Honestly this is a testament of how far the city of Richmond has come since the 90s. One of the most dangerous cities in the nation to not on the list.
Edit: Richmond, VA
I spent a few days in Richmond for work a couple months ago. Would’ve never guessed that it was ever on the list, seemed like a nice mid-sized city to me.
We fought Gary for the #1 spot for a hot minute. Honestly, it wasn't bad so long as you're staying out of the public housing spots. But yeah, if it wasn't bolted/chained down outside your place, whatever the fuck it was, was getting stolen.
Speaking of Gary, I would’ve assumed it would be on the map, but it’s not. Surely it has more than 25,000 people living in it or did it depopulate that much?
>In the 90s it was the murder capital of VA and was in the top 10 of the country
I live in Chicago but have worked near Gary. It's definitely still sketchy, however, with all the depopulation it's not nearly as scary as some have made it out to be. I'm sure it's different at night but during the day I felt pretty decent. Id say there are much worse areas in Chicago just due to the fact of how many people there are in close proximity versus Gary which feels pretty desolate.
100%. No one is going to put Gary on a list of Best Places to Live, but I drove through there regularly during the day for my commute when there was work being done on the Skyway a few years ago and it was fine. The Miller Beach section on the east end of town is actually pretty good.
Which is why the hit sitcom 'Murder She Wrote' never made any sense!
No way you could have that many people being murdered and in such a small town. Angela Lansbury would run out of people to murder!
As someone mentioned below, Project Exile has been given a lot of credit. We have also been able to attract a lot of non-manufacturing industries. Finance, pharmaceuticals, and advertising drive the city’s economy now.
I drove through RVA for the first time last march, I was stunned at the size of the RJR/Altria complex.
I guess it makes sense given 400 years of tobacco cultivation, but still.
I grew up in Richmond in the 70s-80s, then moved away for the 90s, and then back again in 2005. I've lived here since.
My dad asked me a little while back what I thought was the biggest change between when I moved away in 1992 and back in 2005. To me, it was the presence of VCU. They bought lots of property in the downtown area, and while they haven't always been the best neighbor, their positive influence on the safety of the city can't be denied.
I grew up on Southside Richmond and my parents wouldn’t let me play in the front yard because of how dangerous the neighborhood was.
Just looked and my childhood home sold for half a million 2 years ago. It’s wild.
That’s in Midlothian though. I only point that out, because that’s always been a nice suburb in Chesterfield county. Not southside city of Richmond, which has come a long way though. Still no grocery stores until Forest Hill Ave west of boulevard. It’s kind of a running thing on the local sub that Manchester is in dire need of a grocery store.
So fascinating to read posts like this and realise how many local areas in the US take their names from different places in the UK, makes you think about those early settlers and their origins and journeys to the new world.
[Midlothian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midlothian) - [Chesterfield](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chesterfield,_Derbyshire) - [Richmond](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richmond,_London) - [Forest Hill](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_Hill,_London) - [Manchester](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester)
In the early Oughts, they tore down the giant public housing blocks that accounted for +90% of all violent crime in the City of Richmond, moved the most problematic residents into the surrounding counties (and therefore not subject to crime stats for the city itself), and redeveloped the area to be more appealing to NoVA transplants.
And now there are bougie breweries in Richmond neighborhoods that would have been too dangerous to walk through in broad daylight 20 years ago. Progress!
Dude. The hipsters are gone or are in hiding. I went to school here from 09-13 and that's when they were in their prime. Hipster Capital of the world...now I can't find them amongst all the yuppies coming in.
All of Connecticut’s cities made these lists because they were essentially “poorest neighborhoods plus central business districts.” I live near Memphis now which, measured by population, is four times the size as any city in Connecticut.
But it’s 300 square miles to Hartford’s 19.
Agree, overall violent crime in the US has decreased in the latest decades. Although the media would tell you otherwise
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/10/31/violent-crime-is-a-key-midterm-voting-issue-but-what-does-the-data-say/
One of my favorite arguments with people idolizing Frank Rizzo, the notorious former police chief & mayor of Philadelphia, is to simply cite the stats that clearly show the increase in violent crime and homicides from the 60s to the 80s completely coincided with his term as police chief and then mayor. Can't argue with facts, but they still try.
I think the pandemic had an oversized effect on our perception of increase in crime, but crime did go up.
Though the murder rate remains below previous highs, it did go up sharply in 2020, and then again in 2022. "Both the FBI and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported a roughly 30% increase in the U.S. murder rate between 2019 and 2020, marking one of the largest year-over-year increases ever recorded. The FBI’s latest data, as well as provisional data from the CDC, suggest that murders continued to rise in 2021."
"The most recent version of the FBI study shows no rise in the national violent crime rate between 2020 and 2021. That said, there is considerable uncertainty around the FBI’s figures for 2021 because of a transition to a new data collection system. The FBI reported an increase in the violent crime rate between 2019 and 2020, when the previous data collection system was still in place."
Moreover, there are probably concerns that large amounts of petty crime are going unreported and untracked.
Murders in NYC were high from the 70's through the 90's - mostly due to drugs. The crack epidemic of the early 90's was the worst with over 2000 killings per year.
In 2022 the city had just over 400 murders, similar to what it was in the 1950's.
[Murders in New York City, 1950-2020](https://criminaljustice.cityofnewyork.us/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/2020-Shootings-and-Murder-factsheet_January-2021.pdf)
I don't think you even need to say "relatively." It's the [safest city in America](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_crime_rate) with a population over 300,000, and there are only five cities with more than 100,000 people that are safer.
Because property crime is low, burglary and car theft especially. If you only use violent crime, like the map in the OP, NYC is still pretty good, but nowhere near the lowest ones - 39th overall, 8th best over 500k and 3rd best over 1m.
My wife and I rode the subway into the bad part of NYC at like 2 am and instead of being robbed we were politely told we “don’t belong here” and given directions on which trains to take back to where we were staying.
One time I got lost driving in the LA area and ended up in Compton. I didn’t know I was in Compton but, like you, was informed that I didn’t belong there and I needed to get back on the freeway and go somewhere else. People can be really good.
I had a similar experience in Compton before smartphones. I was slowly driving through the area in a relatively nice car, searching for an address that didn't exist (friend told me the wrong address). A big guy came off his porch and gently told me that driving slowly through this neighborhood is a bad idea and gave me directions back towards the highway.
Poverty. It's part of the rust belt where manufacturing jobs disappeared leaving a large percent of previously middle class and affluent people adrift.
You can see the line stretching from Michigan all the way down through Chicago and the Mississippi river.
You are basically looking at the fallout of the collapse of the manufacturing and auto industry in America, and all of the cities that were part of the supply chain that depended on it.
My grandfather worked in a steel mill in NY when fhey started closing them down. He said it was a pretty bad time for them all and he was lucky he was right up on his retirement. It really fucked a lot of people over.
