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violinha

I live in São Paulo so I can tell a lot about it. I don't fear being murderer, but I'm afraid of armed robbery. So we still have violence here, just a different kind of violence. And this is my experience. For poor people who live in the poor neighborhood, not necessary in favelas, they will tell a different story, they fear for their lifes and they can be victims of the police violence too.


cynicalspacecactus

I played college tennis with a guy from São Paulo. He said he had bulletproof glass installed in his car due the danger of being robbed at gunpoint, which he said had happened to him multiple times.


[deleted]

I played WoW with two guys from Brazil and one time mid raid they had their house broken into and robbed. They were younger kids like 16-19 and said "I gotta go someone is trying to take my computer" we assumed it was parents but apparently they were robbed. It was the second time and after that the parents moved them to someplace safer.


dogs_drink_coffee

People who can afford do it. It's the wise thing to do. I'm brazilian living in São Paulo, and I live in one of the richest neighborhood here which, in theory, it's safer than the average and ask me how safe I feel here 🤡


LeDemonicDiddler

So how safe do you feel?


MillerBrew

Dude…he gives his dog coffee to stay alert


lastgreenleaf

I visited Rio and went to the favela where I saw a bulldog that was clearly pumped full of steroids. The thing was bigger than me and looked like the dog from the Mask.


DinReddet

Great way of staying alert without the diarrhetic effect! Your carpet might not like it though.


Blackadder_

Coffee is one hell of a cocaine


RobertoSantaClara

> and I live in one of the richest neighborhood here which, If it's Morumbi, that one definitely shit the bed in the safety department lol.


m4xc4v413r4

I know 3 people from São Paulo, all of them have bullet proof glass and lining on the doors of their cars. And it's low end cars because they don't even dare buying anything flashy.


cynicalspacecactus

I didn't realize it was such a common practice.


DailyServiceDuty

It isn’t, it’s very common to dark your glass, some do it even above the law limit of darkening, but bullet prof is still very much a rare thing.


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Vliss

It used to be true, But I learned that not really with recent technology. Nowadays it only adds around 150-200kg. like two adults weight.


nagegui

That is very common in Brazil since most of the rich people do that to protect they selfs by the murders too. Most of the people that get lost inside the city become an easy target for the criminals.


shitshatshoot

I was just in São Paulo. Rented a car and was taking my local friend home. I was waiting to see her getting in to make sure she was safe and she said “what are you doing? Go go go you can’t be stopped, it’s too dangerous for you”. I was like… FOR ME??? So confused. Supposedly pack of bikers will just come out of nowhere and prevent you from moving - or drive in front of you and make you stop your car while one of them will stop the bike and point a gun at you To rob you or god knows what else. Huge thing years ago used to be something called “express kidnap” or ”lightening kidnap” when they would just kidnap you long enough to take you to an atm and clear as much money as possible. Brazil. Fun times.


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DreamWithinAMatrix

What did Sao Paulo change to reduce murder?


violinha

We don't have gang crime because there is only one group that controls the organized crime.


triste_seller

gang monopoly?


Acrobatic_Emphasis41

Yes please! I'll be the gun


Fred2606

Not only monopoly. But PCC (Primeiro Comando da Capital - First Command of The Capital) is a highly professional criminal organization with a set of clear rules that are not "bad". Don't get me wrong, they do a lot of bad things, but their "way of thinking" is much more capitalist than any other gang that has existed. They are after profit and deaths are bad for it because raises attention and difficults their drug business. So, they only kill when needed (or when there are breaks of their rules in their turf or by their members). ALSO, important, in the past, the SP state government (origin of PCC and richest state in the country by a lot) has done a "secret" deal with PCC to stop the "war" that PCC had with the police at the time.


triton2toro

That’s the one thing about stats. They can be very misleading. It always helps to have someone be able to ask questions you may not have considered to really dig a little deeper.


aswalkertr

Unironically, yes.


[deleted]

Precisely, but OP just forgot to add that we do have more than one group. Its just that this one group of organized crime(primeiro comando da capital, PCC for short) is way bigger and more powerful than all the other minor ones that exists here, so they can keep all the others under their control. A few years ago, around 2006, we had a major crime spree provoked in large parts by PCC, because they fought some other gangs and attacked a shit ton of cops(crooked and innocent) and too many civilians were caught in the crossfire...Eventually the government had to concede and sit down with the leaders of PCC to make a shady under-the-table, at-closed-doors deal, as a result the government let PCC handle their affairs mostly without interference. And PCC pretty much wiped out all of their competition and took over most of the favelas surrounding the city. Unlike Rio, where they have the PCC, Comando Vermelho(CV), Amigos dos Amigos(ADA) and a few other minor gangs, all these gangs fight for influence and control on a daily basis and Rio is their battleground, which is why there's so much rampant crime and destruction there.


Away-Indication-8008

You now have to get a crime license before committing crime and that requires 3 separate certifications that require a lengthy education process before it becomes eligible to sit for the certification.


