Midwest/Mid-Cities might merk you
mannybolone
Los Angeles, CA 15,025 Posts
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/13/us/13crime.html?_r=1&oref=sloginJune 13, 2006Violent Crime Rose in '05, With Murders Up by 4.8%By MARIA NEWMANViolent crime increased in the United States for the first time in four years, up 2.5 percent in 2005 from the year before, with the biggest increases in murder coming in medium-size cities and in the Midwest.A preliminary 2005 crime report issued yesterday by the Federal Bureau of Investigation shows that the total number of murders in the country went up 4.8 percent from the year before. St. Louis, Houston, Philadelphia and Milwaukee saw an increase in murders, while other cities including New York, Los Angeles and Miami saw a drop.Among violent crimes, the only decrease was in rapes, which fell 1.9 percent. Robberies increased over all by 4.5 percent.Cities with populations of more than 500,000 had the biggest rise in violent crime, 8.3 percent. In the Midwest, violent crimes increased by 5.7 percent.The data are considered preliminary until the final statistics are released in October.The increases in violent crime over all come after years of crime reduction efforts all over the country in the 1990's that are credited with lowering crime rates almost everywhere, especially in the larger urban areas. Law enforcement officials and other experts on crime cautioned that this latest report did not necessarily mean crime would start to run rampant again.James Alan Fox, a professor of criminal justice at Northeastern University, said that after the sharp decreases during the 1990's, the crime rate over all from 2000 to 2004 was "essentially flat.""We squeezed all the air out of the balloon after having seven good years of crime decline," Mr. Fox said. "That ended when the 1990's ended. Now the challenge isn't so much to make the crime rate go down more, because that's not necessarily realistic, but the challenge is to make sure that the small blip doesn't become a big one."Mr. Fox pointed out that some of the cities where murders rose in 2005 had seen small fluctuations in recent years.Houston, for example, which reported 334 murders in 2005, had 272 in 2004 and 278 the year before.In Memphis, there were 136 murders in 2005, 107 in 2004 and 126 in 2003."I don't think we'd be too obsessed with the day-to-day changes in the stock market," Mr. Fox said.The 2005 figures are not necessarily the beginning of a trend upward for everyone, he said, but "the potential does exist."The annual F.B.I. report is drawn from numbers gathered by state and local law enforcement agencies. They measure four violent offenses (murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault) and four property crimes (burglary, larceny, auto theft and arson). The report does not measure drug crimes.The report showed that cities with populations of 100,000 to 249,999 had the greatest increase in murders, up 12.5 percent. Cities with 500,000 to 999,999 inhabitants had the greatest increases in both robbery, 9.9 percent, and aggravated assault, 8.5 percent. The number of rapes fell in all city population groups except in those cities with fewer than 10,000 residents; there, the number of rapes was up 1.5 percent from the 2004 level.Alfred Blumstein, a criminologist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, said an increase in crime in the last couple of years in some places could be a result of police efforts' being diverted to fighting terrorism, budget cuts that have reduced social services and prisons, and fewer job opportunities for young people in poorer communities."I want to be careful to not overstate a one-year trend as the start of something much bigger, because it could well go in the other direction next year," Mr. Blumstein said. "In places that had a good rise in crime, the chances are good that they could see a good fall next year as they pay more attention to the issue."
Comments
That's not really saying anything profound, especially about a small city like Gary.
gary indiana is fucking scary, saying.
Gary is pretty thorough but is it worse than Camden, NJ??
eh, I dont know if I would call it scary. In fact every cat I've met from Gary is cool as fuck.... its just alot of people out there are on some ignoramus country gangster bullshit.
I take it that you haven't watched HOOD 2 HOOD?
Gary is
the few times ive drove through, this was my observation, not saying there arent chill or normal folls residing within the area. its a sad situation there.
I grew up in northern Indiana. At its worst the state as a whole dreamt that it was hard. On paper, Gary has been no joke. Crime statistics for the city have fluxuated in recent years and the Railcats haven't exactly reshaped the landscape, but every time I've darted through the city it's been a good experience. What's more, all the people I know from the region are quality personas.
As for Michigan City, I never feared for my safety when my mom darted us up to the outlet malls for school clothes.
Naptown robbery and larceny are booming a bit, but IN is soft.
My entire immediate family grew up in Gary and both sets of my Grandparents, including lots of aunts, uncles and cousins still live there. I've been going to Gary AT LEAST 5 times a year and during college almost every month because I was so close. In all of my time there I have never been a victim of crime and the only violence I've seen was a beat down on the side of the road when I was super young. Some of you act like people walk around with heat just LOOKING to pop somebody. That's ridiculous.
Sure, race will make a difference in your perception of an area, and possibly how you are treated there. So a white dude carting around in a dilapidated, mostly black area may be frightened preemptively. But don't act like you know what's really going on when you really don't.
Unfortunately, Gary is a city that has struggled mightily to clime out of the hole left by the Steel industry and whites with money who left the city when jobs became scarce. In its hay day, Gary was a bustling small city where people came, especially from the South to find work to support their new families. What's left are those that cannot afford to move elsewhere or do not want to abandon where they grew up.
All the "Gary this, Gary that" is ridiculous to me because I know the area intimately and see it as no different than a Detroit, Chicago or Philadelphia neighborhood, on a much smaller scale.
Which leads me back to the point of this thread: If a city has a population of 10 people, and 5 of those people are killed...that's a 50% death rate, which = MURDER CAPITAL OF THE WORLD!!!
It's simple math and proportion, which should be taken into consideration when you read stories like the one above.