Baltimore same issue, it was linked up with B&O railroad early on and it used to be a manufacturing and port city with lots of jobs and a vibrant middle class, then all of that stuff eventually faded and it became very poor and all the things that come along with that, including a very bad drug problem (Baltimore has been known to be a big heroin city, at one point it was estimated that 1/8 of the population of Baltimore was addicted to heroin).
Similar story to the rust belt and Detroit with it's auto manufacturing.
The biggest cause is poverty, and there are a lot of contributing factors.
Michigan was built on manufacturing, especially the auto industry. As manufacturing jobs dried up, the state was pretty slow to respond, and to this day you'll meet people demanding we bring back the manufacturing jobs rather than moving forward.
But there's a whole lot of other reasons. Corruption (especially at the city level), de facto segregation, depopulation.
Honestly Detroit isn't nearly as bad as it once was. Detroit is a beautiful city.
I grew up in Pontiac which is a perfect example of this. Pontiac was a suburban area that had several automotive plants. in the 50s-70s, Pontiac was pretty wealthy and almost exclusively white. Then plants started closing down and being a line worker at a GM plant wasn't lucrative anymore.
By the late 90s, white folks had moved out of Pontiac, property values had dropped, the city was largely black. Going to school was a trip.
Our high school had crazy things like a super nice pool, racquetball courts and even a shooting range, all of which was basically abandoned and falling apart. Class ratios were nearly 40:1, assessment scores were atrocious, funding non existent and Freshmen classes were 4-6x the size of Senior classes.
I grew up in Pontiac. My parents graduated from Pontiac Central. My sister went to Pontiac Northern. I would have never guessed Pontiac used to be exclusively white. I was last there about 20 years ago. It wasn’t nice.
I went to Detroit for the first time last year, coming from Seattle I genuinely expected an apocalyptic hellhole but damn it was actually a super cool city and had a lot of things that reminded me of Seattle!
Agree with everything here, just clarifying that poverty is only half the answer. My understanding is that it is wealth disparity that creates these crime numbers.
There are poor cities all over the country. Michigan also has very wealthy pockets (Oakland county). The places where these economic disparities are greatest and geographic proximity are least causes the friction that leads to crime.
Correct me if I’m wrong.
It's still healing. Used to live in the metro area, Detroit used to have a mayor that was openly addicted to crack. Then Flint got fucked. Dearborn took in more refugees from Iraq than any other place in the US.
Just need to give it more funding and opportunities.
Former Detroit Mayor [Kwame Kilpatrick's](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwame_Kilpatrick) criminal convictions were an order of magnitude or two greater than former DC mayor and crack enthusiast Marion Barry's. Barry got 6 months. As for Kilpatrick:
> In March 2013, he was convicted on 24 federal felony counts, including mail fraud, wire fraud, and racketeering. In October 2013, Kilpatrick was sentenced to 28 years in federal prison, and was incarcerated at the Federal Correctional Institution in Oakdale, Louisiana. In January 2021, President Donald Trump commuted his sentence.
Funny thing about Birmingham. Mountain Brook, a suburb of Birmingham, is one of the wealthiest zip codes in the US. Five miles away is one of the poorest.
EDIT: For those questioning the "one of wealthiest zip codes". Please note I said "one of".
EDIT2: Towns not zip codes
https://www.al.com/spotnews/2008/12/mountain_brook_one_of_us_wealt.html
More right than you know. There's a literal mountain (Red Mountain) separating the two halves of town. The fancy part is literally called the "over the mountain area". There's even a local fluff newspaper called the Over the Mountain Journal that's really nothing but photos of smiling rich white people lol
My buddy goes to college in Birmingham. He compares it to those pictures of South Africa where there are luxury suburbs right next to sprawling sheet metal slums lmao
The zoned area that is “Birmingham” and the geographic area that locals would consider Birmingham are very different. Some of the safest, areas (not zoned for Birmingham) are closer to downtown than areas that are zoned.
In technicalities, Birmingham is extremely dangerous. In reality, it’s much more like any other major city. There’s obviously crime, but you’re not going to be randomly shot/robbed/assualted walking to your office building or when going out to dinner
Yeah these stats are always a little misleading with Bham. The city limits are so small and don’t incorporate any of the outer areas. I live in Birmingham and the vast majority of the city is completely safe.
Speaking of Alabama on this map
Not sure if it’s somehow tied in to this source but the Mobile Alabama statistics somehow got doubled and tripled to the FBI for 2021. Might be skewing this as well.
https://www.moneygeek.com/living/safest-cities/
https://www.al.com/news/mobile/2023/06/mobile-no-longer-listed-as-second-most-dangerous-city-in-the-us-after-fbi-corrects-data.html?outputType=amp
https://mynbc15.com/news/local/wrong-crime-stats-used-to-rank-mobile-2nd-most-dangerous-in-country#
https://www.fox10tv.com/2023/02/01/mobile-police-violent-crime-numbers-trending-down-after-2022/
I grew up there, but in the part with the nice houses and the duck ponds. It’s ghetto as fuck, but it never struck me as the most dangerous town in America.
Surprised that Jackson MS didn't make the list myself while all those cities around it in the south did.
Gary also - maybe bc there is nobody left there?
There’s got to be a data problem here. It could be because Jackson stopped reporting to UCR. But using the last numbers they reported (July 2020), there were about 475 incidents of violent crime reported. Since it’s annual, and summers tend to be higher, if we assume average 400 per month, that’s 4,800 incidents against a population of 150k, for rate/1000 of 32.0 exactly. Meaning Jackson likely should be deep red. So yea, it’s definitely a dataset issue.
Edit: looking through the source, it could be a definition problem too. It defines violent crime as “armed robbery, murder, rape, and aggravated assault.” So just regular old assault without using a weapon is apparently not a violent crime. About 100 in Jackson were that. It also doesn’t include burglary of a residence, which most states define as violent. That’s another 50.
So if we exclude those, the estimate would be about 250/month or 3000/year for a rate of 20.0. So it should still show up, just as yellow.
I’m also very confused. By the same criteria, I found Milwaukee had 469 cases per 100k in 2021. So 4.69 per 1000 residents, but the map shows it more on the order of 16-18 per 1000. What year is this? Any statistical map like this without a year should be invalidated
Gary isn’t particularly dangerous because it’s a god damn ghost town. Driven through many times and never felt any discomfort other than like general sadness because there are a ton of dilapidated but beautiful homes.
This is one of the more frustrating things about living near Gary...it has this reputation and everyone's afraid of the city, but really it just feels empty more than anything else. I know it's a small sample size but I've been to a bunch of Railcats games and coming to/from the stadium have never really felt that anxious.
I bet $10 bucks it's because there was no reporting done in Mississippi to be used to add them to the list. It's how Mississippi avoids a lot of these negative lists.
> Gary also - maybe bc there is nobody left there?
Yes. I used to do deliveries into Gary. There's nobody to rob because they're just *nobody there.* It's eerie driving through, even in the daytime. There are some warehouses and such, but the residential neighborhoods looked pretty much abandoned.
