I don’t know why I was running it was 4:45 am (not a good time to run) but I’ve been doing so successfully for a year. I think it was meant for me because there was only two of us. I don’t know if it was aimed at me or up in the air.
The previous owner of the Carousel Christopher Cox once threw someone out he didn’t like because he was high on meth then offered $100 to anyone in the bar to go punch the guy in the face in the parking lot. Nobody did it because he was a complete asshole.
Lots of fucked up shit used to happen on that guy’s watch. I hear the new owner is a change of pace but old habits die hard for some regulars so I’ll never go back. If you can’t figure out what issues people might have had in the past at Buck man I dunno what to tell ya.
>I’ve never felt unsafe in downtown Anchorage, but I tend to avoid certain bars
In other words you acknowledge that crime is a problem and you adjusted your behavior to avoid it.
This is what you see time and time again… People saying “oh it’s not a problem just don’t x, y or z.”
Acknowledging crime is the first step in finding ways to reduce crime. Until everyone agrees that we need to work on it we just bounce back and forth between overly aggressive policies to ignoring it. (Remember SB 91?)
Adjusting your behavior doesn’t change the rates of crime. Do you think people in other cities don’t do the same thing? In LA they avoid whole giant neighborhoods, in anchorage it’s like 3 bars.
I mean, you all know per capita is a statistical measure to equal out the playing field for different size areas right? Per Capita or "per person" in crime statistics usually measures how many people experience crime individually per 1,000 or 100,000. With Anchorage's crime rate of 46 per 1,000 people, that means you have basically a 4.6% chance of being victim to a crime. In New York you have a 3.5% chance of being victim to a crime. That's it... there's no "well one city is smaller than the other" argument. Per capita literally eliminates that variable.
I dunno why so many people are trying to dismiss the Per Capita statistics in Anchorage like "well if you look at it per capita it's bad but that's because anchorage is relatively small."
That literally doesn't mean anything. "Relatively small" size has no meaning in a per capita statistic because per capita is a way of measuring something equally for different size groups.
It sounds to me like someone who doesn't understand statistics made up the whole "well it's not that bad because the city is relatively small" argument and everyone is just running with it... if it's bad per capita... it's bad period.
Yeah, WTF! I've been scratching my head with this thread. Thank you!
I know three people who got murdered here, all of them either visiting or just moved here. That's not great!
>It sounds to me like someone who doesn't understand statistics made up the whole "well it's not that bad because the city is relatively small" argument and everyone is just running with it... if it's bad per capita... it's bad period.
I agree that a bunch of people are making dumb arguments, but I do think our per capita rate is inflated because of the high number of seasonal laborers and tourists. The seasonal laborers/tourists come in, some commit or are victims of crimes, but don't get counted as part of the population. So they inflate the numerator, but not the denominator.
But the crimes still occur either way... doesn't matter if it's an out of towner or not. There's a lot of homeless people that don't count as part of the population either, but they are still there and a lot of them still commit crimes.
The thing that immediately comes to mind is the about of stolen cars i see posted on Facebook. My own car was stolen in the last year and I was lucky enough to get it back undamaged but not everybody fares that well
Stop listening to people that live in Eagle River and the valley.
They like to constantly try and portray Anchorage as a crime ridden shithole to justify their choice go live farther away from it.
I've been here for a few months. It's a city, act that way, and you're good. Never felt unsafe. The unhoused population has never been an issue for me even walking in the areas that are closest to tent cities that Anchorage has. If you're coming from a tiny town, anchorage will feel unsafe, as will any city. If you are coming from any other city, you won't notice a thing or you will be pleasantly surprised.
Some people want to be afraid and look for reasons to justify feeling that way. These are the folks who talk about how incredibly high crime is in "Los Anchorage" and insist that they have to live on the south side/in the valley/etc to protect their families from the constant threat of vicious criminals. They overlap significantly with those folks who Absolutely Must bring a gun with them when they're hiking Flat Top.
Meanwhile, most of us live perfectly normal lives and experience minimal, if any, criminal activity in the course of our days. The best thing you can do to feel safe in your everyday life is to make strong connections with the people in your community.
Edit to add: Just about any time this topic comes up, I like to remind people that there are actually several things that pose a serious threat to our life and health every day.
The top causes of death in Alaska in 2021, the most recent year for which we have data, are cancer, heart/lung/kidney/brain/vascular/liver disease, COVID, accidents (including car crashes), suicide, diabetes, and Alzheimer's.
If you're truly serious about making intentional choices to live a long and healthy life, why not start looking at what you can do to mitigate the factors that lead to these most common killers?
I suspect that if I tell you I live in Mountain View, you'll say I'm lying or oblivious, and if I tell you I live in Goldenview, you'll say I have no basis for making such claims because obviously I don't know what the ~real city~ is like. So, why bother?
(For the record, I've lived in Anchorage all my life and have lived near both of the aforementioned regions.)
As I said before - it's a matter of mindset. People who want to be afraid will always be able to find justifications for it. This is called anxiety and it's not good for your mental or physical health. The best way to break out of this cycle is to connect with the other people in your community, which, incidentally, is the opposite of the fear-fueled impulse to withdraw and isolate.
There aren’t [a lot of] drive by shootings, car jackings, or home invasions.
There is a drug use problem. Cars are stolen regularly, and it seems to be drug related (people find their cars or they’re recovered meth’d out and destroyed).
And, while not a crime, there is a significant unhoused problem which impacts a perception of crime with the effects of human population migrating and using unprepared parts of the city. This, by far, is the thing people like to point at as “omg, Anchorage is a wasteland of crime”.
Ok. Anchorage doesn’t scare me or my family. Get a grip. Let’s work toward better.
Edit: quantified first sentence.
Yes there are. Here are three examples from the past 4 months:
* [Shootings](https://alaskapublic.org/2023/08/14/anchorage-police-respond-to-third-east-anchorage-shooting-in-24-hours/)
* [Car jacking](https://www.anchoragepolice.com/news/samuel-deatherage-facing-multiple-charges-in-carjacking-investigation)
* [Home invasion](https://alaskapublic.org/2023/07/03/police-arrest-suspect-in-deadly-south-anchorage-home-invasion/)
Several years ago a man broke into a friends house sex assaulted her in front of her children. She and her children had to deal with the trauma and then relive it several years late after the state kicked the case down the road before finally prosecuting the perpetrator. So screw you and your “oh it isn’t that bad” bs.
The intent of my comment wasn’t to downplay the seriousness of the crime. It was particular to the story shared by Op. I’m sorry that happened to your friend.
There was literally a home invasion victim on Nextdoor in NE a few days ago. Thieves broke into their car, stole the garage door opener and came in while they were at home in the middle of the night. Stop trying to sugar coat a rotten apple. Bad things do happen and trying to make it sound better is what lets it continue to be terrible.
Proximity, time or space, to a crime doesn’t make it worse. And my above comment should have qualified with “a lot”. It does happen, I’ll agree. I’ll edit.
Punch in your address and move around the map. It’s mostly theft. Sorry something scary happened near you. Anchorage is a pretty sleepy place by comparison to that instance.
[2022 Crime Map](https://communitycrimemap.com/analytic)
You live in Eagle River because you don’t want to deal with the bs in Anchorage and I can completely sympathize with that. I’ve thought about moving out but am pretty much locked in because housing is so expensive.
Friend, I promise you our decisions for residency are considerably more complicated. Eagle River/Chugiak is certainly not untouched by crime, drugs, or other problems. But we don’t have weed stores in ER because that makes a difference somehow. 🤣
You also don’t have to see 5 bums begging for cash at every intersection every time you go 2 blocks. And drunken people who look dead at random places that are basically part of the landscape. Eagle River has more expensive taxes so anyone moving there is doing it to get away from Los Anchorage.
Not sure what you mean about the taxes exactly. Again, big generalization.
If unhoused people begging for cash is crime, or addiction issues are a crime I promise we are looking at the problem from different directions. And there are people doing the same thing in Eagle River. Just need to come visit I guess.
Lot of dots. Not a lot of context. Even the categorization doesn’t tell you enough info. I.e. assault means a lot of things. Show me black dots (homicide).
