> I like that the city is generally safer than the rest of America.
Coming from New Hampshire: this is just fantastically untrue. NYC is about one hundred times more violent than where I live. It is so thoroughly not the same that I can usually tell when people come from cities simply based on how nervous they are. I think most people don't realize how badly it affects them, or how violent cities are versus "the rest of America".
edit: NYC has 5.8 violent crimes per 1,000 people, which is 45% more violent than the USA median (4.0). I have no idea how 45% more violent got a reputation as "safer than the rest of America" but it's not true.
The NYC crime rate varies wildly by neighborhood so I don't think its very useful to compare city-wide crime stats. For example, the felony assault rate is literally 10x higher in parts of the Bronx than on the UES. If you live and work in safer neighborhoods the city will appear to be very safe to you.
In NYC the most dangerous areas are pretty far out from (edit: downtown) Manhattan and you'd really have to go out of your way to get there. Anecdotally I lived in Chelsea and worked in Union Square for a few years and never witnessed any real crime, violent or otherwise. By comparison I also lived in SF where the bad parts are unavoidably located in the center of the city and I've witnessed multiple violent crimes over a similar time period. The neighborhoods in a city you pass through on a day to day basis really matter in terms of defining your experience.
> In NYC the most dangerous areas are pretty far out from Manhattan
East Harlem (part of Manhattan) is as dangerous as the Bronx and is very different from the Chelsea where you live. Manhattan is not a uniformly safe place. Also, NYC subway is filthy, disgusting and sometimes plain dangerous. Car traffic is worse than before COVID. There seem to be more cars on the streets, for people are avoiding subway and are using cars more often than before.
East Harlem is a relatively small neighborhood, the Bronx is an entire borough. There are parts of the Bronx that are both significantly more and less dangerous than East Harlem (Mott Haven and Riverdale come to mind, respectively).
None (or at least few) of the folks you’re gonna see on HN are going to be in the income bracket where they’re going to be living in East Harlem. It’s about half an hour from the places where things happen, at least, and might as well be an outer borough for most intents and purposes, given transit times, even if it’s technically within the stated geographical limits of Manhattan.
This might have been true 25 years ago, but all of South and East Harlem has been experiencing steady gentrification for the last decade. Most of that is coming from young families, from my experience living in South Harlem.
(There are lots of attractions to the neighborhood: old buildings, pretty side streets, good food, convenient access to museums, and one of the most reliable subway lines in the system.)
Former Harlem resident chiming in here as an additional, concurring datapoint.
I didn't fit the traditional Harlem demographic (ex-FAANG employee, startup founder, etc) but found the neighborhood to have solid access to the rest of Manhattan, an increasing number of amenities, proximity to Central Park, and an overall appealing character compared to the increasingly sterile areas of Manhattan
If/when I move back to NYC I would certainly consider living in Harlem again.
"Where things happen", aka Manhattan? Tbh, Manhattan kinda blows these days. It's more or less a sterile, disneyified, yuppy, consumerist grazing ground from 100th down, with the exception of alphabet city and Chinatown. But even Chinatown's changing, unfortunately. Feels like the old Chinatown Fair shutting down was a signal.
Idk Manhattan has a few solid areas that have held up over the years, but I personally try to avoid it unless my boys and I have a skate session or heading to a museum.
Also, the commute from the boroughs really isn't bad. If you really need to get to Manhattan you're probably looking at 45-50 min on average, which is whatever... unless you live in bumfuck nowhere where there's not a stop within a mile or two.
Point being? It's likely you got friends throughout the boroughs and not just Manhattan, unless you just came here for a job. 45 min one way, 1.5 hrs both ways, is nothing. Especially if it means seeing the people you love.
It's more or less 30 min minimum to get anywhere regardless of location and there are beautiful and interesting spots all over this city, not just Manhattan. Why not explore?
I’ve lived in nyc for 20+ years, moving from a country that is “hundreds of times safer”. I’ve never felt unsafe.
As others remarked correctly, aggregated numbers are useless and not representative for the avg person. If you truncate NYC’s crime numbers by stripping out high crime areas such as Brownsville or the South Bronx, crime here is shockingly low. Even more so if you correct for crime that would be er affect you unless you’re in some sort of drug gang (many of the violent crimes are gang on gang crimes).
Also saw folks here mention East Harlem — I assume that’s a joke?! That hasn’t been a “dangerous” neighborhood for 35+ years. It’s now a very sought after area esp. for families, and it’s got plenty of artisanal BS stores that come with gentrified areas. I can’t afford to rent there.