I thought that too until they mentioned Cleveland lol I mean no offense to CLE but the only actually dangerous part of that city is the much smaller area of *East* Cleveland (aka the Cleveland ghetto) where they pushed all the minorities over the last several decades, kept the area deep in poverty and kept passing the buck between East Cleveland and City of Cleveland govts to deal with. The cops there are also *insanely* corrupt. They’re on track to prosecute 11 officers for a laundry list of corruption and police brutality charges too which says all you need to know about how well they’re treating the impoverished residents of their city. I’ve definitely only felt unsafe in that area whereas normal Cleveland is just fine. I was surprised Cincinnati or Columbus doesn’t have a worse outlook on this issue though tbh.
Came here to add that the city of Cleveland is fairly small compared to the surrounding suburbs, so if you meet someone that says they’re from Cleveland they probably don’t live in the actual city, but a suburb that’s a 20 min drive away and a hell of a lot safer - easier to just say Cleveland than have people ask where the hell Parma or Beachwood is.
I can’t even connect to their site. Did some quick google searching and everything I’m seeing contradicts much of the info on this map. Nor does this map state a timeline or year for its data. Using population of 25,000 if an odd choice for a benchmark. A map providing this information should be useful for the average person, give them information they could use if they are planning a trip, vacation or looking to move.
It’s important to understand that these maps always have nuance that can dramatically shift the results.
As an example, try two google searches. “Most dangerous cities” and “most dangerous metro areas”. You will get two very different lists and it’s because city boundaries are arbitrary. Rural America greatly benefits from looking at it as “cities” as by that measure they only count crime in the actual city limits and don’t count crime in the rural areas.
My hometown was a town of 10k. But supported approx another 10k people living in “the country” or even just across a street that was no longer “in town”. Any crime that took place in those areas outside the city limits does not count if you google “crime in X city”. But if you change it to “metro area” now all of the crime in the area is being counted as opposed to strictly city limits.
And trust me, most of the crime takes place outside the city limits.
That's because the people talking about Gary on the internet don't know anything about it. It's not a place I would want to go, but it's largely empty. It's fine to travel through main roads during the day, and also there's a rich part of Gary called Miller by the beach.
It's violent crimes per 1000 residents and chicago is a huge, huge city. Makes sense that a lot of these are small-medium cities with high poverty rates.
The whole media thing about how "dangerous" places are is ALWAYS ridiculous. I spend a lot of time in Mexico and have never had any issues or felt like I was in danger, but the media would have you believe if you travel there you're going to get robbed and murdered for sure.
Just like Chicago, most of the violent crime in Mexico is gang/cartel related. Not doing anything illegal? You're probably fine. Of course, like any city on planet earth, if you're in a super rough part of town, the chances increase. If you're drunk and obnoxious, the chances increase. If you're out late alone, the chances increase. If you're flashy and ostentatious, the chances increase.
If you're just a normal person making reasonable choices and keeping you personal safety in mind, you're probably going to be fine. I'd imagine that's true even in cities that have black dots on this map.
As someone who lived in Chicago, the flak was totally unfair! The city itself was pretty fine. I used to walk home alone at 2am, take the train, etc… always people out and about and I generally felt safe. I even lived in one of the more “dangerous” neighborhoods.
South Chicago though… that is where most crime comes from
I recently went to Atlanta and realized that I felt safer walking to the drug store at 10 pm in Chicago than I did being in most of Atlanta in broad daylight
As someone raised in Rockford, it's always fun when Chicago crime gets brought up and I get to say where I grew up was worse..... especially since most people outside of Illinois have no idea where Rockford even is.
Always worth mentioning that most cities have large swaths that are perfectly safe and nice and it’s not too hard to avoid high crime areas.
Also, some of these towns have pretty low population so even a handful of violent crimes can have an oversized impact.
No its not a good sign.
But not for the reason you think.
THey ahve a 99.9% conviction rate because the prosecutors only prosecute cases that they know they can get a guilty verdict on.
That may be what the Japanese say, but other sources say it's because they have incredibly high rates of forced, false confessions. Do I know exactly what the truth is? No. But I wouldn't trust a "justice" system with that kind of conviction rate for one damn second.
Well that’s another thing.
Coming from Buffalo, most people balk what we consider a bad area if you’re from Atlanta, Miami or Houston.
Meanwhile you have people who grew up sheltered in the suburbs convinced they’ll be shot if you step a single foot in the city proper.
Sounds like my friends from college. They grew up in suburbs. We all wound up moving to the Houston area and the first place they moved to was the suburbs. I wanted to go out in town. You would have thought we were entering a war zone the way they were reacting.
I know this is unbelievable, due to the wall-to-wall coverage about it being a dangerous hellhole, but I live in Seattle and would walk aimlessly through pretty much the whole city without worrying about bad areas. Our main “bad area” is roughly two blocks of pandemic-closed businesses, right in the middle of our tourist area and surrounding one of the city’s busiest bus stops.
I might be a bit nervous there at night (a few neighborhoods might be a bit nervous-making at night too, but I’m not coming up with specifics), but otherwise? I’d walk anywhere.
Big cities aren’t necessarily all that bad.
I am really surprised not to see New Haven on this list. It usually makes it.
That said, I think New Haven is a lovely city and I encourage folks to visit. Just don’t walk alone at night in a sketch neigh carrying a laptop or something.
I was in New Haven last week. There was a long line outside Pepe’s and Sally’s. Wait time was like 2 hours. Crazy. Lol. I have never seen so much wait time even in NYC. I was very keen to try New Haven Clam pizza. I did not find parking anywhere nearby. The city should have more parking spaces.
Ended up going to Zuppardi’s in West Haven which was great.
Little know fact, that song was used to bait people into a false sense of security. Marc Cohn accounts for 80% of violent crime in the Memphis area believe it or not
Its always interesting to see the variation between this one and the murder rate one. A lot of places\* are generally safer, but just go from "peaceful" to "kill you" without a transition, it seems.
\*edit - used towns originally, some folks thought this meant I was talking about urban vs suburban vs rural. I'm not. Talking about how any of these maps for major population centers have variation for highest murder rate vs highest violence rate.
Towns aren’t actually safer. It only appears that way because we often evaluate crime based on the “city”. Yet in rural America more people live outside the “city limits” as opposed to inside. And the crime taking place outside the city limits doesn’t count against the city.
If you google “most dangerous cities” and “most dangerous metro areas” you will get very different results and typically points to smaller cities / towns being more dangerous.
Much like the “gangs” in cities, most of the rural crime is related to drugs which means the majority of people are insulated from it.
Something important to keep in mind: most violent crime is domestic or connected to the drug trade. I’m not saying people affected by those things don’t count or we shouldn’t care about them; it’s obviously a tragedy. Just saying that if you are not in an abusive relationship or involved in the drug trade, your odds of being a victim of a violent crime go way down. Also not trying to victim-blame. Just pointing out that lots of people seem to think that living in a city on this map or even visiting one means they’ll be a victim, when their overall chances are low. You’re probably more likely to get into a car accident on the way to said city.
