[watwut]

I am not sure I want to travel on the bus with a scared man trained in multiple martial arts. All the stats say that criminality is pretty low, I am safe on the bus, but fearful scared trained dide sounds like someone who will make it less safe for all of us.

[TurkishPoptart]

You have no idea what you're talking about, but I'm glad you feel safe on the bus. Criminality stats are low, so the chances of being assaulted on our light rail or buses is indeed low, but it only takes one incident to lead to loss of life or injury. I'm not a "scared man", I'm trying to prepare myself for unhinged situations, which we've been witnessing at an increased rate after 2020, when our city/county reduced police and law enforcement presence.

Here's an article about the massive rise in homicides in our county since 2019 [1]. Maybe the numbers are "low" to you, but it's 1000x higher than in countries such as Japan. I won't go further into the reasons why due to risk of being downvoted by people unwilling to accept the new reality of west coast urban life.

[1]: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/seattl...

[ianburrell]

I couldn't find historic chart for Seattle but most cities are having a similar spike in crime so I'm using NYC. The rise in crime from pandemic is from historically low numbers. The jump is big but the absolute numbers are still low.

NYC had the same murder count in 2019 as 1948. 2022 was same as 2012. The peak in 1990 was 5 times as much as last year.

[TurkishPoptart]

Again, here is a case of rationalists misinterpreting risks based on data.

[dang]

Please don't post in the flamewar style (e.g. low-information / high-indignation comments or putdowns). We're trying for something else here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[watwut]

You are the one misrepresenting risks. In addition to what other person said, majority of homicides is among people who know each there - people killing their own partners, families, friends, business associates and partners in crime.

[JPws_Prntr_Fngr]

The calmest people I know are black belts who can pretzelfy 99% of people. You should try meeting some.