Brownsville is still dangerous? For some reason I thought they were calming down there and East New York was the dodgy place now in Brooklyn.
And Yeah Harlem seems to be on the up and up.
>"The NYC crime rate varies wildly by neighborhood so I don't think its very useful to compare city-wide crime stats. For example, the felony assault rate is literally 10x higher in parts of the Bronx than on the UES. If you live and work in safer neighborhoods the city will appear to be very safe to you."
This makes no sense. It's a mobile city. You can live on the UWS but have to go downtown to see a doctor, or work in midtown but commute in from the Bronx or Queens to go to work. The vast majority do not live and work in the same neighborhood let alone work and live in the same nice and safe neighborhood.
>"Anecdotally I lived in Chelsea and worked in Union Square for a few years and never witnessed any real crime, violent or otherwise."
Not only is that a walking commute but there is literally not a single bad block between anywhere in Chelsea and Union Square.
>"The neighborhoods in a city you pass through on a day to day basis really matter in terms of defining your experience."
Yes exactly, where do you think all of the service workers that are back bone of the city travel through on their commute, often at night? Hint, it's not Chelsea.
I think you and GP are on the same page. GP isn’t saying that life in the city is safe for everyone, the point is that it is safe for some, depending on where they frequent, how/where the commute, etc.
If I was thinking of moving to somewhere in NYC, I would want to know just that: could I live there safely? If someone answers that topic with “well, many people are exposed to crime, and it’s really unfortunate, and change is really desired”, that’s all true, but that doesn’t answer my question. If one were to tell me “yes, it can be fairly safe if you have the means to live here, and commute over there, and mostly hang around this place”, that doesn’t somehow minimize or deny the plight of those who are less fortunate. These are two separate topics that are both worth discussing.
Edit:
I now live in Dallas. I don’t know about crime stats at the moment, but if you’ll allow me to speak of how safe I feel in the city: I would say that there’s no way to live in Dallas (assuming you want an active social life that involves music, drinks, shows, etc) that feels safe. The usual hangout spots in Dallas (e.g. Deep Ellum) are right next to shady overpasses, sections of street with vacant buildings with busted out windows and broken street lights. So much of the city is in a state of disrepair. I feel like I’m gambling with my life if I go anywhere remotely interesting in Dallas.
When I lived in Carrol Gardens in Brooklyn, I could walk to the coffee shop, or go to dozens of great restaurants and shops, get late night tacos or pizza, and never feel like I was in a sketchy area. Granted, I was privileged to have the means to live where I did.
If someone then asks me where I would prefer to live on the basis of apparent safety, I would say Brooklyn. If I was then asked if everyone feels safe in Brooklyn, I would say “no” — if you live in a low income, high crime area, you’re not going to feel safe — and that’s an unfortunate reality for many people. Both things are simultaneously true.
Except crime is also random. The person that was shot on subway in May was an investment banker who lived in a nice area and had means. He was simply on his way to brunch on a Sunday morning:
That's gotta be similarly true for a lot of major cities though don't you think? Vancouver, BC is broadly quite safe, unless you drive, have a car centric cycling route, or walk down certain streets in the downtown Eastside during particular times of the week or day alone
But a city is the sum of all its residents. Saying that the well-off parts of the city are safe and ergo, the city is safe reeks of incredible privilege - that crime is okay as long as the people who suffer from it are the poor.
There is a massive difference between "an overall very safe city with a few small dangerous neighborhoods/areas" and "an overall dangerous city with a few small safe neighborhoods/areas".
I suppose that's true, but is it as true if there's literally only one area that most people should probably be much more cautious in for objectively more intense safety reasons or unpredictability?
Whats up with Manhattans South Precinct (the roughly square section south of Central Park? For just about all of the categories of crime on this map, it consistently ranks as the worst area in the whole city across all five boroughs. Seems weird for this to be happening in a core section of Manhattan itself.
That precinct has Times Square as well as multiple train and bus stations (Port Authority, Penn Station and Grand Central). So tons of people passing through daily, many of whom are easy crime targets like tourists.
My understanding is NY state prisons bus felons being let out at the NYC bus stops here as well. Many of them have no where to go other than homeless shelters and tend to cause crime again.
The implication there is that the areas with fewer tourists have higher true rates of crime than the official stats, which makes the overall case worse...
But other places also have underreported crime. In a place where police take 30 minutes to arrive it might not be worth it to call the police for some minor things.
100x is shocking, so I explored a bit. Over 2010-2020 Amherst PD reported ~5 violent crimes per year[1], in a town of ~10000, or about 50 per 100000. NYPD reported ~49k per year over the same period[ibid], on about 8.3m residents, or about about 590 per 100000. So about 11x difference in per-capita reported-to-local-PD crime.
