[JimDabell]

This is just learned helplessness. Out of control violent crime is not an inevitable part of city life. It doesn’t have to be this way at all. Feel free to compare the violent crime rates in my city (Singapore) to San Francisco.

[ModernMech]

Out of control violent crime is not an inevitable part of SF life either, but it seems like that's the presumption about what the situation is in SF.

Moreover, I didn't say anything about crime or crime rates, I said cities are dangerous places. As in there's danger in cities, which I don't think is a false or disagreeable statement. I mean, you take Singapore as an example, Singapore has a sex trafficking problem. Literally my friend's mom just went there, and her favorite story was about all the American guys she met taking sex holidays.

[JimDabell]

> I didn't say anything about crime or crime rates, I said cities are dangerous places. As in there's danger in cities

You said:

> No one has ever been brutally murdered in your city?

You are aware that murder is a crime, right? You are aware that you’re participating in a discussion about violent crime?

> “We shut down Kraken’s global headquarters on Market Street in San Francisco after numerous employees were attacked, harassed and robbed on their way to and from the office.”

Violent crime rates are an extremely reasonable measure of danger in a city.

> Literally my friend's mom just went there, and her favorite story was about all the American guys she met there taking sex holidays.

This is an extremely unlikely story. Singapore during the pandemic has been a difficult place to go for any kind of holiday. Tourism to Singapore essentially disappeared over the past two years. And for sex tourism specifically, venues that would ordinarily host that sort of thing are closed. You literally couldn’t even buy an alcoholic drink in a bar past 10:30pm for the past two years, give or take a week. Nightlife venues like clubs aren’t going to reopen properly for another couple of weeks. Are there some people flouting the law? Of course there will be. But nobody would choose Singapore for sex tourism at the moment given the restrictions on nightlife.

I can’t help but note that the first section of the Wikipedia page on crime in Singapore mentions sex trafficking. If you weren’t aware of the local situation regarding pandemic restrictions, I can see why you might think that “all the Americans on sex holidays” is a vivid and plausible story to suggest that Singapore is a dangerous place. But I’m sorry, it’s just not.

[ModernMech]

> This is an extremely unlikely story.

I'm glad you love your city and all, but whether or not you find my story unlikely you're not really denying the thrust of it. That the issue is a prominent feature on Wikipedia seems to bolster my argument and prove that it's a problem, I'm not sure why you brought that up as it doesn't help your position.

Anyway, as far as the story in question, it covers violent crimes as well as drug use, harassment, public sanitation issues, mental health, as well as just homelessness in general, not all of which are violent or crimes. Lumping all of this into "out of control violent crime" really throws the issue out of context.

It's also true that violent crime rates are an extremely reasonable measure of danger in a city, but in so far as we're talking about cities, they also show that violent crime does in fact concentrate there, and they also hide dangers which are not crimes or are not reported. For example, the crime of rape is committed at much higher rates than it's reported, so if we were to look at the stats of a place with a high rate of rape, we might conclude there is a low rate of rape based on low figures. So while they are reasonable they are not the full picture and can in fact be misleading.

[notreallyserio]

> As in there's danger in cities, which I don't think is a false or disagreeable statement.

If this is truly what you're saying then why say it at all? What value do you feel it contributes to the conversation?

Yes, there is danger in cities. Sometimes it rains in small towns. Restaurants serve food, some of which is good and some bad. All equally useless statements.

[ModernMech]

Mainly I was just concurring with the parent and throwing out that it seems absurd to complain about danger when you're moving out given the kinds of things that neighborhood had been known for. The bit at the end was mostly a quip to punctuate the linked story, so sorry everyone took that as some grand thesis on the relative safety between rural and urban environments, or some dig at progressive cities or something. I don't know what sensibilities I stepped on.