The Manhattan and Brooklyn homicide rates are higher than ~30% of the other counties here, but overall they’re very safe because people mostly don’t drive, which is the most dangerous thing to do in the world
New York has been one of the safest big cities in the world for a long time, but you'd never know it based on news media or entertainment media. I blame Batman and the rat problem.
most recent episode of the Ezra Klein show has a very interesting discussion of the politics of disorder that goes beyond the usual media criticism approach to why ppl perceive the safety situation in places like NYC so negatively. didn't agree with all of it but it was thought provoking.
STL not on the list because of ridiculously small county that's only the ridiculously-small-boundaried city. Murder city not on the list because "How to Lie with Statistics" was a great textbook.
Though, in thinking about this more, I wonder if part of the Middlesex Co advantage is something related to mean distance to a high quality hospital bed.
That is, all things being equal, it seems plausible someone with the same injuries is less likely to die in Cambridge than almost anywhere else.
Polling on crime is very similar to polling on the economy - lots of people say their neighborhood is safe and they're doing fine financially, but "crime" is up and "the economy" is terrible. Reporting on both probably needs a rethink.
If someone says they 'live in Boston', it is more likely than not that their actual home address is in one of the towns of Middlesex county, rather than the City of Boston itself (which is geographically pretty small and mostly not residential).
The funny thing is, that's true even though Boston isn't actually in Middlesex county, it's in Suffolk county, which is mainly just Boston proper and a couple of extra towns.
Yes. It's the largest county in the state. (It doesn't actually exist any more but there's no geographically comparable unit of government.) Cambridge, Somerville, Newton, Waltham, Lincoln, Concord, Woburn, Burlington, Chelmsford, Westford, Lowell, and a bunch of other towns and cities.
Yup. It’s just across the river from Boston. The southern part has crowded cities (Cambridge, Somerville). Public transit keeps bad drivers off the roads, low speed limits make the roads safer for everyone. The northern part of the country has a lot of acreage but not so many people.
It goes from the Charles River up to the New Hampshire border. Bad because includes incredibly demographically different places. Also physically large enough have different weather zones, which makes the NWS alerts more annoying than useful.
When I moved to Charleston from NYC, everyone there said "oh you just be so happy to get out, it's so dangerous there" and no one would believe me when I said Charleston had substantially more violent crime.
And even then people aren’t accounting for the numbers. New York has a TON of crime because when they look at crime stats they count every crime, but nervous people assume every crime is murder. There’s like 9 million people here.
Funny how Portland, OR (Multnomah) also didn’t make the list despite FOX news consistently trying to convince their viewers it’s the most dangerous city in the nation.
Ohio has been reddish-purple for a while now. Is there any benefit to residents' safety or does the state need to "deport" Cleveland first? If Republicans can't handle one medium sized city with a glaring problem, why would we think they will improve cities that are *already* safe?
NYC having the lowest traffic accidents is throwing it off here. NYC has poor infrastructure for cars so it forces people to use public transportation (This is a good thing).
Looks like that's counting four boroughs/counties (Bronx Queens Manhattan/New York County and Brooklyn/Kings County) separately. Presumably Staten Island/Shaolin/Richmond County didn't qualify on its own. All that said NYC as a whole is much safer than most cities for sure.
God, the amount of shitty political ads I see during Jeopardy, with candidates talking about securing the Nassau County border from the slavering hordes that Eric Adams is sending them…
And both NYC and Long Island are the safest places to be!
Perception is more powerful than facts.
Manipulation of perception by untruthful media actors has always been a huge problem.
For 'media actors' i mean everything from modern cable news and social media to old time neighborhood gossip. 'Your perception is misinformed' is ineffective against it.
With the exception of the top 5 or so cities, almost every city on the list is very low for homicide rates, mirroring the nation’s historically low homicide rate.
Not to be contrarian but the graph is misleading.
It lists New York, NY and then separates out Queens and Kings.
NYC is made up of 5 boroughs; Manhattan, Brooklyn (also called Kings), Queens, Staten Island and the Bronx.
