Want to back that up with some data? NYC is half the per capita murder rate of the US. What swath of places do you think are safer such that "one of the safest places" for NYC is inaccurate? On >250k population list, NYC is #20/100 safest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
On a 100k to 250k list, NYC is above average safety.
This is a problem that everyone who has lived in the developed world knows very well.
As the police is able to solve less and less crimes, and less criminals are convicted, people stop thinking it is worth their time to report every crime.
As less persecutions end up in convictions, and as accusations of bias can mean the end of a police officer career, there's also a more lax attitude from the police force.
Crime becomes less risky and more rewarding, what drives crime force recruitment up, the culture becomes more and more accepting, and petty criminals over time graduate to more serious crimes. Substance abuse, violence, it all just adds to the culture.
Soon you'll start noticing that there areas of the city where police presence is virtually inexistent, and the people who live on those places realize that involving the police could bring unpleasant consequences. Those liberated areas are for all practical purposes, outside the reach of the State.
Soon, murders start going unnoticed, fights against rival gangs lead to deaths, but unless the bodies are found, nobody is going to involve the police. People simply cease to exist and disappear, no records.
Politicians, prosecutors and police chiefs soon realize the political advantage of not digging too much into reality and promoting the lie that the official statistics, utterly corrupted by the incomplete data collection, are trustworthy and represent the reality.
Terminally political people and journalists, that are nowadays basically propaganda officers, start gaslighting everyone that dares to say otherwise. You can't feel safe in the subway, but you are either crazy or a simpleton if you don't believe NYC is one of the safest places in the world, look at the data!
If you want to throw out the data because it doesn’t suit your bias, fine, ultimately it’s your safety on the line based on your decision, so you better hope you’re correctly evaluating.
But I also think it’s odd that you think NYC is underreporting murders and not going after serious crimes, when if you go into rural areas, you’ll find many that are a few Sheriffs stretched thin over hundreds of miles, and infinite more potential for “murders going unnoticed.”
Lol man. I live now in northern Europe. You can show me any stupid number you want, I am not an idiot. I know NYC, it is a fucking hell hole.
Averages, per-capita, even if we could trust the data, and we definitely can't because NY government is a cesspool of corruption means absolutely nothing, because every one who lives in the real world knows that violence is not uniformly distributed. You can lie to yourself as much as you want, it is your choice, but I've seen this movie before, that's how things start, and them there's a moment when even people like you can't deny it anymore, but it will only get there exactly because of folks like you that prefer to live in the bizarre illusion that being a member of your ideological bubble makes you a high status person.
People like you make me remember the old soviet joke when they get astounded with the faith Americans had in their media, because the soviets at least were able to recognize propaganda for what it is.
Poor psychoanalyzing since I’m more often surrounded by the types who would knee jerk agree with you. I’m more likely (and do) to get shit on for dare questioning how truly awful big cities are, so I’d love some of that “high status” you think I’m feeling. Still, I’d rather poke hills in peoples’ poor kneejerk understanding of the world with investigating what the data tells us is actually going on, regardless of whether the opinion is popular. And it’s not, evidenced by the many people here, even on a more urban intellectual environment.
> This is a problem that everyone who has lived in the developed world knows very well. As the police is able to solve less and less crimes, and less criminals are convicted, people stop thinking it is worth their time to report every crime.
'Everyone knows' is a group of people repeating something to each other enough that they believe it must be true. Those are the things that most need skepticism, an objective factual basis. Look at your comment - there is no factual basis for any of the claims. Some is conspiracy - if they disagree, they are gaslighting, incompetent, etc.
Objective facts are our only salvation from our own delusions - which we're all subject to. There is factual basis to say that NYC is very safe, but it's not conclusive. That doesn't support baseless claims. If you have an alternative claim, there's not reason to believe it without factual support.
Almost everyone you're talking to here lives in the developed world, and it doesn't seem like they 'know' the same thing.
The statement that "NYC is one of the safest places in the country" and the relevance of per capita crime rates are two different discussions. When we say a place is "the safest," we're referring to the absolute level of safety.
