattern that repeats itself since decades.

[nerdponx]

The victims themselves here are more or less part of the downtrodden caste. Some of them might not be living in the USA with legal authorization. They probably don't feel like the city is interested in protecting them, and it seems like in some cases they are already familiar with "protecting themselves" in organized groups. So with a lack of political interest in their case, banding together makes perfect sense.

[josephorjoe]

Robbery of delivery workers has long been a problem in the city complicated by the fact that many of them don't trust/don't feel safe going to the police.

My first time on jury duty in nyc the case was armed robbery of a delivery worker to steal his cell phone - this was pre smart phone era, so let's say the phone's value was <$200.

Was a very depressing case tbh. One person at risk of death and another at risk of a long prison term for what was really petty theft (armed robbery makes the punishment much much worse than just petty theft would be).

[nerdponx]

Indeed. Maybe the part that's most depressing to me is that the long prison sentence clearly isn't enough of a disincentive against robbing another working-class person. How fucked up and bleak would your world have to be in order to do such a thing?

[LeifCarrotson]

Harsher sentences can actually be detrimental. It's not so bleak that someone would be willing to spend years in prison for a $200 phone.

Similarly, I didn't actually believe it was worth more than $125 to be a few seconds earlier to work this morning, which would be a rational, economic justification for a $125 traffic ticket. Instead, I've driven some 250,000 miles in the past 10 years (thankfully done with the long highway commute that caused most of them), I'd say about half of them were at 5mph over, and I've never received a ticket. I traded a 1:100,000 chance of a ticket against keeping up with the rest of traffic who were also uniformly breaking the law; I'm pretty adept with numbers but I find it difficult to comprehend that scale.

They're trading a tiny, tiny chance of prison time against a $200 phone. The actual percentage of enforcement is irrelevant compared to the justified, reinforced belief that they won't be caught or punished. OP mentioned that as a juror they were depressed at the apparent mandate to sentence someone to years in prison for the petty theft, instead, consistent enforcement of an appropriate penalty would be far better at changing behaviors.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

That long sentences weren't much of a deterrent was already common knowledge when I was in high school in NYC some 40-odd years ago.

The biggest deterrent was just getting caught in the first place.

[tazjin]

There's no way it's this simple. Looking at a map of NYC, it seems that this must be a fairly major bridge (southernmost connection from the Bronx to Manhattan) for all kinds of traffic. I'd expect plenty of average people not involved in delivery gangs (??) to cross there, too, and have issues with the roving bandits.

If this is a known crime hotspot, shouldn't police just be hanging out there?

[pydry]

Is it that hard to believe given the events from the last couple of years that the police arent all that interested in protecting these people?

American police also stole $2.5 bn in cash and killed 1,100 people in 2020.

[tazjin]

My point is that there must be people who aren't involved in criminal gangs or deliveries crossing this bridge, too, so there should be a general interest in keeping it safe.

[brundolf]

It seemed like these were targeted attacks- specific time window, specific target group. Most people crossing won't have something worth thousands of dollars on them, which can conveniently act as its own getaway vehicle, and which can then be fenced through what sounded like an established pipeline for this particular item

[nerdponx]

Relatively few "regular" people walk across that bridge. It's mostly car traffic. And it connects two areas that have been historically "rough".

[MisterTea]

This is nothing new, the South Bronx has always been a notorious crime ridden mess.

I used to hang around some trucking forums and found that in the 70's-80's into the 90's Hunts Point was legendary among truckers as a war zone. From the stories and anecdotes the route between the ports and the expressway was a gauntlet of armed highwaymen. It was so bad truckers would not stop for red lights or stop signs for fear of being hijacked in broad daylight. It was customary to lean on the horn and try to roll through. A few even admitted to illegally carrying a pistol for protection.

[stagger87]

Burglary and violence are not specific to American cities. Implying that they are "unthinkable" in large European cities is borderline flame bait.

[mjburgess]

I don't really think so. Americans often project this "no-go areas" type thinking onto europe. I'm not aware of any "no-go" areas anywhere in the country.

I think a ban on guns, and eg., an extreme historical scarcity of them in the UK means we aren't in the same position at all.

Yes there may be gangs. Yes there may be murders. But I think people delivering food on bikes arent in danger basically anywhere.