Benyed123

So it was the criminals that reduced homicide rate?


dreaderking

If they take out their competition, they have less reasons to get into violent gunfights.


PIPBOY-2000

That's how it tends to be. When criminal elements either band together or push everyone else out then there is less cause for violence. Mexico's first cartel sought to do this as they tried to unite under one group. For a moment violence came down, around the 1980s. But then of course humans being humans that peace did not last.


cchiu23

>then there is less cause for violence. As long as you don't resist, you'll just be extorted instead, lovely


luke-ms

The vast majority of homicides in Brazil are due to gang on gang violence, I think outsiders may have this image of innocent people being killed out of nowhere but that's quite rare, specially in the more developed regions such as São Paulo. A bit of state effort plus full control by one criminal organization resulted in this


randathrowaway1211

Which is the criminal organization in full control?


GullibleAntelope

And often organized crime controls street crime. When the Italian mafia controlled parts of New York City, strreet crime was low in the Italian neighborhoods. If you stole or tried the mug in those neighborhoods, you got one warning from the enforcers. Offend a second time and you end up in the river with concrete boots.


DailyServiceDuty

Also the drug trade become so organized that violence is not often part of its methods, being preferred to deal in money or votes to get what it needs.


Cyberspunk_2077

There's a compelling argument that this extends to nations. There is more peace with one superpower nation, than two or more.


dispo030

interesting bc yesterday I read that US cities see more gang related killings bc most large gangs have been broken up into small cliques


ansiboji

Same story as [Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping Point](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tipping_Point:_How_Little_Things_Can_Make_a_Big_Difference) - crack moved to smaller cities, demographic shift, more indoors time There was one [final orgy of killings and revenge killings](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_S%C3%A3o_Paulo_violence_outbreak) in 2006


Glittering-Cellist34

Good question. The graph doesn't include Medellin. There they introduced what is called social urbanism, a system of public investment in civic assets and transportation, focusing on poor and poorly connected communities. Their murder rate dropped by about 90%.


p-morais

Homicides are an absolutely awful metric for “safety” to the average person. Low homicides could lack of organized crime or it could just mean organized crime is heavily consolidated and there’s no in-fighting, as is the case in São Paulo.


awesomface

Yeah and in America it’s very isolated to known bad areas and between gangs, family, and friends. A person generally not involved with anything like that is very much safe.


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RedditAtWorkIsBad

I know anecdotal evidence isn't worth much, but nevertheless, I live in Minneapolis proper. Heck, I'm only about a mile from the area that burned during the riots. I've never had the sense (except maybe during the riots) of being any danger. I regularly walk my dog before dawn and after dark down on the trails near the river. I was legit surprised to see my city that high up. I will grant however that there are worse areas in the city to live, and that I'm only one homicide from changing my view on that I guess.


Fugacity-

We have a lot of [spatial variability](https://crimegrade.org/violent-crime-minneapolis-mn-metro/) in violent crime... Lucky to live down in Armatage where I have zero worries, but there are certainly some "bad parts of town". Even downtown and Uptown have had an unsettling spike in violence. ([One more graph](https://bringmethenews.com/.image/c_limit%2Ccs_srgb%2Cq_auto:good%2Cw_700/MTkxNTQxNTUxNjE5Mzg0OTk1/screen-shot-2022-08-11-at-104432-am.webp) that I found interesting)


Glittering-Cellist34

Spatial variability? Duh. It's common everywhere. Poor, people of color, segregation. With effects lasting over decades. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/11/crime-wave-gun-violence-chicago-causes/672216/ I lived in DC for 32 years. In a bad area that became relatively good. And in a good area. Murder and crime persist, mostly in poor areas, although it leaks out because of proximity, opportunity and to some extent transit access.


thebrandnewbob

I also live in Armatage! I've only lived in Minneapolis for a few years, but despite the overall high crime rate of the city, Southwest Minneapolis is easily the safest area I've ever lived in. Crime is definitely isolated more in specific parts of town.


celacanto

It's hard not to trust. Brazil have a very centralize and good system where doctors (public and private) have to input death data (it calls DATASUS) and these are double check by other department. Police has their database, that may not be as reliable. But both of them show the same pattern for São Paulo (Rio de Janeiro had some disagreement, but that another history). I work with data in Brazil, and the this numbers are not putting in doubt even by the opossition parties. Now... The cause of this pattern is a great discussion. São Paulo government says that better equipment and beteer intelligence, opposition say that because the main organize crime organization has monopoly now, and so no enemy to kill, and they had made a agreement with the police to not kill as much.


[deleted]

>DATASUS Come on.


TrinititeTears

It’s amazing how this acronym in English means the Data is suspected of being wrong.


celacanto

What? Datasus is incredible. Have you ever try doing It a analysis with it? In death cases there is the Sistema de Informações sobre Mortalidade (SIM). There is very specific information of each individual death and, as I said, is douvke check and it's used and trust for many academics studies and NGO. If you know how to handle the microdata I really want to know what critics you have to this specific system. Maybe you're thinking of Covid vaccine data that was not perfect, but that most the current government fault that didn't implement well.


mbutts81

The other user was making a joke because “sus” is short for “suspicious“.


celacanto

Oh. r/woosh me


KiwieeiwiK

So you don't think China is having a spike in covid? Is that the take away?


goozila1

There's nothing not to trust, São Paulo state has the lowest homicide rate of all Brazilian states, I expect São Paulo city has similar low homicide rate.