Something is amiss.
It's always very telling when people say traffic deaths are simply categorically different and should not be counted when trying to quantify safety. Like, interesting, I wonder who benefits from that categorization... (Rich people, white people, men)
I wonder if this includes some county data vs just city data? The long stretch of highway 15 that connects SoCal with Vegas is in San Bernadino county.
It's all county data. That is the way that they structured this. If anything that makes NY seem better because Manhattan is all urban and doesn't include rich local suburbs like Middlesex county does for example.
When I said this in a travel Facebook group, a thousand people who have never left their county laugh reacted me. It must be rough to be scared of every city.
Talking to my MAGA relative about how she won’t go into NY anymore because it is just too dangerous just before her entire family drives home drunk from a party. As always, focusing on the wrong danger.
And, weirdly enough, places inhabited by millions of psychotic white guys wearing Oakleys and driving around in giant trucks covered with Molon Labe stickers are disproportionately violent. Who'd have guessed?
Didn't this get figured out? In NYC you're way less likely to be the victim of a crime but way more likely to see one. The media bias reinforces an immediacy bias.
12 years ago during my Masters in Public Policy program at IU, classmates kept using NYC as the strawman/bogeyman in their arguments. Prof had to finally ask who had ever been to NYC. Less than 1/4 of the class.
"Right. Even Fort Wayne is significantly more dangerous than NYC. Stop saying that."
For those wondering about major cities in Texas counties, roughly: Harris is Houston, Tarrant is Fort Worth, Travis is Austin and Collin has a couple of Dallas’ northern suburb cities, Plano and Frisco.
tbh, this entire chart is kind of weird because it's talking about cities and not metro areas, which excludes and includes a lot of relevant areas. Philly has a high crime rate, but it's not "worst in the country" bad. Only a little higher than Anchorage: https://www.statista.com/statistics/718903/murder-rate-in-us-cities-in-2015/
IMHO this graph should be called "Interactive survivability". "Safety" should be about robberies, burglaries and such, and "sense of security" should express perceived feeling of feeling safe.
I don’t disagree that NYC is safer than its reputation, but it is worth noting that this chart lists 4 of the 5 boroughs separately, because each one is its own county. "New York, NY" is Manhattan. Queens and the Bronx are both on there, as is Kings, NY, which is Brooklyn.
Do you have the source for this? Riverside County is considering new laws about ebikes and I would like to show them they are focusing on the wrong thing.
Comments
https://controller.phila.gov/philadelphia-reports/mapping-gun-violence/#/?year=2023&layers=Point%20locations&map=10.78%2F39.98365%2F-75.18329
https://www.vice.com/en/article/lord-miles-afghanistan-free/
That is, all things being equal, it seems plausible someone with the same injuries is less likely to die in Cambridge than almost anywhere else.
But it was on there, it’s 6 murders per 100k would put it above all the NYC counties besides Bronx County, and tie it with Los Angeles.
Wait, no 🤣
Real lesson for the rest of the country there!
And both NYC and Long Island are the safest places to be!
Manipulation of perception by untruthful media actors has always been a huge problem.
For 'media actors' i mean everything from modern cable news and social media to old time neighborhood gossip. 'Your perception is misinformed' is ineffective against it.
"TAMPA VICE," BABY
It lists New York, NY and then separates out Queens and Kings.
NYC is made up of 5 boroughs; Manhattan, Brooklyn (also called Kings), Queens, Staten Island and the Bronx.
Something is amiss.
(Still don’t want to move back.)
a. nowhere I have been*
b. lots of places I haven't heard of
c. substantial omissions of major cities.
*which is fine
"Right. Even Fort Wayne is significantly more dangerous than NYC. Stop saying that."
Google "Atatiana Jefferson".
No, she wasn't having a 'mental health crisis' or whatever. She just heard people plodding around in her yard at 3AM and looked out the window.
The governor is Kathy Hochul
And then the rest, not
https://x.com/incredutility/status/1847287039579808081?s=46&t=_JvhxST_eMA6G-OKZbXQtw