I'll admit I'm surprised it's still an order of magnitude, I share GP's sensibility that the cities are generally much safer than perceived
NYC gets dozens of millions of visitors annually, in addition to people commuting in daily and people transiting through the city. So, while the number of crimes is high, the number of people actually in the city at any given time is multiple times the number of people who reside there. Probably the total number of people in the city anually is 10x the people who live there.
I'd also factor in the numbers are higher also because policing is very robust. I can't think of any other city where I saw a cop nearly as often as NYC, they're everywhere.
Anecdotally, I never felt unsafe there. Although where I grew up crime was rampant, common, and expected- so comparatively NYC seemed really safe, and it wasn't hard to avoid high risk places/situations. I do think people hype up the crime numbers, and forget to consider the variables present in a megalopolis which aren't present in smaller cities.
> I'd think the average number of people there each day is much closer to the relevant number.
Yes, and that "average number of people there each day" would include all the non-residents/tourists in the city. Which is a non-trivial number at all for NYC.
Yes, of course it would count them. But that number will be much much smaller. If the average visitor is there for a week, then a million yearly visitors only increase the daily population by 20k. You'd expect a crime increase equivalent to 20k residents or less.
So if there really is an 11x increase in crime, along with a 10x increase in yearly population, that's actually a huge increase in crime on a per-person per-day basis.
Too late to edit, but I should emphasize a comment down thread that this is a crude, worst-case estimate of the difference between OP's town and NYC. Don't take this as 'NYC is 10x more violent', take this as 'The difference is at least 10x _smaller_ than stated'
"Violent crime" is not a consistently defined or tracked category across cities, so it isn't comparable. The NYPD has a notoriously... loose definition of "violent crime", to the point where it counts things that no reasonable person would be thinking of when they hear that term.
For this reason, researchers typically use homocides to make comparisons, because that's consistently defined and tracked across jurisdictions, and because it's harder to manipulate those statistics when recording.
NYC - particularly Manhattan - has a much lower homocide rate than other places.
Very fair point, my comment should be read as a worst-case estimate of the comparison. In homicide terms, GP's town averages ~2 per 100k (although they haven't had one for the last few years) while NYC averages ~4 per 100k.
I am not surprised. NYC gave up on violent crime. It's Democrat's policy. Same as in Chicago, SF, Los Angeles, and many other Democrat-run cities.
One of the reasons I left NYC. I'm now in one of the safest neighborhoods, we have virtually no violent crime, except from the occasional visiting criminals.
Even according to this, murder and manslaughter is significantly up in the last 2 years.
But you're also ignoring the fact that in other parts of the country these crime rates are 1-10% of these numbers. NYC could be much safer, if the right policies were applied.
No doubt it could be safer but I'm asking you to explain how NYC gave up on crime. In 20 years the crime rate looks like it went down maybe ~45%?
I believe the south has the highest per capita murder rate which is mostly Republican led. It's states with lower education and higher poverty that have high murder rates. I think blaming Democrats or Republicans is misguided. We're a country pretty evenly split and there's no place that's a panacea.
For some reason no one wants to blame a lack of education, poverty or a lack of opportunity on crime (per your above statement). Everyone wants to get into these weird, esoteric arguments about what might have cause the crime rates that aren't germane to the actual, easily identifiable problems... most likely so no one has to try and solve those issues.
Isn't manslaughter up all across the US in the last 2 years... attempting to use a pandemic as a stat and then say it's a trend is on the border of unethical.
Crime is up after the lull that was the COVID lockdowns. Less crimes occurred when everyone was at home and the economy was essentially halted. Great argument.
People use these sorts of stats in Seattle to pretend that crime hasn’t gotten worse in the last few years.
The reality on the ground is much different, most people just don’t bother reporting crime, because it’s not worth the effort and the police probably won’t come anyway.
In what year did the stats become garbage then? If they were always garbage then crime has gone down. Do the stats become worse each year while crime goes up?
When the DAs in Democrat-run cities stopped charging criminals. I think there's a case in Seattle where one guy assaulted 23 people, one at a time, and they just let him go over and over again. No charges.
So the current Seattle district attorney is a current Republican and an ex-Democrat. So crime should get better then? Is she materially better at her job after switching parties a year ago? Do you see how weird the logic is to blame Democrats for all that goes wrong?
I know this sounds insulting but you seem like seem to have bought into a narrative of them versus us. There are ills on all sides, we are all humans who are mostly trying to make it through. Yes, there are people that are terrible at their jobs and cause harm. Yes, they are in both parties. If there was a third party they would be there too. Sure, vote and support people that align with your values but life is not a binary thing.