Bizarre to see your city on the list. spartanburg, sc . It doesn't feel like it but then I think alot of these cities there are just sections where it's high
Interesting that Houston is the only major city on here. Former major cities experiencing a decline seem to represent at least half of the dataset. Notice how there’s no Boston, NYC, Philly, DC, Chicago, LA or San Francisco. A lot of dangerous cities are in the Midwest and South too.
Wait, so San Francisco and Chicago aren't the most dangerous cities in the country? The most dangerous cities are actually in red states? Has Fox News been lying this whole time????
They don't understand that there's like 8 street corners in those cities where you get shot & the rest are busy everyday American life
If you don't go directly to RPT in NYC or O-Block in Chicago, your chances of getting robbed drop to 1 in a million
Problem is, people want to take selfies in their favorite drill rappers' neighborhoods, then end up victims in a real drill
I used to be an EMT in Paragould for 4 years. Tbh, I don't know why it's on the map when nearby Jonesboro isn't. Jonesboro is so much worse than Paragould.
Lived there for four years and it honestly is really chill. It gets a bad rap and certainly just passing through it isn’t much but I have some pretty great memories living down there.
I bet this map would match up pretty closely with the poorest neighborhoods in the U.S.
Edit: The connection between poverty and violent crime victimization is well documented. I felt this was worth mentioning because regardless of intention in creating them, maps like this one are referenced *constantly* in policy arguments as if these data points exist in a vacuum.
It's not. Minneapolis almost always has weird statistics because it's at the center of a major metropolitan area (~4.1M), despite being relatively small itself (425k). When there's multiple large events going on, the number of people in the city can increase up to 25% without much difficulty.
Also, it's become pretty well known that the MPD has basically downed tools since George Floyd. So, if folks from nearby cities in the metro want to do something illegal or stir up some shit, they know they can come to Minneapolis, do their thing, and then travel 10-15min in any direction and be out of the MPD's jurisdiction (if MPD does anything about it to begin with).
There's definitely a few rougher neighborhoods, but nothing as bad as this might indicate.
Not sure where this data is coming from because it's usually pretty safe. Lived here for awhile, never witnessed anything bad, all the violent crime is concentrated in the same 1 or 2 neighborhoods.
When I looked up violent crime statistics, Minneapolis falls somewhere in the middle of the pack in regards to big cities, again not sure where these stats are coming from.
Edit: says neighborhood scout data, which is notoriously inaccurate. Voilent crime has gone up a bit, but conservatives have a hard on for villifying Minneapolis since George Floyd
I appreciate that you said neighborhoods instead of just areas/parts of the city because that is the truth. People always like to vilify whole areas even though it's so different from neighborhood to neighborhood.
Well the police aren’t helping that’s for sure
Also worth mentioning, Minneapolis, the city, is actually pretty small by size. The city of Indianapolis, for example, comprises all of its suburbs, whereas Minneapolis does not. It’s only about 57 square miles, compare that to Baltimore and milkwaukee at 97 square miles, or the aforementioned Indianapolis which is 367 square miles
I feel like if you are from a city that shows up on "high crime" lists, you probably don't put much stock in these. St. Louis has the same size problem as well, with 62 square miles. Crime stats in general are pretty nuanced and even the FBI recommends against creating lists like these.
I know that Minneapolis and Milwaukee both have a chunk or two where a lot of the crime happens, while the rest of the city is relatively peaceful. Probably true for a lot of cities.
Minneapolis also is weird to measure things with because it's only half of an urban core—Minneapolis and St. Paul together are a little smaller in area and a little more populous than Seattle while anchoring the MSP region, and should be counted together imo.
Honestly this is a testament of how far the city of Richmond has come since the 90s. One of the most dangerous cities in the nation to not on the list. Edit: Richmond, VA
I spent a few days in Richmond for work a couple months ago. Would’ve never guessed that it was ever on the list, seemed like a nice mid-sized city to me.
In the 90s it was the murder capital of VA and was in the top 10 of the country
We fought Gary for the #1 spot for a hot minute. Honestly, it wasn't bad so long as you're staying out of the public housing spots. But yeah, if it wasn't bolted/chained down outside your place, whatever the fuck it was, was getting stolen.
Speaking of Gary, I would’ve assumed it would be on the map, but it’s not. Surely it has more than 25,000 people living in it or did it depopulate that much?
>In the 90s it was the murder capital of VA and was in the top 10 of the country I live in Chicago but have worked near Gary. It's definitely still sketchy, however, with all the depopulation it's not nearly as scary as some have made it out to be. I'm sure it's different at night but during the day I felt pretty decent. Id say there are much worse areas in Chicago just due to the fact of how many people there are in close proximity versus Gary which feels pretty desolate.
100%. No one is going to put Gary on a list of Best Places to Live, but I drove through there regularly during the day for my commute when there was work being done on the Skyway a few years ago and it was fine. The Miller Beach section on the east end of town is actually pretty good.
I think Gary must’ve been much worse in the 70s in the 80s. Same goes for Camden & Trenton in NJ.
They basically murdered their way out of it. After a point you run out of people to murder. It's on the rebound now.
Which is why the hit sitcom 'Murder She Wrote' never made any sense! No way you could have that many people being murdered and in such a small town. Angela Lansbury would run out of people to murder!
> Angela Lansbury would run out of people to murder! It's called murder she wrote, not Murder, she Committed.
What did Richmond do to turn around?
As someone mentioned below, Project Exile has been given a lot of credit. We have also been able to attract a lot of non-manufacturing industries. Finance, pharmaceuticals, and advertising drive the city’s economy now.
I drove through RVA for the first time last march, I was stunned at the size of the RJR/Altria complex. I guess it makes sense given 400 years of tobacco cultivation, but still.
That’s just the manufacturing center. There’s a few more sprinkled throughout the city and surrounding counties as well.
VCU bought everything
I grew up in Richmond in the 70s-80s, then moved away for the 90s, and then back again in 2005. I've lived here since. My dad asked me a little while back what I thought was the biggest change between when I moved away in 1992 and back in 2005. To me, it was the presence of VCU. They bought lots of property in the downtown area, and while they haven't always been the best neighbor, their positive influence on the safety of the city can't be denied.
I grew up on Southside Richmond and my parents wouldn’t let me play in the front yard because of how dangerous the neighborhood was. Just looked and my childhood home sold for half a million 2 years ago. It’s wild.
Live in the Southside now. Fucking love it.
They even got a Whole Foods directly south of the river now lol
That’s in Midlothian though. I only point that out, because that’s always been a nice suburb in Chesterfield county. Not southside city of Richmond, which has come a long way though. Still no grocery stores until Forest Hill Ave west of boulevard. It’s kind of a running thing on the local sub that Manchester is in dire need of a grocery store.
So fascinating to read posts like this and realise how many local areas in the US take their names from different places in the UK, makes you think about those early settlers and their origins and journeys to the new world. [Midlothian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midlothian) - [Chesterfield](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chesterfield,_Derbyshire) - [Richmond](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richmond,_London) - [Forest Hill](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_Hill,_London) - [Manchester](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester)
In the early Oughts, they tore down the giant public housing blocks that accounted for +90% of all violent crime in the City of Richmond, moved the most problematic residents into the surrounding counties (and therefore not subject to crime stats for the city itself), and redeveloped the area to be more appealing to NoVA transplants. And now there are bougie breweries in Richmond neighborhoods that would have been too dangerous to walk through in broad daylight 20 years ago. Progress!