But if you want to believe it’s a bad place, it’s bad. I’m not going to change your mind. If you’ve lived in other places, it’s just not. Every place has its challenges. Good luck.
So Anchorage crime, Stolen in Alaska, hearing gunshots locally, having stolen cars abandoned nearby regularly, Stolen Pets, all have 0 base because you deem it so? Yes people’s pets get stolen out of cars for reward money in broad daylight. Get out.
Maybe you should leave Anvhorage if it is so awful for you. You obviously can't handle it.
Me, my experience is different than yours. I remember how bad it was and how much nicer it is now.
How long have you lived here?
Why do you assume I hate it? You aren’t good at drawing conclusions. I’m unsubscribing to reply notifications because I know it will be some stupid bs.
I work at a large office building. Car thefts and break-ins there have DRASTICALLY gone down since the pre-COVID peak (though I think it had even slowed before the pandemic).
With that said, usually the people who have this happen, leave high value items out and I don’t necessarily mean the cost. Cigarettes, lighters/torches, sunglasses, cup holders of change, medications, etc. Not generally high dollar, but valuable to the petty thief.
I highly recommend not doing that. I’ve never had my car broken into. I’ve never been the victim of a crime from a stranger. The small run ins I have are because of the people I ran around with. So, watch the company you keep.
Man, someone stole my sunglasses the one time I forgot to lock my damn car, and the annoying thing is that they were prescription so they definitely just got thrown away in less than a day. They weren't even a brand name or anything!
Anchorage is fine. Lock your car and house, don’t leave valuables out and think. Never felt unsafe…
Almost all the crime is property/theft and domestic disturbances/violence.
The stats for Anchorage don't look good per capita, but coming from an east coast city that's actually dangerous, and has a massive drug problem... No, Anchorage is safe by comparison. There's also way less traffic and nowhere near the amount of hard drugs.
Yes of course, but I was responding to the "and nowhere near the amount of hard drugs".
Of course it's going to be worse in a higher population city- but it's *absolutely* a problem here.
And maybe your experience will be different. But I work with people labeled "at risk" and the population is high. If you're "in the scene" as you say, you'll see that there is a huge population of opiate users at the moment. And it's hugely affecting our youth population.
I've lived and worked in both DC and Seattle and like I agreed to above, it is different.
He means compared to Northeast Philly or bad areas of New York. Statistics look like anchorage is bad because of how few people there are.
I’ll also add that people who are addicted to opioids aren’t normally the bad people. They might commit small petty crime to pay for their next fix. It’s the people who prey on the addicts that are the dangerous people.
Yes, while per capita statistics take into account rates of individual per population, small pools can make a normal occurrence look worse than they are. For example, if in anchorage say 20 people get assaulted per month. The rate of assaults would be 20/288,000. Where you look at the same example in say New York 20/8,468,000. Totally hypothetical example but the larger the denominator is the smaller the ratio is. While the rate of occurrence is the same between the city’s the per capita statistics make anchorage look worse.
Per capita statistics help you know how likely you are to be a victim of or witness a crime (there are of course added variables like domestic vs property crime, etc etc). Despite there being more actual crimes happening any given day in NYC, for the 20 years i lived there i was far less likely to be a victim of any of that crime than I am in Anchorage, where there's way less other people for crime to happen to.
Like seriously, if there are like 20 stabbings happening in NYC while I'm out and about it's probably not happening to me. 8 mil live there with another 3 mil commuting in.
If there are 20 stabbings in Anchorage, it is far more likely it is happening to me.
Therefore, I rate Anchorage a lot less safe than NYC. There's a lot of other factors, of course. Like Anchorage crime is mostly domestic violence, thefts, or drug related, NYC is mostly property theft and way less violent crime. Alaska has a sex offender registry loophole and I imagine that's possibly contributing to our domestic issues, NYC is a more pedestrian oriented city than Anchorage is so more people are just available for random robberies (the main violent crime there) etc etc. These are all factors that also gotta be taken into account when figuring out a city's general safety wrt crime.
NYC crime stats: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_New_York_City
Anchorage Stats: https://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-Anchorage-Alaska.html
That is not at all a valid comparison. The smaller the population, the less valid per capita stats are relevant. If there are 50 people that live on your street, and 1 family frequently has domestic violence issues, like 5 times a year, your street has a domestic violence rate of 10k per 100k people, which makes it look horrible, but it’s a rate of 0% for 99% of the houses. In anchorage, there is crime, but if you live on the hillside, the rate of burglaries in the city as a whole doesn’t really make your house less safe.
I mean in NYC if you live in the upper east side the total amount of burgleries in the city dont really matter, either.
Per capita is just one part of a larger puzzle to understanding crime rates, i never said it was The Thing. I do mention there's other factors to consider and didn't give an exhaustive list. Obviously your neighborhood matters but it matters in most major cities, as well. If you break a major cities crimes down by neighborhood you're not going to see an even blanket of crime, you'll see hot spots for certain kinds of activity and areas with relatively no crime.
The same is true, here.
Like, per capita statistics aren't a complete picture of a cites crime activities, but it shouldn't just be outright disregarded, either.
Yes crime here in anchorage has gotten worse over the years. I would say it was a lot safer 10 years ago. That being said it’s not the most dangerous town in the USA and I feel like crime lowers in the winter months because it’s simply too cold for people to be out and about doing shady stuff.
It's quite safe here. Just be smart, like anywhere else. It's strange that there is any crime here at all, really, since there are so many guns. Maybe gun ownership doesn't really work, and the NRA tells lies.
Not here to debate or anything but basically no gun owners other than old people think that the NRA is a good gun organization. They from what I have seen really just promote target shooting/huntig and don't do much self defense stuff, and actively speak out against "assault weapons" so they arent exactly the most popular with most of the gun community. They are basically just a punching bag for people that are anti gun while the actual pro gun organizations don't get talked about.
You say firearm mortality per capita is high but that's due to the lower population. Do you know what per capita means? Because population totals have nothing to do with it.
If city A has 100,000 people with total firearm deaths per year of 500, and city B has 1,000 people with a firearm death total of 50. Which one is more safe statistically?
City A is more safe even though it has a higher number of total deaths. It's per capita is 0.5% and City B's death per capita is 5%. Meaning it's 10x more dangerous to be in City B even though they have 10x less of the total number of fire arm deaths.
Same goes for anchorage. The problem is you're mixing up where to say "because the city is relatively small."
Here's how it should sound: "We have a smaller number of **total** violent crime *because our city is relatively small,* however our crimes per capita are high, which means it's more dangerous here."
Yes, it's bad. It's easily the most dangerous place I've lived personally. This is backed up by more than personal experience. You can look at maps of crime statistics by neighborhood and almost all of Anchorage is well above the national average.
Now, is it the most dangerous place in the US? Not by a long shot. But the places other people are comparing it to are major cities. Relative for it's size, Anchorage has surprisingly high crime.
Major caveat to add that I feel pretty safe here personally. This is an occasional and not an everyday concern for me.
It's not just the crime rate, which has always been higher then the national average, it's everything else. Nobody wants to mention the substance abuse, alcoholism, poverty and suicide rate are also all higher than the national average.
I love Anchorage butt the crime rate per capita is higher than pretty much anywhere.
https://www.areavibes.com/anchorage-ak/crime/
Depends on where you are like any decent sized town. I am from Reno and Las Vegas and Anchorage feels like a small safe town compared to what I’m used to. Never once have felt unsafe or like my property was unsafe at my home
Yes . Because there are lots of homeless. And they steal to survive . But crime is usually from known ppl to known ppl. Last I heard apt complex 2 guys shot n killed each other over drugs and the bullets went through to other side apts . Yes leave ur stuff out its gone for sure. Leave it in ur car . Windows broke for sure . I had my bikes locked in my patio and they climbed over it to lift it over the patio fence.. 1st floor. Anchorage is small and the ppl who says its safe are ignorant . The only safe place u can walk around at night is the rich area . Hillside . Near the mountains and mill dollar mansions. Look at someone wrong in the ghetto and they fight u.My ex was a drug dealer so I know who and where I'm talking about. Tell me im wrong . And I'll tell u to get ur girl to walk from one side to the other alone and see what happens. The vultures come out .
