September 19, 2006
NYC is Safest Big City Again
The FBI has announced that NYC was the safest big city for 2005. If this sounds familiar, it's because NYC has pretty much been the safest for a couple years, and in fact announced the 2005 stats earlier this year. But the FBI has finally issued the full report, Crime in the U.S., and it's very detailed - you can see the breakouts of crime by age, felony type, and even what weapon was used.
As for NYC stats, the number of reported crimes dropped by 4.3% - a cumulative decrease of 17.7% since 2001. And while violent crime in the U.S. rose by 2.3%, it dropped 1.9% in NYC. The Mayor took the opportunity to say, “Today’s final 2005 report by the FBI shows that our innovative efforts to reduce crime and increase New Yorkers’ quality of life are working."
And there's an article in the NY Times today about a Mott Haven man who has kept track of articles about children and teens killed by illegal gunfire. He's enlarged articles to poster size and has created an exhibit at a community center to remind people the violent cannot continue.
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The statistics are misleading.
If you read it carefully, the stats compare percentages of increases/decreases, not actual totals of crime. This basically doesn't mean anything.
Read BBC: How to Understand Statistics
Quotes:
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
~ Mark Twain
Think about how stupid the average person is. Now realize half of them are dumber than that.
~ George Carlin
47.3% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
~ Steven Wright
This is not reflected in my neighborhood, at all. Right now, we are experiencing a resurgence of drug activity and gun violence. People have been shot, some have been killed. With the exception of one, none of these events have been reported in the news at all.
Also, in my experience, the police in my area are understaffed, or something.
Not only can statistics be misleading, blog comment posters can be misleading and/or intentionally deceptive.
The statistics quoted above DO NOT reflect a rate of change as Blike Moomberg suggests. They reflect crime index rates per capita. (Actual reported totals of crime as a percentage of population total).
Here's my link.. a link to an article about the report.. not a link to some unrelated statistics story:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/19/nyregion/19crime.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Nevertheless, I'm sure we'll hear all sorts of conspiracy theories about how the NYPD suppresses crime reports with one or two anecdotes from people who were told not to report their stolen bike. (As if this only happens in New York and not any other city...)
It seems to me they're basing it on reported crimes per capita, not on percentage decrease, Blike.
#2 Fluffy:
So, when or if your hood becomes gentrified will you be upset? or will you prefer the crime?
Fluffy-
Care to tell us what neighborhood that is?
Would make your case more convincing.
Crime? What Crime?
Where? I's feel saf hear.
Streets safe
Subways safe
Bring on the 2012 Olympics.
Fluffy-
You should lure some of the cops that are clustered together smoking cigs, texting their girlfriends, and poppin their eyes out their sockets at underage girls on my block to yours.
I only only see cops where tourists and gentrifiers (tourists) are likely to be victims.
Some neighborhoods are lucky to have police show up when they are called.
edEx,
If it's a choice between living along side hipsters/yuppies and crackheads, crackheads will always win.
#3 and #4, you are correct, I was definitely unclear and I can see why you stated that. I was referring to the text on *this* website, Gothamist.com, stating this:
This disregards out that while overall crime is down, homicides are up. But compared to the number of homicides, shootings are up. Burglaries are down but rapes are up.My point is that stats could mean anything. There's less sunshine, cloudy days are up. Vanilla ice cream is down, chocolate is up, strawberry is flat. It's all relatively sugar-coated.
Every NYer (excepting criminals) owes Giuliani, Bloomberg and the NYPD a great deal of thanks for implementing aggressive policing. Of course the perennial adolescents of Gothamist would rather complain than appreciate how much better the city is, but who cares? The conservatives have won this argument.
That site doesn't rank cities. It says why in the lower right hand corner of the front page.
wow, it appears the good news trickle down the nyc schools. How can NYC schools have lower incidents of violence than suburban schools?
me thinks something stinks.
I hear that the NYPD uses various tricks to fool the CompStat Crime Tracking software to make it appear the crime rates are much lower than they really are. They make it difficult to even report a crime, they unreport crimes- list a felony as a misdemendor, they lump several crimes together into one Etc.