[bovine3dom]

In Manchester in the UK there was one in 2019: an old railway line which has been converted into a bike path, the Fallowfield loop. Groups of teenagers were attacking cyclists with hammers and logs. I believe that the police woke up to it and it has calmed now but it was definitely a no-go area for me for a few months. I'm pretty sure someone tried to drop a fist-sized rock on me while I cycled under a bridge...

[stagger87]

Bike robbery and theft is an issue in Europe, especially e-bikes.

> Americans often project this "no-go areas" type thinking onto europe. I'm not aware of any "no-go" areas anywhere in the country.

This just comes off as more flame bait. What kind of discussion do you expect to have with this sort of comment?

[mjburgess]

Well, at least, someone offering a counter-example.

[InfiniteRand]

I think you should always take these type of articles with a grain of salt. The author seems keen to play up the drama

[rightbyte]

Drama? Didn't the SF DA stop enforcing laws on theft under some arbitrary but quite large value? I would not call it an exaggeration.

[danShumway]

Heads up, this article is about NYC bikers, and NYC has actually increased police budgets lately.

[jakelazaroff]

The amount of attention spent on Chesa Boudin and shoplifting is puzzling. Wage theft is by far the biggest form of stealing, and it’s rarely — if ever — prosecuted… but instead we’re worried about a small increase in petty larceny?

[yadaeno]

We shouldn't have to choose between wage theft or regular theft.

Also has Boudin done anything significant to combat wage theft? Or do you think since wage theft exists "burn it all down".

[sangnoir]

Police and prosecutorial resources are limited. They have to be prioritized by necessity.

[willcipriano]

Police officers don't investigate wage theft, labor boards do. Not going after shoplifters, bike thieves and porch pirates doesn't free up any resources in order to go after wage theft, it just makes the area less safe and more expensive.

[jakelazaroff]

Chesa Boudin is the District Attorney, not a police officer. Wage theft is under his jurisdiction.

[colpabar]

Has he done anything about it?

I don't understand why you're bringing this up when the TFA is about armed robbery. I do understand why someone would bring up SF in the first place, because SF decided to stop prosecuting "petty larceny". TFA is about what you'd also call "petty larceny", and the city seems to not care about it.

[bradleyjg]

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/whataboutism

[splintercell]

It feels like there’s a clear class difference. Almost all of these people are Hispanic/brown immigrants. If this was happening, and presuming it was worse than what the article described, what are the chances that you would know about it?

[sangnoir]

As a thought experiment, how long would it take for NYPD to respond if young, middle-class, college-aged joggers were being attacked with the same frequency at some dark Central Park corner.

[downrightmike]

Not war-torn, more like lawless wastelands. Cops don't really stop crime, the get their ticket quota and then if they have to follow up on other crime, they may show up and take a report.

[downrightmike]

Just first hand experience, y'all don't like it, well, I don't like it either.

[CryptoPunk]

Police in these major American cities, like all public sector workers (and especially emergency workers), get paid really well too.

The political system of these major Democrat dominated cities is entirely dysfunctional. The only thing the public sector unions, and their political puppets, offer as a solution, is more social spending:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/social-spending-oecd-long...

The US is just ahead of the pack in unraveling.

[bradleyjg]

For a while there, NYC was very safe. Then de Blasio got elected. Hopefully, Eric Adams can turn around the disaster Bill is leaving him.

[jakelazaroff]

Crime is down under de Blasio. Virtually every category has continued decreasing since he took office in 2014: https://www.disastercenter.com/crime/nycrime.htm

(That link only covers through 2019, but if you look at the official CompStat data the two year trend for 2019–2021 is also negative: https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/nypd/downloads/pdf/crime_statist...)

[nzmsv]

Another way to get crime stats to look good is to ignore crimes. Even from the article we are discussing here it sounds like there have been dozens of instances of assault and robbery that were ignored. Ignore enough and people stop wasting their time reporting crimes. Stats look great, the streets tell a different story.

[pandaman]

I am not sure how is the state stats are relevant in discussing DeBlasio's performance or one week makes a trend though. Here are the annual stats for felonies: https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/nypd/downloads/pdf/analysis_and_... https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/nypd/downloads/pdf/analysis_and_...

Some crimes are down, some (e.g. murder) are up.

[jakelazaroff]

Oops, didn’t notice the first link was for New York State. The CompStat link includes longer-term trends, though, which is what I was referring to.