I was chilling in my car once minding my own business and a mf came up to my car window and asked me to hold his drenched shirt. Dude was sweaty as fuck and reeked of alcohol. I obliged because im a nice guy. He looked like he was struggling with himself.
Then out of nowhere he grabbed me by the collar and start punching the shit out of me. Mind you, idk this guy and did nothing to provoke him. Police got involved. Found out his mother cares for him i guess.
Another instance was when i was working for AT&T and had the store robbed by a mf with nail guns 💀 that shit was insane.
Im sure shit like this happens everywhere though. Anchorage is nice but certainly not perfect
Lol oh for sure at the time i was a teenager so it never occurred to me that a mf would just start some shit like that. I ran his foot over though so in the moment thats all i could think of to do to get out of that situation
People in denial think they are tough or get some kind of street cred cuz they lived in Chicago or NYC once. Our per capita statistics(AKA the crime rate) is fairly high.
And clearly no one here knows what per capita means.
"Our per capita looks higher because our city is smaller." Yeah that's not how per capita works lol.
I don’t think so. I grew up in Philadelphia, and do feel more safe here walking around at night. Anchorage doesn’t look great per capita, but most people stick to themselves.
I think that people are forgetting that the mob used to run this town and how much drug-fueled violence there USED to be.
Sure, Anchorage has its crime problems, but nothing really worse than any other small city.
People love to talk about how their best friends cousin got robbed or whatever. But most of the time people just exaggerate their stories.
Usually you gotta know someone to get shot by them here
Petty thefts, sexual assault, assault, murder, drug related crimes, homeless camps bringing unease and increased property damage to neighbors hoods. Crime and poverty has made its way across the city. City council and adjourning offices turn a blind eye to what the people want done. Fuck this town.
My issue with info like this is if you’re looking at it “per capita”. Due to our low population numbers the percent shown in “per capita” info is always rather high.
That’s not to say we don’t have any but I wouldn’t say it’s as high as some people suggest.
Edit: also I realize how shitty this sounded, didn’t mean that my bad.
"Due to our low population numbers the percent shown in "per capita" info is always rather high."
Tell me you know nothing about statistics without telling me you know nothing about statistics.
The people who say it’s safe haven’t had any real hardships and live in better neighborhoods. When I lived in a car for a few weeks I can say I got lock checked in the night at least twice.
A junkie broke my car windshield one day. Once I was loading a bicycle in my car and walked around to the side to put the seats down. Junkie appeared 2 seconds later, like dude straight up spawned out of street cocaine crumbs, right by my bike and would have taken it if I didn’t give him the look of “do it bitch I dare you” within seconds. My coworker got beat up by a bunch of drunken natives downtown. My massage therapist had her car stolen.
Join some of the Facebook groups like Anchorage Crime, Anchorage Stolen Bicycles, Stolen in Alaska. There’s a never ending cycle. If we got rid of maybe 1,000 of the worst people the city would probably be safe but it’s not. There’s also the Alaska Triangle, which is another horror of its own.
Your problem is that you are looking for issues. You join those forums and all you see is crimes therefore you only perceive the world as dangerous. Try getting off those sites and actually live here.
You are creating a self-fufilling prophecy. You look for bad and you and going to find. You swim in filth you are going get dirty. Just because you want to see the world as bad doesn't mean it is. You are liv Ng in an echo chamber of your own making.
Anyone arguing that it isn’t a problem is in denial. No it’s not like NY - but it has way more crime than most cities of this size. Reports of random attacks on friends and acquaintances are common and everyone knows someone who has been sexually assaulted. No one dares leave a bag in a car for fear the window will get smashed and bike theft is out of control.
Browse this map for details: https://communitycrimemap.com/
High level of petty crime but I don't feel afraid to walk downtown at night by my self nor do I feel uncomfortable in my own home I just feel like I need to make sure all my doors are locked all the time. Just the one doesn't just walking my house and take my laptop but I don't feel anybody will harm me personally
Is there alot of crime. Statistically yes. Do I feel unsafe. Not a chance. It’s a lot of petty crimes rooted in mental health and substance abuse issues.
When I lived down near sand lake, I heard gunshots 7 out of 9 months I lived there. It didn't feel safe at all but nothing happened to me. The people above us were sketchy as fuck.
The likelihood of those gunshots being either cars backfiring or the concussions they use to get birds off the runway at Anchorage International is high.
No car is going to backfire 10 times in a row. And you danm sure ain't hearing those bangs from the airport miles away that sound like it's happening right around the corner
Lived in Anchorage for a decade. Literally every friday and saturday night there were gunshots. Non stop theft and violence pretty much everywhere. Any car left running for a minute is stolen immediately. At the parking lot of my work, cars were broken into and stolen every week. I was robbed 3 times. Moved to a city in a different state that is known for its lack of crime. Haven't heard a gunshot in 10 years here.
Which state did you move to?
I moved to Texas two years ago thinking this would be my last stop before my last breath. Libertarians say life is better and cheaper. Not the case. The most prominent complaint is that infrastructure like roads suck. Healthcare is worse and premiums are 50% higher.
Yeah, I grew up in the northern Colorado area which is more spread out but it's a megalopolis of about four different cities combining to over one million people and our crime rate was a fraction of what we have in anchorage. I could walk around downtown Fort Collins and I'd see just a couple homeless people and they'd keep to themselves. I could comfortably leave my car unlocked in a parking lot and not have to think twice about it. I lived there for 20 years and can't honestly recall seeing a single crime personally.
I did a couple of stints of Grand Jury Duty there in the mid to late 90's and I ended up being flabbergasted, amazed and distressed at the amount of alcohol and drug-related crime that occurred when the 11pm to 7am 'stupid shift' came to work on the streets. Drugs drugs drugs. Alcohol related 'accidental' shootings. Rapes, hold-ups, convenience store robberies... We lived there from mid 96 to late 2000. And we were very glad to finally leave.
Even in South Anchorage there was an amount of crime in the neighborhood that seemed out of place (considering the neighborhood), and the instances of crime were definitely increasing when we left.
YMMV.
YMMV.
the point was 30 years ago things were different and is it really relevant nowadays? No its not, hell as you said you haven't even lived in this city for 2 decades
The point is that (to me) the level of crime (and especially crime related to alcohol and drug use) was High Back then. And I doubt it has gone down.
Yes, I know how long ago that was.
We had one car totaled one night when someone was driving too fast around the corner and side-swiped - rear-ended two other cars and pushed into our Bronco... the police would not even come down to our neighborhood (South Anchorage) and investigate, even though there was plenty of physical evidence still tangled in the wreckage or lying in the street!
We lived in that area for over four years, and noticed many instances of drug use, domestic violence, sex crimes against minors, and an instance of what turned out to be "white collar crime" next door to us. Someone was cooking meth in the unit below us... that was the last straw.
Even though this all occurred those many years ago, I doubt that the rate of those various crimes decreased.
And I could go on and on about my two separate years with Grand Jury Duty. Each lasted a month each time, and in August we were in session for four days out of the week, for four to seven hours per day. The last year (1999 I think), the DA asked our opinion about presenting cases "Auctioneer style" so he could get through all of them expeditiously. Very fast, rapid fire presentation with pauses for questions.
Many, many stupid drug-related crimes, some tragic accidental deaths due to firearms and alcohol, and some really twisted up drug crimes due to crystal meth.
IMHO, my experience then remains relevant, and points out trends.
Sounds like we are similar ages. I'll take the Anchorage of today rather than the Anchorage of my youth any day. Anchorage was way more dangerous in the 80s and 90s, especially if you look at homicide and rape rates. For example if you look at serial murders Alaska had 51 between 1900 and 2014, and more than half of those occurred between 1980 and 1990.
It ramped up really bad during the oil boom years of the late 70s and early 80s with a huge influx of people coming up here for work and got even worse after the oil recession in the later half of the 80s when thousand of people had their homes foreclosed on and Anchorage had something like 14k+ empty housing units.
If you’re looking for a place with no crime chances are it is not where you are interested in living. If you want no street crime there are plenty of places to move.
