St. Louis: Most Dangerous City in the Nation (Clayton, Houston: lofts, crime)

[jbushart]

I think that our high rate of crime is a result of last year's World Series in which our St. Louis Cardinals absolutely "murdered" the Detroit Tigers.

[Babycakes22]

Originally Posted by fmoreau

I COULD AGREE NOT MORE WITH YOU. I AM FROM FLOIDA AND IS BY FAR THE 7 MOST DANGEROUS STATE WHERE STATE OF MISSOURI RANKS 20th.
THE FUNNY THING IS THE AVERAGE PERSON TAKES THOSE STATISTICS VERY SERIOUSLY. CRIME IS EVERYWHERE. NO ONE CITY IS IMMUNE FROM IT.

I agree. I grew up in STL and recently moved to Ormond beach FL. Any FYI all major cities have high crime rates! down here in O Beach I know more drug dealers and addics than ever in STL cause everyone down here are posers, where as in STL the dealers stay in their areas and crime is mostly between them. People in STL who look for trouble are usually the only ones who get into trouble. I think that list was BULL.

[Mindyhhhhh]

Hey guys, I grew up in st. louis, and moved away about 8 years ago. I am planning to move back soon. I want to move to the carandelet, or benton park area. Which is all i can afford! I grew up in Benton Park, and I know Benton park west is still bad, but from what i have seen, they are starting to turn benton park, around lemp around. I am not worried so much of the crime, but the schools. I know about the magnet schools, which I went to, and they were great. But there is a waiting list. I have a daughter in high school, and a son in grade school. I really dont want them to have to go to a regular public school, until i can get them in a magnet school. I have looked on the web for charter schools, but havent had much luck. Any suggestions?

[jayco]

The punishment for crimes these days is a joke. The only way to get your point across is to be very serious in sentencing. The people that commit crimes and keep doing it really don't care about anyone but number one. Maybe try caning, it seems to work in Singapore it just might work here.

Unless more drastic measures are taken it will not change. Any ideas as to what can be done, what's your thoughts?

[franpoopsie]

Originally Posted by BTinSTL

I hate statistics. A lot. Because they often create a false image of a city that everybody will listen to without understanding what it truly means. And I see that type of misunderstanding on this board.

All american cities have a crime problem. I’m not trying to say we should all ignore this. The difference between St. Louis and most cities is that St. Louis can’t lie about its problem because it has nonsensical city limits.

Examples
Chicago covers 234 square miles
Memphis covers 314 squre miles
Kansas City covers 318 square miles
Houston covers 602 squre miles

St. Louis covers 61 squre miles. No, we’re not even in the triple digits.

The result is that areas like Clayton, or Webster Groves and other safe areas are outside of the city limits. This would not be the case in any of the other listed cities. Thus, the statistical crime rate of the city sky rockets

More to the point, if you were to find the crime rate of just the 61 square miles around the centers of any of these cities, their crime rates would skyrocket.

The reason statistics frustrate me is that now there are people who say “I try not to go into St. Louis City” but these same people would never avoid Chicago’s or Kansas City’s downtown. Instead, they say, “Statistics tell me that these cities are safer than St. Louis so I’ll patronize their businesses”. Maybe not in those exact words…

It’s much fairer to compare metropolitan areas to each other because numbers can not be skewed by nonsensical city limits. In that comparison, St. Louis is the 130th most dangerous metropolitan area.

I’m particularly frustrated because it seems like for the first time in a half century, the city is beginning to recover and I am really terrified that people will take these stats seriously, and that this will stop the city dead in its tracks.

Here’s to hoping for the best.

Here is just an example of the city's comeback,, I live in the Cherokee Antique Row district. A couple years ago I would not walk down the street after 9pm. there were a lot of abandoned houses. this part of the city (south city it;s called) is supposed to be the worst, next to north county. Now, just about a year and a half ago, the house next to me was renovated and sold for $270,00. It originally sold for $39,000 a few years back. Now I can walk down the street at 2 am and no ones bothers me, evey now and then you will see the police patroling, ( they never use to come around this part of town). A block over the city tore down some abandoned houses and rebuilt new ones to sell to low income families. So,I have to agree with you, we are doing a good job of re-vitalizing the old sout, so to speak. And you can't judge us city people by the crimes committed in outlying cities, such as St. George, St. Ann, etc.etc...............Fran

[mrkue]

Yeah...The Lou was the most dangerous city last year, but this year when the new stats come out it's gonna be Detroit. The murder rate is gonna be around 400-420 for a city with a population of 800,000...now that's bad.