Crime is down overall, and I suspect that if you controlled for the murder rate increase in all US cities over the past two years it might be flat or down in NYC as well.

[alach11]

Murder rate is arguably the most useful crime metric because it's the hardest one for politicians/police to game. Changes in enforcement can change trends for assaults and property crime, but you can't really hide bodies.

[jakelazaroff]

Well, you'd have to show that murder rates correlate with rates for other crime. But more important is digging into the thorny issue of what — and who — defines "crime". Because there are a ton of aspects to it: what laws are on the books, what laws are actually enforced, what various special interest groups want to legislate, what people analyzing data choose to include.

For example, as of 2017 feeding pigeons was a misdemeanor in Las Vegas [1]. That will show up in crime data, but you'd be hard-pressed to convince me that it correlates with the murder rate. And if you wanted me to compile a report on crime data, I'd probably ignore it altogether (which is essentially what people are doing when they refer to "violent crime" states).

For a slightly more charged example, let's say property owners push a law against sleeping in public. If they succeed and police don't enforce it, are they "gaming" the metrics? What if most other locals actually oppose the law?

[1] https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-illegal-pigeon-vegas-20...

[bradleyjg]

If Chicago, San Francisco, and Minneapolis all jump off a bridge NYC should too?

[jakelazaroff]

Are you saying that we shouldn’t control for a coordinated national change in murder rate when evaluating the impact a mayor’s specific policies have had on their city?

[jessaustin]

NYC is subject to the same national economic, demographic, and cultural trends. For example, recently there has been a respiratory pandemic that affected the entire nation.

[swman]

Is this like California making it okay to steal stuff up to a certain amount and then claiming theft is down? Lol

[crispyambulance]

"Safety" in a city is an outcome of a very large number of interconnected factors. It is not under the control of any one mayor or police commissioner. More importantly, perception plays a large role in how people judge the safety a city or a neighborhood.

"Safe" is also very hard to define. Safe for who? Safe in what sense? It's a giant grey area and no one has ever been able to "solve" the crime problem. Getting tough on crime doesn't work, nor does endless social programs, nor does sweeping it under the rug.

Hopefully Adams will take a pragmatic approach and do what he can without making it worse. I wish him well.

[refurb]

SF was always rough but has definitely gotten a bit more lawless.

I wonder if we’re seeing history repeat itself? Cities grew in the 50’s, then saw people leave in the 60-70’s, then return in the 90’s.

[bradleyjg]

The usual explanations for the prior crime wave were exogenous—crack cocaine and leaded gasoline are the two I’ve seen most frequently.

On the other hand, this latest round seems to be the result of poor policy choices.

[rsj_hn]

There are plenty of non-exogenous causes, they just don't have the same cool-factor for publication as things like leaded gasoline. For example many people were released from institutions during the massive de-institutionalization push that started in the mid 50s [1], going from ~340 institutionalized people per 100,000 in 1955 to about 60 per 100,000 in 1980. One can even argue that the sum of incarcerated and institutionalized has averaged roughly constant (about 450 per 100,000) with a dip during the period of increasing criminality from the 1960s to the 1990s as the incarceration rate had to climb from ~100 to ~450 per 100,000 to make up for the mass de-institutionalization.

The cited study is pretty interesting:

"The juxtaposition of these trends and the current high incidence of severe mental illness among those behind bars begs the question of whether the mentally ill have simply been transinstitutionalized from mental hospitals to prisons and jails. A related question concerns the extent to which the unprecedented growth in incarceration since the late 1970s is driven by a reduction in public investment in inpatient mental health services. Past changes in sentencing and corrections policies are currently under heightened scrutiny as state prison populations are at record levels and many states are seeking to scale back correctional populations with an eye on the fiscal benefits of doing so. To the extent that the run-up in state prison populations was driven by deinstitutionalization, the current focus on sentence enhancements and the evolution of the U.S. sentencing regime may be misplaced."

[1] https://gspp.berkeley.edu/assets/uploads/research/pdf/p71.pd...

[swearwolf]

If crack was a big driver for the previous crime wave, it heroin/fentanyl is likely to be a driver for this one. Or, on the West Coast, meth. It’s made a pretty big comeback since 2017, but it’s been mostly overshadowed by the opioid crisis.