The current Seattle district attorney had been just 6 months at her job. Do you think it's reasonable to revert the effect of the previous 12 years in such a time frame?
You don't make your point then. The most notorious crime-enabling DAs are Democrats (Gascone, Boudin, Bragg, Schmidt etc) yet you pick a Republican DA who managed to upset an incumbent Democrat in one of the bluest cities because even there people got fed up with crime and point at her, saying that both parties enabled crime because in her 6 months she didn't clean up Seattle.
But you're sharing propaganda instead of crime stats. So all you've done is repeat a Republican party "talking point", which in the context of crime over time is nonsense.
Plenty of evidence of DAs in Democrat-run cities not prosecuting violent criminals.
In Portland mobs fully control the streets, drag people out of cars and beat them, they threaten people, while police is just standing and watching. This is on video, not propaganda.
So you follow-up propaganda with hyperbole, and pretend that extreme outliers are somehow a normal representation.
There's also plenty of evidence of Republican-run cities locking up innocent people, or conservatives attempting a violent coup during a transition of power. It's a silly game.
I’m confused. Your previous post said you pay attention to crime stats, but you reference a video before you pull a crime stat citation, and you also don’t link to said video.
Indeed. I come from a rural village where I could leave my bicycle unlocked over night at the center of the village and it wouldn't get stolen. When I moved to a city, one realization I made was that cycling is just a lot less convenient if you have to worry about your bicycle getting stolen. Also I can't leave my home door unlocked when I go somewhere (and thus have to remember to take the keys with me).
I think small stuff like this just adds to your total anxiety without you even realizing it. It's really sad how difficult it is to live in extremely safe, small villages like my childhood home nowadays.
I mean, Kryptonite literally has a 'NYC' line of bicycle locks.
When researching getting a lock for a personal scooter NYC always comes up as ground zero for problems with theft, to the point where much of the advice is to not even lock it up but bring it inside.
Yup. that's been true for decades. Literally, I lived in Manhattan for a while in the 1980s and never even considered leaving my bicycle outside, either at home or at work locations. It was ordinary to see stripped frames still locked to a post, some just appeared, some sitting for many weeks. Crime has risen and fallen significantly since I left, so I have no good relative comparison, other than that this is not new.
That’s not a “city” thing, it’s a “New Yorker” thing. People in Tokyo routinely leave things unattended in public, including valuable and easily carried things like laptops.
I'm not sure that's true. I think people are generally more honest that people assume. It's prudent to assume it will be stolen, but I suspect most of the time, accidentally leaving something somewhere for a short while would be just fine.
Sure but in how many cities would people be comfortable leaving a laptop unattended? I don’t think many. It’s pretty unrealistic to use that as the bar for NYC
Its an american city thing really. The same thing would happen when I live in big cities on the west coast and in smaller cities in the midwest too. In the midwest was where my friend got a window smashed for their micro usb cable that couldn't have been more than $2.
This is what I love about my tesla (I wonder if other makes do the same) -- when I get out and walk away, it rolls up the windows, locks the doors, and turns on security camera all automatically. I don't have to think about it. It does remove some background anxiety (did I click the lock button on my remote? did I leave the window down?)
A lot of this is simply a raw population effect. When I lived in Austin, I got in the habit of locking every door I went out of. Now that I live in rural Alabama, I frequently leave the house doors unlocked. I've forgotten to close the garage door for a day or so. My truck is frequently unlocked.
Statistically, where I live now is the same or significantly worse than Austin. But with the lower population, there are simply fewer incidents.
There are big city fixes for this. For example, most big cities offer bikeshares with docking stations all over the most popular places. So you can just use one of those bikes and not have to worry about theft.
In SF those aren't very cheap, and you also replace the anxiety of "will my bike be stolen" with "will there be any bikes left when I need one?" and "will there be any docking stations available near my destination?"
I use bike shares opportunistically, but they are not a reliable mode of transport.
CitiBikes in NYC are a bit different than in SF. Honestly, bike theft is an anecdotal thing and it’s def a problem in New York, but I definitely think it is worse in SF.
As a pure anecdote, my husband had his bike outside in Prospect Heights for 3 or 4 years literally not moved. It had a lock but he didn’t even use the bike. It got weathered and abused and after literal years, I think it was finally stolen. In Seattle, where his has been broken into multiple times in a locked garage in our luxury building, I have no doubt that an untouched bike would have lasted a few weeks at most.