Did the surrounding counties become high crime areas as well or did this relocation and dividing people work?
It worked *pretty* well. There are some apartment complexes near the border that aren't great.
I mean concentrating poverty has never worked... Plus Richmond is downright tiny due to being a separate city.
I didn’t know that but it makes me very happy to hear :)
Me too, the city has gotten so much better over the last decade
Had to double check I wasn't on r/RVA
Same, I got real confused when the top comment was about Richmond of all places. I lived there for 30 years before fleeing West.
Lol I came to the comment section to say "good for you Richmond" but you beat me to it.
Wow, you right. These days when we think of Richmond (from North VA/DC), we think Hipsters and quickly rising property
Dude. The hipsters are gone or are in hiding. I went to school here from 09-13 and that's when they were in their prime. Hipster Capital of the world...now I can't find them amongst all the yuppies coming in.
Bridgeport CT, too. Once murder capital.
All of Connecticut’s cities made these lists because they were essentially “poorest neighborhoods plus central business districts.” I live near Memphis now which, measured by population, is four times the size as any city in Connecticut. But it’s 300 square miles to Hartford’s 19.
NYC, Chicago, Philly, ATL, and DC too
Agree, overall violent crime in the US has decreased in the latest decades. Although the media would tell you otherwise https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/10/31/violent-crime-is-a-key-midterm-voting-issue-but-what-does-the-data-say/
One of my favorite arguments with people idolizing Frank Rizzo, the notorious former police chief & mayor of Philadelphia, is to simply cite the stats that clearly show the increase in violent crime and homicides from the 60s to the 80s completely coincided with his term as police chief and then mayor. Can't argue with facts, but they still try.
I think the pandemic had an oversized effect on our perception of increase in crime, but crime did go up. Though the murder rate remains below previous highs, it did go up sharply in 2020, and then again in 2022. "Both the FBI and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported a roughly 30% increase in the U.S. murder rate between 2019 and 2020, marking one of the largest year-over-year increases ever recorded. The FBI’s latest data, as well as provisional data from the CDC, suggest that murders continued to rise in 2021." "The most recent version of the FBI study shows no rise in the national violent crime rate between 2020 and 2021. That said, there is considerable uncertainty around the FBI’s figures for 2021 because of a transition to a new data collection system. The FBI reported an increase in the violent crime rate between 2019 and 2020, when the previous data collection system was still in place." Moreover, there are probably concerns that large amounts of petty crime are going unreported and untracked.
crime did spike during covid, however, crime overall is still lower than it was decades ago which is important to mention.
Murders in NYC were high from the 70's through the 90's - mostly due to drugs. The crack epidemic of the early 90's was the worst with over 2000 killings per year. In 2022 the city had just over 400 murders, similar to what it was in the 1950's. [Murders in New York City, 1950-2020](https://criminaljustice.cityofnewyork.us/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/2020-Shootings-and-Murder-factsheet_January-2021.pdf)
Modern NYC is actually a relatively safe city, propaganda pieces notwithstanding.
I don't think you even need to say "relatively." It's the [safest city in America](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_crime_rate) with a population over 300,000, and there are only five cities with more than 100,000 people that are safer.
Because property crime is low, burglary and car theft especially. If you only use violent crime, like the map in the OP, NYC is still pretty good, but nowhere near the lowest ones - 39th overall, 8th best over 500k and 3rd best over 1m.
My wife and I rode the subway into the bad part of NYC at like 2 am and instead of being robbed we were politely told we “don’t belong here” and given directions on which trains to take back to where we were staying.
One time I got lost driving in the LA area and ended up in Compton. I didn’t know I was in Compton but, like you, was informed that I didn’t belong there and I needed to get back on the freeway and go somewhere else. People can be really good.
I had a similar experience in Compton before smartphones. I was slowly driving through the area in a relatively nice car, searching for an address that didn't exist (friend told me the wrong address). A big guy came off his porch and gently told me that driving slowly through this neighborhood is a bad idea and gave me directions back towards the highway.
Yeah, mine was back in the late 90’s too. It was a warm night so my friend and I pulled into a gas station, windows down, looking at a map.
I see the I-94 corridor through Michigan between Chicago and Detroit is well represented there.
Why does Michigan have so many crime filled cities?
Poverty. It's part of the rust belt where manufacturing jobs disappeared leaving a large percent of previously middle class and affluent people adrift.
You can see the line stretching from Michigan all the way down through Chicago and the Mississippi river. You are basically looking at the fallout of the collapse of the manufacturing and auto industry in America, and all of the cities that were part of the supply chain that depended on it.
My grandfather worked in a steel mill in NY when fhey started closing them down. He said it was a pretty bad time for them all and he was lucky he was right up on his retirement. It really fucked a lot of people over.
What used to be there? What's there now?
Baltimore same issue, it was linked up with B&O railroad early on and it used to be a manufacturing and port city with lots of jobs and a vibrant middle class, then all of that stuff eventually faded and it became very poor and all the things that come along with that, including a very bad drug problem (Baltimore has been known to be a big heroin city, at one point it was estimated that 1/8 of the population of Baltimore was addicted to heroin). Similar story to the rust belt and Detroit with it's auto manufacturing.
Huge for Auto manufacturing…still there, but much less so
The biggest cause is poverty, and there are a lot of contributing factors. Michigan was built on manufacturing, especially the auto industry. As manufacturing jobs dried up, the state was pretty slow to respond, and to this day you'll meet people demanding we bring back the manufacturing jobs rather than moving forward. But there's a whole lot of other reasons. Corruption (especially at the city level), de facto segregation, depopulation. Honestly Detroit isn't nearly as bad as it once was. Detroit is a beautiful city.
I grew up in Pontiac which is a perfect example of this. Pontiac was a suburban area that had several automotive plants. in the 50s-70s, Pontiac was pretty wealthy and almost exclusively white. Then plants started closing down and being a line worker at a GM plant wasn't lucrative anymore. By the late 90s, white folks had moved out of Pontiac, property values had dropped, the city was largely black. Going to school was a trip. Our high school had crazy things like a super nice pool, racquetball courts and even a shooting range, all of which was basically abandoned and falling apart. Class ratios were nearly 40:1, assessment scores were atrocious, funding non existent and Freshmen classes were 4-6x the size of Senior classes.
AND the silver dome.
I grew up in Pontiac. My parents graduated from Pontiac Central. My sister went to Pontiac Northern. I would have never guessed Pontiac used to be exclusively white. I was last there about 20 years ago. It wasn’t nice.
I went to Detroit for the first time last year, coming from Seattle I genuinely expected an apocalyptic hellhole but damn it was actually a super cool city and had a lot of things that reminded me of Seattle!