Per capita crime rates, while useful for comparing the likelihood of crime between areas with different population sizes, don't determine the absolute safety of a place. They normalize crime data by population to show relative safety, which is a different metric.
There’s a psychological reason (rational or not) people equate cities with violence, and it’s this same “absolute level of safety”. When you could live in a town of 5000 where 1 person gets murdered every year, it’s very different than scaling those numbers up by 1,000. Realistically, 999 of those murders will be of/by people you will barely interact with, whereas in a small town, it’s all but guaranteed that you will know both the murderer and the victim (and they will know each other).
That said, I understand the desire to frame crime in the absolute. Either you’re the 1 guy who gets unlucky and experiences a crime in your small town, or there are 999 people like you in the big city). Crime is a problem of scale, and a bigger scale freaks people out even if the coefficients are the same.
It is not just the scale issue. It is also that for your personal safety, only statistics on killings of random strangers matters.
Majority of murders are among people who know each other. You personal risk is all about who your partner is, who your friends are, how much aggressive your uncle is. A guy you never met that is just about to murder his wife has nothing to do with your personal risk.
Who your partner and friends are can very much be influenced by your location. Your own safety is in some ways influenced by the overall people around you, not just stats on random killings.
I lived in NYC for 20 years, people who live there too long develop stockholm syndrome excusing the shit that goes on on a daily basis. Every new yorker experiences it given enough time.
The common saying is that when a 'transplant' moves and starts questioning the filfth, noise, qol issues and minor crime they are told to go back to Ohio.
I used to be that person , then I realized that living in an environment where you excuse this behavior as normal... is not normal.
So you can spread your message of "statistically safe" as much as you want but everyone knows that new yorkers put up with a different amount of s*t than most.
Why do all the arguments for NY being dangerous, etc. lack an objective basis (except one person's)? I think it's because it's fabricated.
Lots of NYers love living there, obviously - they are willing to pay far more for the privilege (another objective fact). You dismissing their preferences is just one person's baseless speculation.
By that logic, somewhere with no people would be the safest area. Good factoid to know but for most people, it's not useful to live with no others around.
As any person who lives in a city knows, more people means more safety. It's the empty, dark street - especially non-residential - that you want to avoid. Also, the NYPD is always nearby if that suits you (I've never needed them personally).
> When we say a place is "the safest," we're referring to the absolute level of safety.
Idk who you think "we" is. It's not in my definition of safety, nor probably the general populace to think of Stockton, California as "safer" than NYC, just because Stockton had 50 murders a year compared to NYC's 240... Because Stockton has a 17.77 murder rate per 100k, and NYC 3 per 100k. You bet your ass you'd be "safer", as in less likely to get shot or stabbed to death, living in NYC.
My argument is clear about how ridiculous absolute values of crime pertain to how safe it is for someone. That you instead want to nitpick the exact # of murders in NYC (when I just winged a 3 per 100k at 8m population) is indicative that you can't refute it and your original assertion is incorrect.
If anything, the real # in 2023 of 386 only further proves my point. That it's ridiculous to assert even that many more murders is less safe than Stockton, CA.
Safety is about "am I more or less likely to have something happen to me" and no one is thinking that means moving to the tiniest country of 2,000 people where only 10 murders happened in the entire country last year.
Apologies, I wasn't aware you were making up numbers. That isn't useful, or helpful in conversation in my opinion, but clearly you feel strongly that's a reasonable thing to do.
I contend it is significantly safer in the majority of cities in the US than New York City.
I didn't realize you need the exact #'s to understand an argument. Now that I've provided NYC's, and Stockton's is 34 in 2019, does it make any difference? No.
Your conclusion is without any evidence and is in fact, wrong, based on the crime metrics we can easily compare.
It's quite uncanny that it's the people who most fear crime, think they're going to something like "stay the hell away from crime infested NYC" and proceed to move somewhere where they're more likely to be affected by crime.