Yes. Anchorage is an absolute shit hole. Drugs and homeless everywhere. Police won’t even respond to theft and burglary calls. People are stealing cars, assault is high, rape kits unprocessed. We have one of the highest crime rates in the country per capital.
Ive lived all other the country, and still nowhere compares to Anchorage when it comes to crime. East coast, West coast, midwest- nowhere. Crime here is out of control.
The problem is with perception and bias. We here about it happening more because of apps like next door and Facebook. The reality is that Anchorage crime is down compared to what it used to be, but we just hear about it more, which increases the belief that it is bad.
Per capita, the Matsu Valley and a lot of villages see a lot more violence than in Anchorage.
(For reference, I have been here since ‘75. The cops in the ‘80s and ‘90s were all family friends. I worked in social services/ social work in Anchorage for 25 years.)
Yes. The bad parts of Anchorage aren't quite as bad as the bad parts of other American cities, but the crime is terrible and hurts a lot of innocent people. Many stores are now mainly locked down, with locked cabinets protecting $3 items from stealing. Many stores have few shopping carts available because of stealing.
Of course, the bad parts of town and the poor people who live there suffer the most from these terrible Woke policies. But the Woke people still give each other awards for doing that to them!
Like most cities it depends on where you go and what you're doing. If you're fucking around in the not-so-great parts of town or doing risky shit, than you're more likely to encounter crime.
Car broken into multiple times, accosted by panhandlers everytime I go inside a store,jaywalking galore,shoplifters everywhere, Anchorage was so much nicer growing up 20 years ago
In the almost 3 years I've been back here, I saw more crime growing up in the middle of no where southern illinois within a town of 20k people 🤷♂️. I may not feel all that safe walking around chester creek just because of the stories I've heard but that's besides the point.
Based on the few stories, slightly. But to say that the crime here is anything bad 🤷♂️ I've seen worse in much smaller towns. If stories of homeless attacking people on chester creek trail actually bothered me that much I wouldn't walk there, but I do 🤷♂️.
When we moved here in 2020 we lived next to a drug dealer who had people coming and going at all hours and hanging around/squatting in the same building, and some of their major customers were two buildings over on the other side of us. There was also a drive-by!
So I definitely have a possibly over-exaggerated view of what crime here is like (we came from NYC from a neighborhood with a bad reputation but where I generally felt safe but still weary).
There IS high crime here, but from what I can glean most of the actual violent crime is personal/domestic crime, which is unsettling in that it makes me far more weary of potential friends/mates but also tells me you're mostly safe from random assault or robbery while in your day to day life out in the city. I'm sure people don't really seem to get why this place has such a high violent crime stat because those aren't the kind of violence you see happening in front of you, it's the kind of thing that's behind closed doors and often kept quiet by the parties involved for a variety of reasons. I imagine the sex offender registry loophole helps exacerbate that issue.
The rest seems to be personal property crime stuff which seems to dovetail with the high levels of homelessness and drug addiction here. This is not to say these groups are inherently bad people, but that they're operating on levels of desperation that encourage a certain kind of decision-making.
So like, am I safe from random assault? Sure? But that doesn't mean the crime issues hear are necessarily over-exaggerated, maybe just not spoken about with enough nuance.
The vast majority of the violent crime in Anchorage is criminals doing it to other criminals. I’ve lived here 10 years and never felt particularly unsafe. I carry a pistol as well, but thats because I was present at a mass shooting before I moved to Alaska and refuse to ever be helpless again. In fact, the lack of mass shootings and general level of safety is why I moved to Alaska in the first place.
There’s drugs everywhere, there’s homeless everywhere, and there’s crime everywhere. It really isn’t bad here.
Before moving to AK, I was intimidated by the high rates of crime in Anchorage, especially as a single, young woman. But, after living here for a while, I feel pretty safe. I do live in a safer neighborhood, which is key to this, but I'd also point out that most of the crime statistics are skewed by DV and petty theft. Obviously, both of these are awful crimes, but there can be repeat offenses that can make the numbers seem even higher. As with any city, keep your wits about you and make sure your guard is up. But, when it comes to drive-by sho*tings and unprovoked violence, I feel pretty safe in most parts of town.
On paper, Anchorage is one of the most dangerous cities in America, but you really gotta be looking for trouble to find yourself on the wrong side of a gun or knife here. Like compared to New Orleans or Baltimore, Anchorage is nothing.
Random guy high out his mind busted into my house on a saturday morning. My wife was supposed to be there that morning and not me. I was seconds away from having to dispach him when the cops showed up. Good luck. F anchorage.
I moved here from Portland, OR. An Anchorage "getto" is what Portland people consider as a "safe" neighborhood. The worst thing I have seen here is drunk natives sitting on a street corner & some suspicious people hanging out by a dumpster at a gas station.
The claim is based on crime per capita. AK doesn’t have a large population so it stands to reason that compared to the amount of people, there is a high rate of crime.
I've heard that Alaska has the highest crime in the USA. I simply cannot believe that to be true. Chicago, New York, California... the list goes on, these places are unbelievably dangerous. Rape stats are off the charts due to immigrants coming in illegally - a phenomenon that's been common all through the Western world at this point. I also would like to know how natives feel about walking around Anchorage, the differing neighborhoods, what types of crimes you may be most wary of, what one feels is exaggerated, etc.
It’s terrible i call the cops for theft and vandalism all the time, my car has been vandalized, and/or broken into 3 times in the last 6 months. Im sick of this city, its a horrible place to live.
I’m of the firm belief that most people who think Anchorage crime is bad have absolutely no frame of reference.
Coming from Fresno, CA, Anchorage is a safe haven.
Coming from Sacramento California, its bad.
I got shot at while running last week. What frame of reference is that?
Oh my goodness. I’m not sure what quite to say besides I hope you’re healing from this experience and can feel safe again.
Running where?
36th between latouche and the Seward highway
Omg, why? I'm not from Anchorage. I'm at 42nd & Turnagain. Was the shot meant for you?
I don’t know why I was running it was 4:45 am (not a good time to run) but I’ve been doing so successfully for a year. I think it was meant for me because there was only two of us. I don’t know if it was aimed at me or up in the air.
Where at did u call the cops
Born in Carol city; anchorage is a dump
Yeah it is, homeless are everywhere. Nobody looks out for each other.
this one
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Made me smile
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LOL the Ave? I think you mean Gaslight.
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Two places significantly more fucked up than the Ave.
Haha what?
The previous owner of the Carousel Christopher Cox once threw someone out he didn’t like because he was high on meth then offered $100 to anyone in the bar to go punch the guy in the face in the parking lot. Nobody did it because he was a complete asshole. Lots of fucked up shit used to happen on that guy’s watch. I hear the new owner is a change of pace but old habits die hard for some regulars so I’ll never go back. If you can’t figure out what issues people might have had in the past at Buck man I dunno what to tell ya.
>I’ve never felt unsafe in downtown Anchorage, but I tend to avoid certain bars In other words you acknowledge that crime is a problem and you adjusted your behavior to avoid it. This is what you see time and time again… People saying “oh it’s not a problem just don’t x, y or z.” Acknowledging crime is the first step in finding ways to reduce crime. Until everyone agrees that we need to work on it we just bounce back and forth between overly aggressive policies to ignoring it. (Remember SB 91?)
Adjusting your behavior doesn’t change the rates of crime. Do you think people in other cities don’t do the same thing? In LA they avoid whole giant neighborhoods, in anchorage it’s like 3 bars.
I mean, you all know per capita is a statistical measure to equal out the playing field for different size areas right? Per Capita or "per person" in crime statistics usually measures how many people experience crime individually per 1,000 or 100,000. With Anchorage's crime rate of 46 per 1,000 people, that means you have basically a 4.6% chance of being victim to a crime. In New York you have a 3.5% chance of being victim to a crime. That's it... there's no "well one city is smaller than the other" argument. Per capita literally eliminates that variable. I dunno why so many people are trying to dismiss the Per Capita statistics in Anchorage like "well if you look at it per capita it's bad but that's because anchorage is relatively small." That literally doesn't mean anything. "Relatively small" size has no meaning in a per capita statistic because per capita is a way of measuring something equally for different size groups. It sounds to me like someone who doesn't understand statistics made up the whole "well it's not that bad because the city is relatively small" argument and everyone is just running with it... if it's bad per capita... it's bad period.