But that’s all anecdotal. I can say that in the 5 years or so that I used the CitiBike system, I never had a problem either finding a bike and the pricing was also more than fair. I frequently would take a bike from near Union Square and ride across the Brooklyn Bridge home on nice afternoons. I never once had a problem getting a bike or returning it to its drop off place near my apartment.
And the app/locator lets you know the status of bikes at any time so you can know if there is a bike at a specific site or not.
This might have changed in the last few years, but if anything, the city had a hard time convincing people to use the bikes. The system is a lot more efficient than the Lime bike/scooter setup that a lot of other cities like Seattle have (people in Seattle also don’t know how to use bike lanes and use the fucking sidewalks like assholes, because Seattle).
In NY I’ve yet to see this happen. Rather it’s an issue of , is there anywhere to dock the bike. The outer boroughs are also experimenting with Electric Scooters.
This is not a fix. It's exactly the sort of extra thing I don't want to deal with when I'm cycling.
It really feels more careless to just ditch your bicycle on the side of the road and forget about it than lock it. I admit it's not a big thing, but as I tried to convey, small things like this add up.
At least in NYC, there are bike docks - you don't just leave them wherever. This was quite controversial because I think each bike dock(which supports about 20 bikes) takes up 1-2 street parking spaces, so drivers were up in arms that these bike docks would destroy street parking in NYC..
Yeah but they're somewhat less convenient, you never know the quality of the bikes or whether there will be one available, and over time it's usually far more expensive (I literally just did this calculation for myself in DC, took about 6m of daily commuting to be even and then after that you're saving money). Luckily I work in a neighborhood crawling with cops so there is very little risk when I lock my scooter outside, but I definitely don't take it to other neighborhoods and leave it outside (I've had some funny conversations checking it with the coatcheck at events after work).
NYC is generally safer than the rest of America. NH is typically the safest region in the entire country. But the truth is that there are high numbers of relatively rural areas that are substantially more dangerous than NYC. Also, I think that crimes/mile is fairly un-instructive because of how much the legal boundaries of a city shift/as well as the amount that a person will travel in a given location (I live in NYC, and probably live/work/eat within a 1.5-2 mile range).
> NYC is generally safer than the rest of America.
I don't think that's true: NYC is at 5.8 violent crimes per 1,000, and the national median sits at 4.0. That's 45% more violent than the median. That's not small! I feel like some PR firm must have implanted this idea in everyone's minds that NYC is somehow magically safer, but it's not showing up in the stats, and if the stats are skewed by reporting its almost certainly worse, not better.
I don’t know. I never felt generally unsafe in New York if I was out late at night (after midnight or 1am) and walking alone to the subway or whatever. Part of it I think is that the city “never sleeps” so you don’t get the feeling of being alone. There’s always other people around.
(My mom felt differently and would often force me to take a car home if I was leaving the office at 10pm in NYC — but my mom would feel that way about any city I lived in.)
In SF, I’ve felt *very* unsafe being out before midnight (I was once propositioned for prostitution 4 times in a 2 block walk). Same in Seattle, where my own neighborhood has felt downright unsafe after 7pm on certain nights. Same in parts of Atlanta. Same in parts of LA.
I can’t compare it to places like New Hampshire or the suburbs — but I’m a female who weighs between 105 and 110lbs and yes, I’m white so that might help me, and I haven’t been to every part of NYC late at night — I’m sure there are places I wouldn’t want to be alone — but I do think that it is generally safe.
I was shocked by how much more crime was in Seattle than where I lived in Brooklyn.
There is another part of New York which is just that people generally leave you alone. So you’re surrounded by people who you can call out for help to, but you’re also not usually badgered by randos on the street.
I can’t talk about statistics but I can talk about how safe I feel. And I feel safer in NYC than any other major US city I’ve lived in or visited.
I think this is where statistics fails me. You (and a couple sibling comments) are responding to my comment with your experiences to the contrary, and I—never having lived in NYC—just don't have access to that.
This passage[1] probably sums up the difference between aggregate crime stats and NYC residents' own assessments:
> Looking at NYPD crime reports for 2010, 2015, and 2020, we find that about 1% of streets in NYC produce about 25% of crime, and about 5% of streets produce about 50% of crime. This is consistent across the three years, showing that a very small proportion of streets in the city are responsible for a significant proportion of the crime problem.
I wonder if this phenomenon is different in different cities. Are the "shapes" of crime all "spiky" in New York, but more spread out in Seattle?
The "spikiness" of crime in NYC is extreme. I lived about two blocks away from a housing project which had a low but steady rate of assault, rape, and even the occasional murder. You wouldn't know it on my street and I never felt unsafe. I think the density of the city and relative lack of car mobility makes crime extremely non-uniformly distributed compared to most other cities (where everyone drives).