[Milliano]

Crime stats are almost all down to demographics. Basically what % of blacks and Hispanics live in city limits compared with % of whites and Asians. (sorry if it sounds racist, it's sad but that's just a fact in the USA, for instance blacks are reported to commit around 10 times more crime than whites) If you compare city crime rates the connection is obvious. And this goes down to the specific neighborhoods in a city. Just because a city's crime rate is really high doesn't mean the whole city is dangerous, nor does a low rate mean it is all safe. It just means some parts might be high crime, and some parts low. In demographically diverse cities, which means most American cities, crime, especially violent crime, is strongly localized to specific parts of the cities. It's not evenly spread throughout.

So basically what I'm saying is like what some said earlier, that it's nonsense to base decision making on visiting/moving to a whole city/metro area based on citywide crime rates. There is always so much more detail to it that can make those preliminary judgments over crime rate fairly meaningless.

Plus crime itself doesn't necessarily tell the whole story. In some places, crime rates might be high/low simply because it does/doesn't get reported as often (not as often in the case of a high illegal population for instance, or in the really rough ghettos, and more often reported in more dense, nicer areas). And crime itself doesn't necessarily make a place dangerous. A place can be low crime but have muggers prowling the streets and child molesters in the parks... or high crime but they could just be drug dealers that leave law abiding citizens alone.

[jamie2626]

Originally Posted by jbushart

I think that our high rate of crime is a result of last year's World Series in which our St. Louis Cardinals absolutely "murdered" the Detroit Tigers.

HeeHeeHeeHee...fantastical assumption jbushart!

[Danilo-11]

Originally Posted by Milliano

Crime stats are almost all down to demographics. Basically what % of blacks and Hispanics live in city limits compared with % of whites and Asians. (sorry if it sounds racist, it's sad but that's just a fact in the USA, for instance blacks are reported to commit around 10 times more crime than whites)

Actually, it's not so much about race, but about poverty.
Since the US had a very racist society, poor people are usually black and rich people are usually white.

BTW, Orlando is 51% white, 27% black, 18% hispanic and it's the 7th most dangerous city in the US.
Most dangerous and safest cities - Top 25 - Oct. 30, 2006
Orlando, Florida - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Based on this, San Antonio (67% hispanic), Houston (37% hispanic) and Phoenix (34% hispanic) are 3 of the safest big cities even though they have a huge hispanic population.
USATODAY.com - FBI: New York had lowest overall crime rate of the nation's 10 largest cities in 2005

[Milliano]

Originally Posted by Danilo-11

Actually, it's not so much about race, but about poverty.
Since the US had a very racist society, poor people are usually black and rich people are usually white.

BTW, Orlando is 51% white, 27% black, 18% hispanic and it's the 7th most dangerous city in the US.
Most dangerous and safest cities - Top 25 - Oct. 30, 2006
Orlando, Florida - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Based on this, San Antonio (67% hispanic), Houston (37% hispanic) and Phoenix (34% hispanic) are 3 of the safest big cities even though they have a huge hispanic population.
USATODAY.com - FBI: New York had lowest overall crime rate of the nation's 10 largest cities in 2005

NYC lies big time about their crime statistics. They routinely downgrade or not report crimes, to keep the rates down, because the rate is so important for their image.
But there is a point about the Hispanic thing - Hispanics are such a broad aspect of the US population. From very high crime, poor Puerto Ricans, to very low crime, wealthy educated Mexicans. Cities like Houston have much different from usual Hispanic populations, in that they've been around for so long, typically got and stayed here legally, and many of them consist of highly skilled laborers. As always been the case, not just in the USA, highly skilled immigrants tend to have lower crime rates than the native population. Highly educated people in general have much lower crime rates.
There's no real proof that blacks are poor because of racism, but whatever. There are plenty of smart blacks out there who grew up in some of the most impoverished places in the country, yet got an education, worked hard, took care of themselves and their families, didn't commit crimes .... and generally then moved to the suburbs LOL. Inner cities have wealthy black neighborhoods too that are safe but usually in the USA inner city black neighborhoods consist of the people that "have not left yet" compared to all the other blacks that were able to leave and better themselves in the face of this supposed racism these places tend to have very high crime rates. These neighborhoods have actually gotten worse since the civil rights era (since the smarter blacks have been allowed to leave them), even though African American life as a whole has gotten way better.

In terms of things like income, crime rates, etc... guess which immigrant group in America is one of the best? Nigerians! Yes those black people, who have to face such supposed terrible racism, and have only just come from Africa, somehow manage to do way better than white Americans. Hmm.
I wonder why Asian people do so well in the USA too? Why aren't their crime rates high? You know Japanese Americans were put into concentration camps just 60 years ago. Whites were just as racist to groups like the Chinese as they were to Black people, if not more. But Chinese Americans don't live in poverty like this.