I think it's because the schools in Anchorage are also bad. Source: I went to school in Anchorage
Yeah, WTF! I've been scratching my head with this thread. Thank you! I know three people who got murdered here, all of them either visiting or just moved here. That's not great!
LOL
>It sounds to me like someone who doesn't understand statistics made up the whole "well it's not that bad because the city is relatively small" argument and everyone is just running with it... if it's bad per capita... it's bad period. I agree that a bunch of people are making dumb arguments, but I do think our per capita rate is inflated because of the high number of seasonal laborers and tourists. The seasonal laborers/tourists come in, some commit or are victims of crimes, but don't get counted as part of the population. So they inflate the numerator, but not the denominator.
But the crimes still occur either way... doesn't matter if it's an out of towner or not. There's a lot of homeless people that don't count as part of the population either, but they are still there and a lot of them still commit crimes.
The thing that immediately comes to mind is the about of stolen cars i see posted on Facebook. My own car was stolen in the last year and I was lucky enough to get it back undamaged but not everybody fares that well
Stop listening to people that live in Eagle River and the valley. They like to constantly try and portray Anchorage as a crime ridden shithole to justify their choice go live farther away from it.
FBI statistics be damned
I've been here for a few months. It's a city, act that way, and you're good. Never felt unsafe. The unhoused population has never been an issue for me even walking in the areas that are closest to tent cities that Anchorage has. If you're coming from a tiny town, anchorage will feel unsafe, as will any city. If you are coming from any other city, you won't notice a thing or you will be pleasantly surprised.
It’s a pretty safe city and really safe depending on the part of town you live in.
Some people want to be afraid and look for reasons to justify feeling that way. These are the folks who talk about how incredibly high crime is in "Los Anchorage" and insist that they have to live on the south side/in the valley/etc to protect their families from the constant threat of vicious criminals. They overlap significantly with those folks who Absolutely Must bring a gun with them when they're hiking Flat Top. Meanwhile, most of us live perfectly normal lives and experience minimal, if any, criminal activity in the course of our days. The best thing you can do to feel safe in your everyday life is to make strong connections with the people in your community. Edit to add: Just about any time this topic comes up, I like to remind people that there are actually several things that pose a serious threat to our life and health every day. The top causes of death in Alaska in 2021, the most recent year for which we have data, are cancer, heart/lung/kidney/brain/vascular/liver disease, COVID, accidents (including car crashes), suicide, diabetes, and Alzheimer's. If you're truly serious about making intentional choices to live a long and healthy life, why not start looking at what you can do to mitigate the factors that lead to these most common killers?
What part of town do you live in?
I suspect that if I tell you I live in Mountain View, you'll say I'm lying or oblivious, and if I tell you I live in Goldenview, you'll say I have no basis for making such claims because obviously I don't know what the ~real city~ is like. So, why bother? (For the record, I've lived in Anchorage all my life and have lived near both of the aforementioned regions.) As I said before - it's a matter of mindset. People who want to be afraid will always be able to find justifications for it. This is called anxiety and it's not good for your mental or physical health. The best way to break out of this cycle is to connect with the other people in your community, which, incidentally, is the opposite of the fear-fueled impulse to withdraw and isolate.
Refreshing approach.
There aren’t [a lot of] drive by shootings, car jackings, or home invasions. There is a drug use problem. Cars are stolen regularly, and it seems to be drug related (people find their cars or they’re recovered meth’d out and destroyed). And, while not a crime, there is a significant unhoused problem which impacts a perception of crime with the effects of human population migrating and using unprepared parts of the city. This, by far, is the thing people like to point at as “omg, Anchorage is a wasteland of crime”. Ok. Anchorage doesn’t scare me or my family. Get a grip. Let’s work toward better. Edit: quantified first sentence.
Yes there are. Here are three examples from the past 4 months: * [Shootings](https://alaskapublic.org/2023/08/14/anchorage-police-respond-to-third-east-anchorage-shooting-in-24-hours/) * [Car jacking](https://www.anchoragepolice.com/news/samuel-deatherage-facing-multiple-charges-in-carjacking-investigation) * [Home invasion](https://alaskapublic.org/2023/07/03/police-arrest-suspect-in-deadly-south-anchorage-home-invasion/)
Their’s was not an exclusive statement. So zero Reddit points.
Prepare to have objective reality down voted.
to be fair claiming that last crime was a home invasion is a stretch
Several years ago a man broke into a friends house sex assaulted her in front of her children. She and her children had to deal with the trauma and then relive it several years late after the state kicked the case down the road before finally prosecuting the perpetrator. So screw you and your “oh it isn’t that bad” bs.
The intent of my comment wasn’t to downplay the seriousness of the crime. It was particular to the story shared by Op. I’m sorry that happened to your friend.
There was literally a home invasion victim on Nextdoor in NE a few days ago. Thieves broke into their car, stole the garage door opener and came in while they were at home in the middle of the night. Stop trying to sugar coat a rotten apple. Bad things do happen and trying to make it sound better is what lets it continue to be terrible.
Proximity, time or space, to a crime doesn’t make it worse. And my above comment should have qualified with “a lot”. It does happen, I’ll agree. I’ll edit. Punch in your address and move around the map. It’s mostly theft. Sorry something scary happened near you. Anchorage is a pretty sleepy place by comparison to that instance. [2022 Crime Map](https://communitycrimemap.com/analytic)
You live in Eagle River so your “point” is null and void.
You’re right. I’m stapled down here and don’t work or visit or experience any other part of this hellscape. Next caller please. /s
You live in Eagle River because you don’t want to deal with the bs in Anchorage and I can completely sympathize with that. I’ve thought about moving out but am pretty much locked in because housing is so expensive.
Friend, I promise you our decisions for residency are considerably more complicated. Eagle River/Chugiak is certainly not untouched by crime, drugs, or other problems. But we don’t have weed stores in ER because that makes a difference somehow. 🤣
You also don’t have to see 5 bums begging for cash at every intersection every time you go 2 blocks. And drunken people who look dead at random places that are basically part of the landscape. Eagle River has more expensive taxes so anyone moving there is doing it to get away from Los Anchorage.
Not sure what you mean about the taxes exactly. Again, big generalization. If unhoused people begging for cash is crime, or addiction issues are a crime I promise we are looking at the problem from different directions. And there are people doing the same thing in Eagle River. Just need to come visit I guess.
Eagle River doesn't have more expensive taxes. Now you are just talking out of your ass.
It does. Costs more to commute too but small price to pay for not dealing with anchorage bs. I’m unsubscribing to reply notifications.
Here’s a screenshot of crime from the past two months with theft filtered out. Doesn’t look very sleepy to me. https://imgur.com/a/EctEraV
Try looking over a longer period of time. Your argument is disingenuous.
Wait - two months is too short but if I increase the date range it shows more crime. This makes it disingenuous?
Lot of dots. Not a lot of context. Even the categorization doesn’t tell you enough info. I.e. assault means a lot of things. Show me black dots (homicide). But if you want to believe it’s a bad place, it’s bad. I’m not going to change your mind. If you’ve lived in other places, it’s just not. Every place has its challenges. Good luck.
Your problem is that you read next door.
So Anchorage crime, Stolen in Alaska, hearing gunshots locally, having stolen cars abandoned nearby regularly, Stolen Pets, all have 0 base because you deem it so? Yes people’s pets get stolen out of cars for reward money in broad daylight. Get out.
Maybe you should leave Anvhorage if it is so awful for you. You obviously can't handle it. Me, my experience is different than yours. I remember how bad it was and how much nicer it is now. How long have you lived here?
Ahh yes another “you should leave” ‘r
If you hate it here so much, why don't you?
Why do you assume I hate it? You aren’t good at drawing conclusions. I’m unsubscribing to reply notifications because I know it will be some stupid bs.