I grew up in Indianapolis, where the violent crime rate is 8.7 per 1000. Growing up, we had plenty of trips to Columbus, OH (16.6), Detroit, MI (21.8), Cincinnati, OH (8.9), and, yes, Chicago, IL (9.9).
Granted, sometimes we'd visit smaller, safer college towns, like Purdue's Lafayette Indiana University's Bloomington, or Ball State's Muncie, IN. Only Muncie had a lower crime rate than NYC. Then again, Notre Dame's South Bend (17.3) University of Evansville (10.1), and Rose-Hulman's Terre Haute (14.6) kind of dispelled the idea of college town safefy.
My current town is at 36 violent crime per 1000 residents, but the statistics are collected differently, so it may not be an exact comparison.
NYC isn't safer than the majority of the country. But, compared to where I've been, it's felt pretty safe every time I stopped by.
I’ve heard this stat before, but comparing to large cities.
NY is generally safer than Chicago, LA, Seattle, Boston, and Fort Worth; Wikipedia places it in 59th place for most violent crime per capita amongst the nation’s largest 100 cities.
The problem with any of these comparisons is that cities are very heterogeneous. In Boston, the Back Bay != Roxbury and in NYC, the West Village != the South Bronx. However, at least absent a doorman, I probably wouldn't leave a door unlocked or an accessible window ajar the way I routinely do in my (only) semi-rural home in New England. When I visit people in cities, I have to consciously remember that they'll be unhappy if I am casual about such things like I am at home.
I mean…or it’s that some of us have lived in New York for decades and not experienced even a little bit of violent crime. Born and raised New Yorker here.
Now look at dangers in general and not just crime and the picture is very different[1]. Judging by the total number of deaths from external causes, NYC was the second safest metro area in the country behind only Boston.
Much of that is because NYC has drastically fewer transportation deaths than most of the US. The worst states have literally twenty times as many traffic deaths as NYC.
I think that overall crime rates can have severely skewed reporting. Homicide rate in NYC is 5.5 vs US average of 7.5, But manhattan's is even lower. The last time the city reported the borough by borough breakdown (2019), had a homicide rate of 3.2.
I've only ever heard the claim made in reference to other large cities, not suburban, rural, or exurban parts of the country.
Its trivially true that dense urban environments are going to have different baseline patterns of crime
It also seems pretty clear to me that this is the context OP was speaking in, given that almost everything else he described are features of big cities.
I don’t think the relative percent is a good way to compare 5.8 per 1000 vs 4.0 per 1000. It can easily be flipped to show that NYC is only 0.18% less safe than the national median.
>"NYC is generally safer than the rest of America."
What does that even mean - "generally" safer? Saying "generally" and "the rest of America" are nebulous to the point of being completely meaningless. If I were to compare hunting accidents, wild fires and car accidents in NYC compared to the "rest of the America" then yeah sure. Have a look at these NYPD crime stats from May and tell me that it's safer than the entire "rest of America."
And while this reminds me of XKCD: Heatmap[0], the density of crime also matters when it's where you live, and the actual proximity you are to frequent violent crimes.
Also in NH, and I would say my perception is the opposite of your facts.I've spent lots of time all over the city at different times of day/year across decades.
I would still say Manchester, Rochester, Nashua ETC are 10x trashier and more neglected than even the most run down alley in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens.
I think that would be stretching it, but yeah, everywhere has good and bad. I walked a lot of SF at night when visiting for work and went to some less than savory places that felt no riskier than the worst of Rochester, but that’s a low bar.
That said, I shared a Lyft to the airport pre-dawn one time and where we picked up the other rider was a little more exciting than I would ever want to be.
Presumably OP was just talking about Manhattan or something, maybe even Manhattan below 110th st, and not the less nice parts of the Bronx or Queens or Brooklyn that they never go to.
I had similar thoughts. I live on the west coast and feel so safe that I don't even lock the front door to my house, ever. I wonder if OP feels safe enough to always have their front door unlocked.
I wonder how much people think the typical flimsy locks on a residential door will actual stop someone who goes up to the door with the intention of entering. It would almost require someone to want to enter but iff the door was unlocked, which seems like a poor strategy for a burglar.
Locks won't stop somebody who wants to get inside no matter what. They will stop somebody who would not mind casing the house, waiting till it's empty, entering without attracting any attention and walking out with loot, which is a "safer" crime than knocking down the door or breaking a window. Breaking and entering is a crime by itself, carries minimum sentence in some jurisdictions. As I understand it's because it's hard to convict somebody who walked in, took stuff and sold it for anything other than trespassing. How do you prove they stole the missing items unless you catch them in the act or have video surveillance inside?