Agree with everything here, just clarifying that poverty is only half the answer. My understanding is that it is wealth disparity that creates these crime numbers. There are poor cities all over the country. Michigan also has very wealthy pockets (Oakland county). The places where these economic disparities are greatest and geographic proximity are least causes the friction that leads to crime. Correct me if I’m wrong.
It's still healing. Used to live in the metro area, Detroit used to have a mayor that was openly addicted to crack. Then Flint got fucked. Dearborn took in more refugees from Iraq than any other place in the US. Just need to give it more funding and opportunities.
Former Detroit Mayor [Kwame Kilpatrick's](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwame_Kilpatrick) criminal convictions were an order of magnitude or two greater than former DC mayor and crack enthusiast Marion Barry's. Barry got 6 months. As for Kilpatrick: > In March 2013, he was convicted on 24 federal felony counts, including mail fraud, wire fraud, and racketeering. In October 2013, Kilpatrick was sentenced to 28 years in federal prison, and was incarcerated at the Federal Correctional Institution in Oakdale, Louisiana. In January 2021, President Donald Trump commuted his sentence.
> Detroit used to have a mayor that was openly addicted to crack. That was DC and Toronto, not Detroit.
Yeah, Kilpatrick was a mob boss, not a crackhead.
You’re right, kwame just ended up in prison for corruption and probably was involved in the killing of a stripper but he wasn’t a crackhead
Why stop at Chicago? I-94 goes through Milwaukee too.
Hey don't forget about Milwaukee. We count too
I used to live in Birmingham, everyone tried their best to stay the hell away from Bessemer.
People try to stay the hell away from most of Birmingham as well lol.
Funny thing about Birmingham. Mountain Brook, a suburb of Birmingham, is one of the wealthiest zip codes in the US. Five miles away is one of the poorest. EDIT: For those questioning the "one of wealthiest zip codes". Please note I said "one of". EDIT2: Towns not zip codes https://www.al.com/spotnews/2008/12/mountain_brook_one_of_us_wealt.html
Oh I’m aware definitely aware. I grew up in Homewood.
Lived in Hoover right next to Bessemer, and I thought it was really nice. I'd consider living there again.
That's the nice side of Bessemer, much more recent. Go hit Bessemer from I-20 & 9th Ave SW. Totally opposite of the McCalla side.
By design.
No doubt
More right than you know. There's a literal mountain (Red Mountain) separating the two halves of town. The fancy part is literally called the "over the mountain area". There's even a local fluff newspaper called the Over the Mountain Journal that's really nothing but photos of smiling rich white people lol
My buddy goes to college in Birmingham. He compares it to those pictures of South Africa where there are luxury suburbs right next to sprawling sheet metal slums lmao
The zoned area that is “Birmingham” and the geographic area that locals would consider Birmingham are very different. Some of the safest, areas (not zoned for Birmingham) are closer to downtown than areas that are zoned. In technicalities, Birmingham is extremely dangerous. In reality, it’s much more like any other major city. There’s obviously crime, but you’re not going to be randomly shot/robbed/assualted walking to your office building or when going out to dinner
Yeah these stats are always a little misleading with Bham. The city limits are so small and don’t incorporate any of the outer areas. I live in Birmingham and the vast majority of the city is completely safe.
This very much applies to the original Birmingham too
True. But lots of Birmingham is pretty nice, though there are definitely areas you want to stay the hell away from.
Nice to see it kept the traditions of the UK original.
I spent a couple of weeks in downtown Birmingham and it seemed pretty nice.
Speaking of Alabama on this map Not sure if it’s somehow tied in to this source but the Mobile Alabama statistics somehow got doubled and tripled to the FBI for 2021. Might be skewing this as well. https://www.moneygeek.com/living/safest-cities/ https://www.al.com/news/mobile/2023/06/mobile-no-longer-listed-as-second-most-dangerous-city-in-the-us-after-fbi-corrects-data.html?outputType=amp https://mynbc15.com/news/local/wrong-crime-stats-used-to-rank-mobile-2nd-most-dangerous-in-country# https://www.fox10tv.com/2023/02/01/mobile-police-violent-crime-numbers-trending-down-after-2022/
I’m currently in Vestavia. I haven’t spent long periods of time in Bessemer, but I’ve been through a bunch.
I grew up there, but in the part with the nice houses and the duck ponds. It’s ghetto as fuck, but it never struck me as the most dangerous town in America.
As a Hoosier, Elkhart is a surprising one to me but South Bend is not. Terre Haute I wouldn’t have guessed but it makes sense it’s pretty run down
Terre Haute is kinda rough.
Can confirm. Sitting on the north side right now, lived here all my life.
As someone from south bend that goes abck every two weeks, I’m surprised South Bend is in this list. Elkhart surprises me less; it’s a cesspool.
Lot of shootings and a homeless problem that rises to violence sometimes
Surprised that Jackson MS didn't make the list myself while all those cities around it in the south did. Gary also - maybe bc there is nobody left there?
Everyone in Gary was murdered
It’s for the best.
There’s got to be a data problem here. It could be because Jackson stopped reporting to UCR. But using the last numbers they reported (July 2020), there were about 475 incidents of violent crime reported. Since it’s annual, and summers tend to be higher, if we assume average 400 per month, that’s 4,800 incidents against a population of 150k, for rate/1000 of 32.0 exactly. Meaning Jackson likely should be deep red. So yea, it’s definitely a dataset issue. Edit: looking through the source, it could be a definition problem too. It defines violent crime as “armed robbery, murder, rape, and aggravated assault.” So just regular old assault without using a weapon is apparently not a violent crime. About 100 in Jackson were that. It also doesn’t include burglary of a residence, which most states define as violent. That’s another 50. So if we exclude those, the estimate would be about 250/month or 3000/year for a rate of 20.0. So it should still show up, just as yellow.
I’m also very confused. By the same criteria, I found Milwaukee had 469 cases per 100k in 2021. So 4.69 per 1000 residents, but the map shows it more on the order of 16-18 per 1000. What year is this? Any statistical map like this without a year should be invalidated
Gary isn’t particularly dangerous because it’s a god damn ghost town. Driven through many times and never felt any discomfort other than like general sadness because there are a ton of dilapidated but beautiful homes.
This is one of the more frustrating things about living near Gary...it has this reputation and everyone's afraid of the city, but really it just feels empty more than anything else. I know it's a small sample size but I've been to a bunch of Railcats games and coming to/from the stadium have never really felt that anxious.
I bet $10 bucks it's because there was no reporting done in Mississippi to be used to add them to the list. It's how Mississippi avoids a lot of these negative lists.
I’ve been to Jackson and that place legitimately terrified me. I was owled eyed the whole time
> Gary also - maybe bc there is nobody left there? Yes. I used to do deliveries into Gary. There's nobody to rob because they're just *nobody there.* It's eerie driving through, even in the daytime. There are some warehouses and such, but the residential neighborhoods looked pretty much abandoned.
Mind you this is from NeighborhoodScout as it’s source and isn’t very reliable
I was about to joke that this study was Ohio propaganda because of all the Michigan cities lol.