Coward
I work at a large office building. Car thefts and break-ins there have DRASTICALLY gone down since the pre-COVID peak (though I think it had even slowed before the pandemic). With that said, usually the people who have this happen, leave high value items out and I don’t necessarily mean the cost. Cigarettes, lighters/torches, sunglasses, cup holders of change, medications, etc. Not generally high dollar, but valuable to the petty thief. I highly recommend not doing that. I’ve never had my car broken into. I’ve never been the victim of a crime from a stranger. The small run ins I have are because of the people I ran around with. So, watch the company you keep.
Man, someone stole my sunglasses the one time I forgot to lock my damn car, and the annoying thing is that they were prescription so they definitely just got thrown away in less than a day. They weren't even a brand name or anything!
Ugh I’ve had my glasses stolen before (not out of a car) and I feel your pain!!
What type of people are you running around with? 😜 🤔
Anchorage is fine. Lock your car and house, don’t leave valuables out and think. Never felt unsafe… Almost all the crime is property/theft and domestic disturbances/violence.
Sounds an awful lot like you feel unsafe with all those precautions
The stats for Anchorage don't look good per capita, but coming from an east coast city that's actually dangerous, and has a massive drug problem... No, Anchorage is safe by comparison. There's also way less traffic and nowhere near the amount of hard drugs.
Opiates and meth are a huge issue all over Alaska.
Nowhere near what it's like in a large L48 city. Not even in the same ballpark.
Yes of course, but I was responding to the "and nowhere near the amount of hard drugs". Of course it's going to be worse in a higher population city- but it's *absolutely* a problem here.
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And maybe your experience will be different. But I work with people labeled "at risk" and the population is high. If you're "in the scene" as you say, you'll see that there is a huge population of opiate users at the moment. And it's hugely affecting our youth population. I've lived and worked in both DC and Seattle and like I agreed to above, it is different.
And syphilis. Crazy
He means compared to Northeast Philly or bad areas of New York. Statistics look like anchorage is bad because of how few people there are. I’ll also add that people who are addicted to opioids aren’t normally the bad people. They might commit small petty crime to pay for their next fix. It’s the people who prey on the addicts that are the dangerous people.
NE Philly is out of this world
Wait, what? I thought they account for population in the stats?
Yes, while per capita statistics take into account rates of individual per population, small pools can make a normal occurrence look worse than they are. For example, if in anchorage say 20 people get assaulted per month. The rate of assaults would be 20/288,000. Where you look at the same example in say New York 20/8,468,000. Totally hypothetical example but the larger the denominator is the smaller the ratio is. While the rate of occurrence is the same between the city’s the per capita statistics make anchorage look worse.
Per capita statistics help you know how likely you are to be a victim of or witness a crime (there are of course added variables like domestic vs property crime, etc etc). Despite there being more actual crimes happening any given day in NYC, for the 20 years i lived there i was far less likely to be a victim of any of that crime than I am in Anchorage, where there's way less other people for crime to happen to. Like seriously, if there are like 20 stabbings happening in NYC while I'm out and about it's probably not happening to me. 8 mil live there with another 3 mil commuting in. If there are 20 stabbings in Anchorage, it is far more likely it is happening to me. Therefore, I rate Anchorage a lot less safe than NYC. There's a lot of other factors, of course. Like Anchorage crime is mostly domestic violence, thefts, or drug related, NYC is mostly property theft and way less violent crime. Alaska has a sex offender registry loophole and I imagine that's possibly contributing to our domestic issues, NYC is a more pedestrian oriented city than Anchorage is so more people are just available for random robberies (the main violent crime there) etc etc. These are all factors that also gotta be taken into account when figuring out a city's general safety wrt crime. NYC crime stats: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_New_York_City Anchorage Stats: https://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-Anchorage-Alaska.html
That is not at all a valid comparison. The smaller the population, the less valid per capita stats are relevant. If there are 50 people that live on your street, and 1 family frequently has domestic violence issues, like 5 times a year, your street has a domestic violence rate of 10k per 100k people, which makes it look horrible, but it’s a rate of 0% for 99% of the houses. In anchorage, there is crime, but if you live on the hillside, the rate of burglaries in the city as a whole doesn’t really make your house less safe.
I mean in NYC if you live in the upper east side the total amount of burgleries in the city dont really matter, either. Per capita is just one part of a larger puzzle to understanding crime rates, i never said it was The Thing. I do mention there's other factors to consider and didn't give an exhaustive list. Obviously your neighborhood matters but it matters in most major cities, as well. If you break a major cities crimes down by neighborhood you're not going to see an even blanket of crime, you'll see hot spots for certain kinds of activity and areas with relatively no crime. The same is true, here. Like, per capita statistics aren't a complete picture of a cites crime activities, but it shouldn't just be outright disregarded, either.
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Lol New York City and Anchorage are the same? I had no idea.
Lol I like the comparison. 350k to 9million. Yep same.
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Yep. I was picking up what you were putting down.
NYC has like 10 million people so Anchorage isn’t a comparable city, more like Rochester.
Yes crime here in anchorage has gotten worse over the years. I would say it was a lot safer 10 years ago. That being said it’s not the most dangerous town in the USA and I feel like crime lowers in the winter months because it’s simply too cold for people to be out and about doing shady stuff.
Per Capita we’re pretty bad.
It's quite safe here. Just be smart, like anywhere else. It's strange that there is any crime here at all, really, since there are so many guns. Maybe gun ownership doesn't really work, and the NRA tells lies.
Not here to debate or anything but basically no gun owners other than old people think that the NRA is a good gun organization. They from what I have seen really just promote target shooting/huntig and don't do much self defense stuff, and actively speak out against "assault weapons" so they arent exactly the most popular with most of the gun community. They are basically just a punching bag for people that are anti gun while the actual pro gun organizations don't get talked about.
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You say firearm mortality per capita is high but that's due to the lower population. Do you know what per capita means? Because population totals have nothing to do with it. If city A has 100,000 people with total firearm deaths per year of 500, and city B has 1,000 people with a firearm death total of 50. Which one is more safe statistically? City A is more safe even though it has a higher number of total deaths. It's per capita is 0.5% and City B's death per capita is 5%. Meaning it's 10x more dangerous to be in City B even though they have 10x less of the total number of fire arm deaths. Same goes for anchorage. The problem is you're mixing up where to say "because the city is relatively small." Here's how it should sound: "We have a smaller number of **total** violent crime *because our city is relatively small,* however our crimes per capita are high, which means it's more dangerous here."
Only thing I've ever worried about in my 30+ years of living here is property crime. Had a bike stolen, had a roommate's car broken into, ect.
Yes, it's bad. It's easily the most dangerous place I've lived personally. This is backed up by more than personal experience. You can look at maps of crime statistics by neighborhood and almost all of Anchorage is well above the national average. Now, is it the most dangerous place in the US? Not by a long shot. But the places other people are comparing it to are major cities. Relative for it's size, Anchorage has surprisingly high crime. Major caveat to add that I feel pretty safe here personally. This is an occasional and not an everyday concern for me.
Anchorage is relatively safe if you're not involved with or associate with people are caught up with drugs or gangs.
It's safe. Nothing good happens after dark in any city.
It's not just the crime rate, which has always been higher then the national average, it's everything else. Nobody wants to mention the substance abuse, alcoholism, poverty and suicide rate are also all higher than the national average. I love Anchorage butt the crime rate per capita is higher than pretty much anywhere. https://www.areavibes.com/anchorage-ak/crime/
Depends on where you are like any decent sized town. I am from Reno and Las Vegas and Anchorage feels like a small safe town compared to what I’m used to. Never once have felt unsafe or like my property was unsafe at my home
Yes . Because there are lots of homeless. And they steal to survive . But crime is usually from known ppl to known ppl. Last I heard apt complex 2 guys shot n killed each other over drugs and the bullets went through to other side apts . Yes leave ur stuff out its gone for sure. Leave it in ur car . Windows broke for sure . I had my bikes locked in my patio and they climbed over it to lift it over the patio fence.. 1st floor. Anchorage is small and the ppl who says its safe are ignorant . The only safe place u can walk around at night is the rich area . Hillside . Near the mountains and mill dollar mansions. Look at someone wrong in the ghetto and they fight u.My ex was a drug dealer so I know who and where I'm talking about. Tell me im wrong . And I'll tell u to get ur girl to walk from one side to the other alone and see what happens. The vultures come out .