If people lock their doors all the time, burglars probably prefer to avoid the houses with unlocked doors (because they are more likely to be occupied houses).
> Whether or not you lock your door has more to do with cultural attitudes towards risk
> People in rural areas don’t lock their doors for the same reason they don’t wear seatbelts and drive drunk everywhere. They just don’t care.
Do you think the attitude towards risk is because they truly don't care about having their belongings stolen, or because they know there is less risk of that happening? Having lived in a rural area and in a few cities, my experience is the latter. No one wants to be robbed.
Also, people in rural areas driving drunk is mostly due to lack of transportation options. I'm certainly not condoning it, but Uber doesn't travel out into the sticks and there is no bus or train to hop on.
> Also, people in rural areas driving drunk is mostly due to lack of transportation options. I'm certainly not condoning it, but Uber doesn't travel out into the sticks and there is no bus or train to hop on.
I don’t think that refutes their point that they don’t care. Having come from a rural area myself, the decision was to drink at home or a friends I was staying over at rather than drive drunk. They don’t care about the consequences compared to doing what they want
> They don’t care about the consequences compared to doing what they want
I also come from a rural area and I think you're missing some detail in the individual calculus. The chance of negative consequences drop so precipitously in some areas that, coupled with poor transportation options, it becomes primarily an individual risk in their eyes. They don't see a big issue with being over the limit when it's a road they drive everyday and encountering even a single vehicle on the way back is rare. It's not a lack of caring, it's just a different calculation.
I've never drove drunk (or even buzzed) and I'm not defending the practice, just trying to explain their point of view.
They're suggesting caring less is the primary reason for rural people driving drunk. The primary reason is a lack of transportation options. Caring less is a byproduct of that, not the reason they do it in the first place.
I see how you can interpret his comment that way, but I view it differently with the inclusion of cultural attitudes. The fact that some people started doing it because of lack of transportation made it into a cultural value.
Being called a pussy for instance for not wanting to drive while smashed isn’t a result of a lack of transportation.
> Do you think the attitude towards risk is because they truly don't care about having their belongings stolen, or because they know there is less risk of that happening?
Neither, they just take fewer mitigations in response to the same level of risk because of cultural habits.
America in general (both rural and urban) has a very high crime rate by developed world standards. I grew up in <redacted> which has a lower crime rate than 99% of America, including the parts where people brag about how it's so safe that no one locks their doors, and everyone locks the doors to their houses and cars anyway, because that's just the cultural norm.
I’m in a rural area. I wear my seatbelt, along with everyone else I know. I don’t even drink. The only people I’ve ever known that have driven drunk were dumb teenagers. I lock my door, but I not only kept my high school car unlocked - I left the keys in it.
For two years I did that, and the only time it was “stolen” was when my friends skipped class, used it to drive to the bakery for some doughnuts, and deliberately parked it elsewhere as a prank. Do you really think that’s how it would have worked out in any major city?
I remember it being major news when a few houses were burgled when I was a kid.
Now, the biggest town in the county? Crime happens there all the time. It’s only 20,000 people but a lot of them are…lower rung.
I think that’s the real difference. When I walk in a major city or even that town, crime might happen to me. In the 20 mile radius around my house it’s very unlikely, and I very rarely see a cop unlike in NYC.
You are less likely to be murdered in NYC than the average rural area. I don't know where you live and it's possible that your rural area is safer than average, but in general the myth that so many smug rural Americans subscribe to that the typical rural area is safer than big bad New York City is just totally, completely wrong.
Right, but that was when I was a kid. I'm 34 now and I don't recall hearing of any other burglaries in that area. Just as one neighborhood in NYC can't be compared to another, you can't mix all rural areas in to one "typical" zone.
>for the same reason they don’t wear seatbelts and drive drunk everywhere. They just don’t care.
This doesn't match my experience living in a rural area. Most of the people I knew either avoided drinking (your WASP) or drank with their neighbors (your redneck.)
I can't find similar numbers to yours for any definition of 'violent crime' I found numbers for, but assuming they're true, it's still missing the point. Amherst is a wealthy community in a wealthy, low crime state. It'd be like pointing to a border town to make the opposite argument.
NYC has a lower homicide rate than America, and that is the only category of crime that is mostly consistently reported across jurisdictions. Every other category of crime basically varies by an order of magnitude from place to place depending on accuracy of reporting.