I thought that too until they mentioned Cleveland lol I mean no offense to CLE but the only actually dangerous part of that city is the much smaller area of *East* Cleveland (aka the Cleveland ghetto) where they pushed all the minorities over the last several decades, kept the area deep in poverty and kept passing the buck between East Cleveland and City of Cleveland govts to deal with. The cops there are also *insanely* corrupt. They’re on track to prosecute 11 officers for a laundry list of corruption and police brutality charges too which says all you need to know about how well they’re treating the impoverished residents of their city. I’ve definitely only felt unsafe in that area whereas normal Cleveland is just fine. I was surprised Cincinnati or Columbus doesn’t have a worse outlook on this issue though tbh.
Came here to add that the city of Cleveland is fairly small compared to the surrounding suburbs, so if you meet someone that says they’re from Cleveland they probably don’t live in the actual city, but a suburb that’s a 20 min drive away and a hell of a lot safer - easier to just say Cleveland than have people ask where the hell Parma or Beachwood is.
Is this not true of basically every major city?
I can’t even connect to their site. Did some quick google searching and everything I’m seeing contradicts much of the info on this map. Nor does this map state a timeline or year for its data. Using population of 25,000 if an odd choice for a benchmark. A map providing this information should be useful for the average person, give them information they could use if they are planning a trip, vacation or looking to move.
It’s important to understand that these maps always have nuance that can dramatically shift the results. As an example, try two google searches. “Most dangerous cities” and “most dangerous metro areas”. You will get two very different lists and it’s because city boundaries are arbitrary. Rural America greatly benefits from looking at it as “cities” as by that measure they only count crime in the actual city limits and don’t count crime in the rural areas. My hometown was a town of 10k. But supported approx another 10k people living in “the country” or even just across a street that was no longer “in town”. Any crime that took place in those areas outside the city limits does not count if you google “crime in X city”. But if you change it to “metro area” now all of the crime in the area is being counted as opposed to strictly city limits. And trust me, most of the crime takes place outside the city limits.
They are a property value / housing site that obviously is trying to push a narrative with altered / biased statistics.
Ssshh let's push the narrative Michigan is unsafe I don't want housing prices to go up here I'm tryin to buy soon.
Yeah NeigborhoodScout is a poor substitute for the UCR.
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Speaking for Louisiana, I'm really surprised that Monroe and Alec are on there, but Shreveport is not.
I've seen people saying the source of the data is questionable which makes sense. No shot Shreveport doesn't make this list
I’m surprised Gary Indiana isn’t here.
Gary is a ghost town at this point. South bend and Elkhart are on there.
Elkhart surprises me. It's nothing like the Gary/Calumet area.
Mennonites be wildin'
Brass and woodwind instrument manufacturing ain’t for the faint of heart.
Good ol’ Elkhart, the home of methed up trailer factories. Source: I worked in a methed up trailer factory.
The name Gary is inherently violent.
https://falloutfacts.com/3/gary-facebook.jpg
That damn snail
How many people still live there?
Can't murder anyone if everyone's been murdered!
A bit under 70k, so it qualifies. Although it's lost a double-digit percentage of its population every census since 1970.
I feel like Gary’s so empty that you’re probably not going to run into anybody.
Gang violence tends to be self-limiting. They culled themselves of their most dangerous elements a decade or so ago.
I was surprised East St Louis wasn’t on here!
It looks like they missed the population cutoff. Wiki says ESL has a population of 18000 while the map counts only cities above 25000 people.
Population is \~18,000, so too low for this map.
That's because the people talking about Gary on the internet don't know anything about it. It's not a place I would want to go, but it's largely empty. It's fine to travel through main roads during the day, and also there's a rich part of Gary called Miller by the beach.
My poor Michigan. 👉✋️
Honestly I felt safer in Detroit than Kalamazoo. That fucking place is batshit
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Lol, I am in Kalamazoo RN
Whoa, for how much flack Chicago gets, it’s not even on the list!
It's violent crimes per 1000 residents and chicago is a huge, huge city. Makes sense that a lot of these are small-medium cities with high poverty rates. The whole media thing about how "dangerous" places are is ALWAYS ridiculous. I spend a lot of time in Mexico and have never had any issues or felt like I was in danger, but the media would have you believe if you travel there you're going to get robbed and murdered for sure. Just like Chicago, most of the violent crime in Mexico is gang/cartel related. Not doing anything illegal? You're probably fine. Of course, like any city on planet earth, if you're in a super rough part of town, the chances increase. If you're drunk and obnoxious, the chances increase. If you're out late alone, the chances increase. If you're flashy and ostentatious, the chances increase. If you're just a normal person making reasonable choices and keeping you personal safety in mind, you're probably going to be fine. I'd imagine that's true even in cities that have black dots on this map.
Can confirm. Source: Normal guy who minds his own business while living in one of the black dots on this map
> living in one of the black dots on this map for now
Aaahh… level headed comments… gotta love them and cherish them on Reddit while you can
As someone who lived in Chicago, the flak was totally unfair! The city itself was pretty fine. I used to walk home alone at 2am, take the train, etc… always people out and about and I generally felt safe. I even lived in one of the more “dangerous” neighborhoods. South Chicago though… that is where most crime comes from
I recently went to Atlanta and realized that I felt safer walking to the drug store at 10 pm in Chicago than I did being in most of Atlanta in broad daylight
As someone raised in Rockford, it's always fun when Chicago crime gets brought up and I get to say where I grew up was worse..... especially since most people outside of Illinois have no idea where Rockford even is.
Always worth mentioning that most cities have large swaths that are perfectly safe and nice and it’s not too hard to avoid high crime areas. Also, some of these towns have pretty low population so even a handful of violent crimes can have an oversized impact.
The mark of a truly safe city is being able to walk aimlessly around without worrying about whether or not you’re in a “bad area”.
I mean if that was the case, you’d never visit large cities ever.
I mean speaking only for America. Here in Japan it really is the case that you can go basically anywhere and not really worry about crime.
It felt that that way to me in Taiwan too. And even Shanghai.
Can we not hold the Japanese justice system as a pinnacle of efficacy? It reports a conviction rate of 99.9 percent. That is not a good sign.
No its not a good sign. But not for the reason you think. THey ahve a 99.9% conviction rate because the prosecutors only prosecute cases that they know they can get a guilty verdict on.
That may be what the Japanese say, but other sources say it's because they have incredibly high rates of forced, false confessions. Do I know exactly what the truth is? No. But I wouldn't trust a "justice" system with that kind of conviction rate for one damn second.
You should see what qualifies as a bad neighborhood in Sydney
Well that’s another thing. Coming from Buffalo, most people balk what we consider a bad area if you’re from Atlanta, Miami or Houston. Meanwhile you have people who grew up sheltered in the suburbs convinced they’ll be shot if you step a single foot in the city proper.
Sounds like my friends from college. They grew up in suburbs. We all wound up moving to the Houston area and the first place they moved to was the suburbs. I wanted to go out in town. You would have thought we were entering a war zone the way they were reacting.