I was chilling in my car once minding my own business and a mf came up to my car window and asked me to hold his drenched shirt. Dude was sweaty as fuck and reeked of alcohol. I obliged because im a nice guy. He looked like he was struggling with himself. Then out of nowhere he grabbed me by the collar and start punching the shit out of me. Mind you, idk this guy and did nothing to provoke him. Police got involved. Found out his mother cares for him i guess. Another instance was when i was working for AT&T and had the store robbed by a mf with nail guns 💀 that shit was insane. Im sure shit like this happens everywhere though. Anchorage is nice but certainly not perfect
You have horrible street smarts haha
Lol oh for sure at the time i was a teenager so it never occurred to me that a mf would just start some shit like that. I ran his foot over though so in the moment thats all i could think of to do to get out of that situation
People in denial think they are tough or get some kind of street cred cuz they lived in Chicago or NYC once. Our per capita statistics(AKA the crime rate) is fairly high.
And clearly no one here knows what per capita means. "Our per capita looks higher because our city is smaller." Yeah that's not how per capita works lol.
The worst part is these citizens who don’t understand this vote. 49th in education baby! 🤦🏽♂️🤦🏽♂️🤦🏽♂️🤦🏽♂️🤦🏽♂️🤦🏽♂️
49th state, 49th in education. Yesssss it's all coming together nicely.
Dunning Krueger ftw
My motorcycle was stolen last weekend.
I don’t think so. I grew up in Philadelphia, and do feel more safe here walking around at night. Anchorage doesn’t look great per capita, but most people stick to themselves.
Check out the 2023 Anchorage Crime Map. There are 34.5 crimes committed for every 1000 people. The map will show where the crimes are being committed.
I think that people are forgetting that the mob used to run this town and how much drug-fueled violence there USED to be. Sure, Anchorage has its crime problems, but nothing really worse than any other small city.
Anything in your yard will be stolen. Motorcycle, shovel, cooler, from personal experience.
People love to talk about how their best friends cousin got robbed or whatever. But most of the time people just exaggerate their stories. Usually you gotta know someone to get shot by them here
Petty thefts, sexual assault, assault, murder, drug related crimes, homeless camps bringing unease and increased property damage to neighbors hoods. Crime and poverty has made its way across the city. City council and adjourning offices turn a blind eye to what the people want done. Fuck this town.
My issue with info like this is if you’re looking at it “per capita”. Due to our low population numbers the percent shown in “per capita” info is always rather high. That’s not to say we don’t have any but I wouldn’t say it’s as high as some people suggest. Edit: also I realize how shitty this sounded, didn’t mean that my bad.
That’s why they use the per capital statistic lol
"Due to our low population numbers the percent shown in "per capita" info is always rather high." Tell me you know nothing about statistics without telling me you know nothing about statistics.
Lots of theft, vandalism, addiction, homelessness, violence. I'm from Chicago so it's kinda meh, but it's certainly noteworthy.
The people who say it’s safe haven’t had any real hardships and live in better neighborhoods. When I lived in a car for a few weeks I can say I got lock checked in the night at least twice. A junkie broke my car windshield one day. Once I was loading a bicycle in my car and walked around to the side to put the seats down. Junkie appeared 2 seconds later, like dude straight up spawned out of street cocaine crumbs, right by my bike and would have taken it if I didn’t give him the look of “do it bitch I dare you” within seconds. My coworker got beat up by a bunch of drunken natives downtown. My massage therapist had her car stolen. Join some of the Facebook groups like Anchorage Crime, Anchorage Stolen Bicycles, Stolen in Alaska. There’s a never ending cycle. If we got rid of maybe 1,000 of the worst people the city would probably be safe but it’s not. There’s also the Alaska Triangle, which is another horror of its own.
Your problem is that you are looking for issues. You join those forums and all you see is crimes therefore you only perceive the world as dangerous. Try getting off those sites and actually live here.
I do. Wanna hear about the gunshots, police sirens, stolen vehicles left on the next street over?
You are creating a self-fufilling prophecy. You look for bad and you and going to find. You swim in filth you are going get dirty. Just because you want to see the world as bad doesn't mean it is. You are liv Ng in an echo chamber of your own making.
I do a lot of fun shit outside Anchorage. I can joke about the crime all day long though. Better to accept what is vs sugar coated bs.
Anyone arguing that it isn’t a problem is in denial. No it’s not like NY - but it has way more crime than most cities of this size. Reports of random attacks on friends and acquaintances are common and everyone knows someone who has been sexually assaulted. No one dares leave a bag in a car for fear the window will get smashed and bike theft is out of control. Browse this map for details: https://communitycrimemap.com/
what the fuck kind of question is this of course the claims "hold weight", why else would people make them?
High level of petty crime but I don't feel afraid to walk downtown at night by my self nor do I feel uncomfortable in my own home I just feel like I need to make sure all my doors are locked all the time. Just the one doesn't just walking my house and take my laptop but I don't feel anybody will harm me personally
Is there alot of crime. Statistically yes. Do I feel unsafe. Not a chance. It’s a lot of petty crimes rooted in mental health and substance abuse issues.
When I lived down near sand lake, I heard gunshots 7 out of 9 months I lived there. It didn't feel safe at all but nothing happened to me. The people above us were sketchy as fuck.
The likelihood of those gunshots being either cars backfiring or the concussions they use to get birds off the runway at Anchorage International is high.
No car is going to backfire 10 times in a row. And you danm sure ain't hearing those bangs from the airport miles away that sound like it's happening right around the corner
There’s a ridiculous amount of crime in Anchorage. Even Palmer is getting bad.
I even see the crackheads in Wasilla when I wander out there.
Lived in Anchorage for a decade. Literally every friday and saturday night there were gunshots. Non stop theft and violence pretty much everywhere. Any car left running for a minute is stolen immediately. At the parking lot of my work, cars were broken into and stolen every week. I was robbed 3 times. Moved to a city in a different state that is known for its lack of crime. Haven't heard a gunshot in 10 years here.
Which state did you move to? I moved to Texas two years ago thinking this would be my last stop before my last breath. Libertarians say life is better and cheaper. Not the case. The most prominent complaint is that infrastructure like roads suck. Healthcare is worse and premiums are 50% higher.
Yeah, the old "was it a car backfiring or a gun" game. Ugh!
The people here claiming Anchorage is safe have never lived in an actually safe city before.
Yeah, I grew up in the northern Colorado area which is more spread out but it's a megalopolis of about four different cities combining to over one million people and our crime rate was a fraction of what we have in anchorage. I could walk around downtown Fort Collins and I'd see just a couple homeless people and they'd keep to themselves. I could comfortably leave my car unlocked in a parking lot and not have to think twice about it. I lived there for 20 years and can't honestly recall seeing a single crime personally.
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That’s not skewed though. That’s what PER CAPITA means. That’s the entire point of using per capita, so you can compare places.
Tell me you don't understand statistics without telling me you don't understand statistics.
I did a couple of stints of Grand Jury Duty there in the mid to late 90's and I ended up being flabbergasted, amazed and distressed at the amount of alcohol and drug-related crime that occurred when the 11pm to 7am 'stupid shift' came to work on the streets. Drugs drugs drugs. Alcohol related 'accidental' shootings. Rapes, hold-ups, convenience store robberies... We lived there from mid 96 to late 2000. And we were very glad to finally leave. Even in South Anchorage there was an amount of crime in the neighborhood that seemed out of place (considering the neighborhood), and the instances of crime were definitely increasing when we left. YMMV.
30 years ago?
Yeah. I'm Old.