Thats not how statistics work. The average number of crimes per person is going to be the same so the crime per capita is the same as the amount of crime an person should expect to experience on average.
You may be thinking of a median or mode, which can differ based on the shape of the distribution curve.
Sorry but moving the goalpost from “one of the safest places to be in the country” to “one of the safest big cities in the country” is not fair game. The US has over 19,000 cities and you discarded all but 91 of them.
I've not discarded them, it's just the the largest portion of data for where people in the US are, which NYC has an objectively good per capita murder rate compared to where most people live in the US. If we want to get data for the US as a whole, please point me in the direction where we can find the safety level of the median person, besides NYC having a 3.3 murder per capita rate while the US is ~6.5. Idk what % it is, but a large portion of Americans live in those lists of 100k+ cities.
When you have so many people per square mile, it slightly skews the metrics. The reality might be you're less likely to be murdered, but you might be way more likely to witness a crime. That matters.
> you might be way more likely to witness a crime. That matters.
People are just reaching for possible straws. Do you have any factual basis to say that? We can make up anything and put the word 'might' or 'maybe' in front of them.
I've spent lots of time in NYC and other dense, major cities, and I think I've seen one crime ($20 stolen). The interstate highway is more threatening, with the aggressive drivers.
Really, go to NYC. Look at the millions of people walking around without a care, going about their days.
I think it's gotten polarized enough around here that it's not going to be helpful to defend my statement, but here goes: I was just saying something that must surely be true... If you measure crime by the person, in a dense place you're more likely to be near a crime when it happens than a place with more crime per person, but much less people per space.
To me, this sounds like the rate of unreported crimes would be lower in dense areas, making them even safer than they appear in the statistics.
You are correct that if the average number of observers per crime is higher, that could indeed make a place feel comparatively more dangerous since the while the liklihood of being a victim is lower, the liklihood of seeing a victim is higher. However, I would posit that a lot more goes into feelings of safety and we haven't seen any data on how large this effect size might be.
> If you measure crime by the person, in a dense place you're more likely to be near a crime when it happens than a place with more crime per person, but much less people per space.
Yes, agreed (of course). I'm not sure what that says about the original statement.
> The reality might be you're less likely to be murdered, but you might be way more likely to witness a crime. That matters.
First, it seems like we are really shifting the goalposts. Being victimized by crime is a lot different than witnessing it, though the latter isn't pleasant, of course.
How much does it matter? In a place that dense, you see a lot more of everything. For people there, it's a feature and not a bug. That's why people pay so much to live there.
Is witnessing a crime so bad? I suppose something traumatizing would be, but I think NYers are used to seeing 'everything, all the time', and they would not be traumatized by most crime. Murder? I think that would leave a mark, depending on what you saw, but that's very rare. Shoplifting? Public intoxication? A carjacking would be alarming, I suppose, speaking for myself.
As less persecutions end up in convictions, and as accusations of bias can mean the end of a police officer career, there's also a more lax attitude from the police force.
Crime becomes less risky and more rewarding, what drives crime force recruitment up, the culture becomes more and more accepting, and petty criminals over time graduate to more serious crimes. Substance abuse, violence, it all just adds to the culture.
Soon you'll start noticing that there areas of the city where police presence is virtually inexistent, and the people who live on those places realize that involving the police could bring unpleasant consequences. Those liberated areas are for all practical purposes, outside the reach of the State.
Soon, murders start going unnoticed, fights against rival gangs lead to deaths, but unless the bodies are found, nobody is going to involve the police. People simply cease to exist and disappear, no records.
Politicians, prosecutors and police chiefs soon realize the political advantage of not digging too much into reality and promoting the lie that the official statistics, utterly corrupted by the incomplete data collection, are trustworthy and represent the reality.
Terminally political people and journalists, that are nowadays basically propaganda officers, start gaslighting everyone that dares to say otherwise. You can't feel safe in the subway, but you are either crazy or a simpleton if you don't believe NYC is one of the safest places in the world, look at the data!