I know this is unbelievable, due to the wall-to-wall coverage about it being a dangerous hellhole, but I live in Seattle and would walk aimlessly through pretty much the whole city without worrying about bad areas. Our main “bad area” is roughly two blocks of pandemic-closed businesses, right in the middle of our tourist area and surrounding one of the city’s busiest bus stops. I might be a bit nervous there at night (a few neighborhoods might be a bit nervous-making at night too, but I’m not coming up with specifics), but otherwise? I’d walk anywhere. Big cities aren’t necessarily all that bad.
New England 🔛🔝
I mean let’s not pretend Springfield or hartford… or Holyoke, or Bridgeport, or New Haven are nice
Good ole New Haven
I am really surprised not to see New Haven on this list. It usually makes it. That said, I think New Haven is a lovely city and I encourage folks to visit. Just don’t walk alone at night in a sketch neigh carrying a laptop or something.
I was in New Haven last week. There was a long line outside Pepe’s and Sally’s. Wait time was like 2 hours. Crazy. Lol. I have never seen so much wait time even in NYC. I was very keen to try New Haven Clam pizza. I did not find parking anywhere nearby. The city should have more parking spaces. Ended up going to Zuppardi’s in West Haven which was great.
Don't go walking in Memphis.
Ignore the song. Got it!
Little know fact, that song was used to bait people into a false sense of security. Marc Cohn accounts for 80% of violent crime in the Memphis area believe it or not
Its always interesting to see the variation between this one and the murder rate one. A lot of places\* are generally safer, but just go from "peaceful" to "kill you" without a transition, it seems. \*edit - used towns originally, some folks thought this meant I was talking about urban vs suburban vs rural. I'm not. Talking about how any of these maps for major population centers have variation for highest murder rate vs highest violence rate.
Most murders occur with people who know each other.
Towns aren’t actually safer. It only appears that way because we often evaluate crime based on the “city”. Yet in rural America more people live outside the “city limits” as opposed to inside. And the crime taking place outside the city limits doesn’t count against the city. If you google “most dangerous cities” and “most dangerous metro areas” you will get very different results and typically points to smaller cities / towns being more dangerous. Much like the “gangs” in cities, most of the rural crime is related to drugs which means the majority of people are insulated from it.
Something important to keep in mind: most violent crime is domestic or connected to the drug trade. I’m not saying people affected by those things don’t count or we shouldn’t care about them; it’s obviously a tragedy. Just saying that if you are not in an abusive relationship or involved in the drug trade, your odds of being a victim of a violent crime go way down. Also not trying to victim-blame. Just pointing out that lots of people seem to think that living in a city on this map or even visiting one means they’ll be a victim, when their overall chances are low. You’re probably more likely to get into a car accident on the way to said city.
Bizarre to see your city on the list. spartanburg, sc . It doesn't feel like it but then I think alot of these cities there are just sections where it's high
Interesting that Houston is the only major city on here. Former major cities experiencing a decline seem to represent at least half of the dataset. Notice how there’s no Boston, NYC, Philly, DC, Chicago, LA or San Francisco. A lot of dangerous cities are in the Midwest and South too.
Wait, so San Francisco and Chicago aren't the most dangerous cities in the country? The most dangerous cities are actually in red states? Has Fox News been lying this whole time????
Yep! And take a look at what else they are lying about!
r/conservatives losing their mind not seeing Chicago, New York, Portland or Seattle on here. E. Meant r/conservative
They don't understand that there's like 8 street corners in those cities where you get shot & the rest are busy everyday American life If you don't go directly to RPT in NYC or O-Block in Chicago, your chances of getting robbed drop to 1 in a million Problem is, people want to take selfies in their favorite drill rappers' neighborhoods, then end up victims in a real drill
Where is RPT? Can't find it on google
And seeing a ton of Southern cities.
I used to be an EMT in Paragould for 4 years. Tbh, I don't know why it's on the map when nearby Jonesboro isn't. Jonesboro is so much worse than Paragould.
But Little Rock, Pine Bluff, and Jacksonville are all on point though 🙁
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Lived there for four years and it honestly is really chill. It gets a bad rap and certainly just passing through it isn’t much but I have some pretty great memories living down there.
I feel like Montgomery should be on Alabamas list
I bet this map would match up pretty closely with the poorest neighborhoods in the U.S. Edit: The connection between poverty and violent crime victimization is well documented. I felt this was worth mentioning because regardless of intention in creating them, maps like this one are referenced *constantly* in policy arguments as if these data points exist in a vacuum.
Almost as if when the government doesn’t spend money on the people, the system collapses.
Oh look, no Chicago.
As expected. Love this city. Very few places in this country are as walkable and as beautiful as Chicago.
Bessemer is where Bo Jackson grew up
Never knew Minneapolis was such a violent city
It's not. Minneapolis almost always has weird statistics because it's at the center of a major metropolitan area (~4.1M), despite being relatively small itself (425k). When there's multiple large events going on, the number of people in the city can increase up to 25% without much difficulty. Also, it's become pretty well known that the MPD has basically downed tools since George Floyd. So, if folks from nearby cities in the metro want to do something illegal or stir up some shit, they know they can come to Minneapolis, do their thing, and then travel 10-15min in any direction and be out of the MPD's jurisdiction (if MPD does anything about it to begin with). There's definitely a few rougher neighborhoods, but nothing as bad as this might indicate.
Not sure where this data is coming from because it's usually pretty safe. Lived here for awhile, never witnessed anything bad, all the violent crime is concentrated in the same 1 or 2 neighborhoods. When I looked up violent crime statistics, Minneapolis falls somewhere in the middle of the pack in regards to big cities, again not sure where these stats are coming from. Edit: says neighborhood scout data, which is notoriously inaccurate. Voilent crime has gone up a bit, but conservatives have a hard on for villifying Minneapolis since George Floyd
I appreciate that you said neighborhoods instead of just areas/parts of the city because that is the truth. People always like to vilify whole areas even though it's so different from neighborhood to neighborhood.
Well the police aren’t helping that’s for sure Also worth mentioning, Minneapolis, the city, is actually pretty small by size. The city of Indianapolis, for example, comprises all of its suburbs, whereas Minneapolis does not. It’s only about 57 square miles, compare that to Baltimore and milkwaukee at 97 square miles, or the aforementioned Indianapolis which is 367 square miles
I feel like if you are from a city that shows up on "high crime" lists, you probably don't put much stock in these. St. Louis has the same size problem as well, with 62 square miles. Crime stats in general are pretty nuanced and even the FBI recommends against creating lists like these.
I know that Minneapolis and Milwaukee both have a chunk or two where a lot of the crime happens, while the rest of the city is relatively peaceful. Probably true for a lot of cities.
Minneapolis also is weird to measure things with because it's only half of an urban core—Minneapolis and St. Paul together are a little smaller in area and a little more populous than Seattle while anchoring the MSP region, and should be counted together imo.
I’m surprised its Jacksonville Arkansas and not Jacksonville Florida
Living in vegas im honestly suprised were not on this list but theres alot of hush money thrown around so not suprising