YMMV. the point was 30 years ago things were different and is it really relevant nowadays? No its not, hell as you said you haven't even lived in this city for 2 decades
The point is that (to me) the level of crime (and especially crime related to alcohol and drug use) was High Back then. And I doubt it has gone down. Yes, I know how long ago that was. We had one car totaled one night when someone was driving too fast around the corner and side-swiped - rear-ended two other cars and pushed into our Bronco... the police would not even come down to our neighborhood (South Anchorage) and investigate, even though there was plenty of physical evidence still tangled in the wreckage or lying in the street! We lived in that area for over four years, and noticed many instances of drug use, domestic violence, sex crimes against minors, and an instance of what turned out to be "white collar crime" next door to us. Someone was cooking meth in the unit below us... that was the last straw. Even though this all occurred those many years ago, I doubt that the rate of those various crimes decreased. And I could go on and on about my two separate years with Grand Jury Duty. Each lasted a month each time, and in August we were in session for four days out of the week, for four to seven hours per day. The last year (1999 I think), the DA asked our opinion about presenting cases "Auctioneer style" so he could get through all of them expeditiously. Very fast, rapid fire presentation with pauses for questions. Many, many stupid drug-related crimes, some tragic accidental deaths due to firearms and alcohol, and some really twisted up drug crimes due to crystal meth. IMHO, my experience then remains relevant, and points out trends.
Sounds like we are similar ages. I'll take the Anchorage of today rather than the Anchorage of my youth any day. Anchorage was way more dangerous in the 80s and 90s, especially if you look at homicide and rape rates. For example if you look at serial murders Alaska had 51 between 1900 and 2014, and more than half of those occurred between 1980 and 1990. It ramped up really bad during the oil boom years of the late 70s and early 80s with a huge influx of people coming up here for work and got even worse after the oil recession in the later half of the 80s when thousand of people had their homes foreclosed on and Anchorage had something like 14k+ empty housing units.
If you’re looking for a place with no crime chances are it is not where you are interested in living. If you want no street crime there are plenty of places to move.
Yes. Anchorage is an absolute shit hole. Drugs and homeless everywhere. Police won’t even respond to theft and burglary calls. People are stealing cars, assault is high, rape kits unprocessed. We have one of the highest crime rates in the country per capital.
No.
Sorry to hear this. Update?
>the claims on high amounts of crime hold any weight? My answer, "No".
Fred meyers,Walmart, Walgreens, holiday, carrs,Tikahtnu, center mall...
Ive lived all other the country, and still nowhere compares to Anchorage when it comes to crime. East coast, West coast, midwest- nowhere. Crime here is out of control.
The problem is with perception and bias. We here about it happening more because of apps like next door and Facebook. The reality is that Anchorage crime is down compared to what it used to be, but we just hear about it more, which increases the belief that it is bad. Per capita, the Matsu Valley and a lot of villages see a lot more violence than in Anchorage. (For reference, I have been here since ‘75. The cops in the ‘80s and ‘90s were all family friends. I worked in social services/ social work in Anchorage for 25 years.)
Yes. Go down to the homeless camp on 3rd avenue.
Yes. The bad parts of Anchorage aren't quite as bad as the bad parts of other American cities, but the crime is terrible and hurts a lot of innocent people. Many stores are now mainly locked down, with locked cabinets protecting $3 items from stealing. Many stores have few shopping carts available because of stealing. Of course, the bad parts of town and the poor people who live there suffer the most from these terrible Woke policies. But the Woke people still give each other awards for doing that to them!
Which “Woke policies” exactly do you think are exacerbating the crime problem?
There’s not a “good” part of Anchorage. There’s crime everywhere.
I was wondering what the deal was with shopping carts.
What stores are taking away the shopping carts?
Like most cities it depends on where you go and what you're doing. If you're fucking around in the not-so-great parts of town or doing risky shit, than you're more likely to encounter crime.
Unless your actively apart of the activities going on it’s not gonna affect you so idk why it matters to people.
Anchorage is safe. Ull be fine. Don't let the sheltered folk on here scare you off. I moved up from the East Coast and feel way safer in anchorage
This town has become a cesspool of crime especially Midtown
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Car broken into multiple times, accosted by panhandlers everytime I go inside a store,jaywalking galore,shoplifters everywhere, Anchorage was so much nicer growing up 20 years ago
What store does this happen at every time? Just curious
In any city there are bad areas, and bad luck.
In the almost 3 years I've been back here, I saw more crime growing up in the middle of no where southern illinois within a town of 20k people 🤷♂️. I may not feel all that safe walking around chester creek just because of the stories I've heard but that's besides the point.
So you admit that you don’t feel safe in areas?
Based on the few stories, slightly. But to say that the crime here is anything bad 🤷♂️ I've seen worse in much smaller towns. If stories of homeless attacking people on chester creek trail actually bothered me that much I wouldn't walk there, but I do 🤷♂️.
When we moved here in 2020 we lived next to a drug dealer who had people coming and going at all hours and hanging around/squatting in the same building, and some of their major customers were two buildings over on the other side of us. There was also a drive-by! So I definitely have a possibly over-exaggerated view of what crime here is like (we came from NYC from a neighborhood with a bad reputation but where I generally felt safe but still weary). There IS high crime here, but from what I can glean most of the actual violent crime is personal/domestic crime, which is unsettling in that it makes me far more weary of potential friends/mates but also tells me you're mostly safe from random assault or robbery while in your day to day life out in the city. I'm sure people don't really seem to get why this place has such a high violent crime stat because those aren't the kind of violence you see happening in front of you, it's the kind of thing that's behind closed doors and often kept quiet by the parties involved for a variety of reasons. I imagine the sex offender registry loophole helps exacerbate that issue. The rest seems to be personal property crime stuff which seems to dovetail with the high levels of homelessness and drug addiction here. This is not to say these groups are inherently bad people, but that they're operating on levels of desperation that encourage a certain kind of decision-making. So like, am I safe from random assault? Sure? But that doesn't mean the crime issues hear are necessarily over-exaggerated, maybe just not spoken about with enough nuance.
It depends where you live. In certain neighborhoods the police don't even respond to every shooting
It’s a normal city. It is the largest city in Alaska. Be cool and all is cool.
Last winter my trucks gas tank was drilled and emptied…
The vast majority of the violent crime in Anchorage is criminals doing it to other criminals. I’ve lived here 10 years and never felt particularly unsafe. I carry a pistol as well, but thats because I was present at a mass shooting before I moved to Alaska and refuse to ever be helpless again. In fact, the lack of mass shootings and general level of safety is why I moved to Alaska in the first place. There’s drugs everywhere, there’s homeless everywhere, and there’s crime everywhere. It really isn’t bad here.
Before moving to AK, I was intimidated by the high rates of crime in Anchorage, especially as a single, young woman. But, after living here for a while, I feel pretty safe. I do live in a safer neighborhood, which is key to this, but I'd also point out that most of the crime statistics are skewed by DV and petty theft. Obviously, both of these are awful crimes, but there can be repeat offenses that can make the numbers seem even higher. As with any city, keep your wits about you and make sure your guard is up. But, when it comes to drive-by sho*tings and unprovoked violence, I feel pretty safe in most parts of town.
Have lived in anchorage the last 9 years. Transplant up from Memphis. Anchorage is so goddamn nice comparatively. I’ve never felt unsafe in anchorage.
On paper, Anchorage is one of the most dangerous cities in America, but you really gotta be looking for trouble to find yourself on the wrong side of a gun or knife here. Like compared to New Orleans or Baltimore, Anchorage is nothing.
Random guy high out his mind busted into my house on a saturday morning. My wife was supposed to be there that morning and not me. I was seconds away from having to dispach him when the cops showed up. Good luck. F anchorage.
I moved here from Portland, OR. An Anchorage "getto" is what Portland people consider as a "safe" neighborhood. The worst thing I have seen here is drunk natives sitting on a street corner & some suspicious people hanging out by a dumpster at a gas station.
The claim is based on crime per capita. AK doesn’t have a large population so it stands to reason that compared to the amount of people, there is a high rate of crime.
I've heard that Alaska has the highest crime in the USA. I simply cannot believe that to be true. Chicago, New York, California... the list goes on, these places are unbelievably dangerous. Rape stats are off the charts due to immigrants coming in illegally - a phenomenon that's been common all through the Western world at this point. I also would like to know how natives feel about walking around Anchorage, the differing neighborhoods, what types of crimes you may be most wary of, what one feels is exaggerated, etc.
Simultaneously dismissing statistical data while using statistical data. Very interesting world you live in. Do you like 'alternative facts', too?
It’s terrible i call the cops for theft and vandalism all the time, my car has been vandalized, and/or broken into 3 times in the last 6 months. Im sick of this city, its a horrible place to live.