What about Manhattan? What about lower Manhattan? The reality is that NYC is large and there's bodies of water separating huge parts of the city. Talking about crime in NYC seems really silly because you're going to be talking about tons of neighborhoods that you're just never, ever going to end up even close to.
We are already talking about Manhattan (New York, NY), it is where these numbers are from, and what the OP article is about.
Obviously in The Bronx the numbers are much worse (9.28), and in Brooklyn they're a tiny bit better (5.43) but still well over USA median. Queens (3.25) is safer than median, though.
New York county(or borough) is Manhattan(for the most part), but that is talking about the city of New York, which includes Manhattan, Queens, Kings(~Brooklyn), Bronx, and Richmond(~Staten Island).
I wonder how many people think New York City is only Manhattan and not the 5 Boroughs together. For anyone who see this, yes it includes the “suburbs” that exists within all of the outer boroughs (even the Bronx!)
Funny...one of my favorite pastimes as a new yorker was collecting New York esoterica...a fun related one(relevant to my "for the most part" parenthetical in my original post) is the fact that Manhattan is an island and a borough, but part of the island is actually connected to the mainland in the Bronx.
Marble hill was once fully a part of the northernmost point of Manhattan island, but a canal was cut south of it which turned Marble hill into an actual island all by itself. Later, the waterway to the north of Marble hill was diverted into the canal, so Marble Hill became connected by land to the Bronx and separated by water from the island of Manhattan, but it is still considered a part of Manhattan borough...
Yes, but using the same data, NYC is only 0.18% less safe than the national median. We are venturing deeply into "there are lies, damn lies, and statistics" territory.
Actually, how trustworthy are those stats as a measure of actual crime or safety? I think this effect might actually push the difference to be a bit more extreme; at least several years ago I know the NYPD had a scandal about systemically under-reporting or downgrading crimes. Has this _actually_ improved since then, or did they just "discipline" a handful of people? Do other law enforcement agencies have similar problems?
However, I do also think an important question is "safe for whom?"
Depending on your race, sexual orientation, gender presentation, etc, rural American communities can foster their own distinct unease. Those are the places where you keep your head down, self-censor, try not to draw attention. When is the absence of reported crimes in a state which is 92.8% white "safety" and when is it something else?
Where did these numbers come from? You linked to a screenshot of a spreadsheet, but not its source.
From a random search, I got 2.8 violent crimes per 1,000 people citywide, which means all 5 boroughs. For just New York county (Manhattan), the most official statistic I could find is 4.57 in 2019[2].
> It is so thoroughly not the same that I can usually tell when people come from cities simply based on how nervous they are.
I think, at least in today's culturally polarized environment, there are a lot of people who would be understandably nervous and on guard traveling to rural America, and it has nothing to do with what crime looks like in their home city.
It's also worth noting that Manchester, NH, which is where an Amherst resident is likely to spend a non negligible amount of time (nearest shopping mall, hospital, etc), has a comparable (slightly higher violent, much higher property) crime rate than NYC.
I don’t think the relative percent is a good way to compare 5.8 per 1000 vs 4.0 per 1000. It can easily be flipped to show that NYC is only 0.18% less safe than the national median.
One thing this thread has reminded me of is that for all the lip service conservatives pay to toughness and manly traditional gender roles, they certainly seem to live in abject terror of being the victim of a crime.
Someone's feeling of safety/nervousness has more to do with a variety of different variables that are unique to them, the place in question, and the situation they're in.
Personally, I'd rather be alone on foot in NYC than alone on foot in some small town where I'd stand out. Maybe because I grew up in a city and have traveled to many places, maybe because of my characteristics that make me feel vulnerable when I'm the outsider in a less diverse area, or maybe because I've lived in a city far more violent than NYC- so for me the things I visit for are worth the possible risk of crime.
NYC isn't even on the top 50 most violent cities in the world, which is quite a feat when you consider how things used to be there in the 80s/90s.
Maybe your very specific neck of the woods is very rich and safe but I don’t know why you felt the need to butt in and make the conversation about you, OP never claimed that NYC was the absolute number 1 safest place in the country.
Coming from New Hampshire: this is just fantastically untrue. NYC is about one hundred times more violent than where I live. It is so thoroughly not the same that I can usually tell when people come from cities simply based on how nervous they are. I think most people don't realize how badly it affects them, or how violent cities are versus "the rest of America".
Some crime stats: https://imgur.com/a/qDKqC59
edit: NYC has 5.8 violent crimes per 1,000 people, which is 45% more violent than the USA median (4.0). I have no idea how 45% more violent got a reputation as "safer than the rest of America" but it's not true.