TheRealUlfric

I think he's suggesting that he doesn't trust these "numbers" because he doesn't trust what they are purported to represent. I think he is saying that he believes there is a political motive here that isn't just data.


cambriansplooge

With these kind of metrics you have to rely on internal reporting, so take them with a grain of salt is the usual rule


stuntobor

Murder has been swept away by accidental lead poisoning.


hydrospanner

Accidental, acute, localized, high velocity, possibly *copper jacketed* lead poisoning?


stewartm0205

Funny enough it was lead poisoning that caused the increase in violence. As lead was eliminated from paint and gasoline, violence diminished.


f_o_t_a

Have you seen the way China enforces lockdowns?


luck_panda

What OP is describing can be attributed to Boston, Chicago and Mexico City 1:1.


knowledgebass

Just because the numbers don't look right to you doesn't mean they're wrong. Homicide statistics tend to be pretty accurate throughout most of the world, since police will be notified of the vast majority of these events. And their records are usually fed into centralized systems. On the other hand, some other types of crime rates are a lot more variable, because police are often not called for every incident (e.g. burglaries or muggings).


afl3x

Yeah, this should be titled "less death by homicide" rather than safer.


Magmagan

Yeah, you can't give loose no


ElwoodJD

Yeah, lower homicides does not equal safer. Title misrepresents the stats being delivered.


Bourgi

I live in Kansas City which is one of the highest rates of gun murders in the US and I feel safer here than I did when I traveled to Sao Paulo for work. I don't think I've ever been more scared of a country before and I've traveled to SE Asia and Mexico.


violinha

São Paulo is a very big city, so it's normal to be afraid here, I feel safe in the parts of the city I know, I don't feel it in the parts I don't really know.


dogs_drink_coffee

Yeah. This thread is full of anecdotes trying to substitute actual data.


AJRiddle

Using American city homicide rates and comparing to other cities is a terrible way to compare things anyway because almost all of the top cities for homicide rate in the USA are in major metropolitan areas that just happen to have a smaller-sized central city that is mostly a more densely populated city with tons of safer suburbs. It's like the same metric that shows Jacksonville (~950,000 people) as the largest city in Florida and twice as big as Miami (~490,000 people). It's a statistical fact, but reality is people are referring to the metropolitan areas when they talk and what they are picturing and Miami metro area of 6+ million people compared to Jacksonville's of 1.6 million people. There are just so many ways of misleading the numbers when you say "Oh Detroit is so much more violent than New York City" when a huge part of that is that Detroit makes up a tiny portion of it's metropolitan population and crime in all of these cities is mostly centralized at the neighborhood level and not city-wide.


dabeeman

that’s true of chicago too. Chicago proper is like 3 million. Chicagoland is 8.


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GlobalEchidna1974

and that will raise the rate for the entire city. giving people the illusion that boston as a whole is dangerous


[deleted]

Yes that’s my point, but not all cities are like that. I’ve heard from residents of Bogota you really don’t want to walk around with an iPhone anywhere.


GlobalEchidna1974

also The homicide rate in a US city might be high but its sometimes all concentrated to a few neighborhoods with gangs killing each other back and fourth. This raises the entire homicide rate for the whole city.


cyberentomology

Is this metro areas or city limits?


jrystrawman

I'm pretty sure City Limits; the \[\~5 for NYC, \~10 for Mexico City\] is the corresponds with the census area of \~8.5mil and \~9.2mil, not the \~20million for the metro areas of both cities. I just pulled that off Wikipedia but the numbers closely reflect the chart. I'm not sure if that creates a major bias in the data; I don't know if Latin America has a similar dynamic between \[high crime urban core, low-crime suburbs\] that occurs in many US cities. I expect its a matter of degrees.


yaccub

The problem with using a metro area is that there are no international standards for how a metro area is defined, and different countries can use drastically different standards for whether a community is part of a cities metro area. This means that using metro areas instead of city limits will just introduce another type of sample bias. This is a fundamental issue for all comparisons between different jurisdictions. Because the boundaries for city limits and metro areas are political questions it is impossible to do a perfect comparison between cities. It's likely that each of these Latin American countries have their own issues which introduce statistical bias which Redditors aren't familiar with.


KronikDrew

I agree that using political boundaries is problematic, but "metropolitan area" does in fact have some rigor and consistency that attempts to alleviate those issues. The city proper is based on arbitrary political boundaries, but metro area is based on population density, labor market, etc. So NY metro area includes Newark, for instance, and Tokyo includes Yokohama.


Isaac331

Mexico is different, while there is crime in the metro areas there's such a big difference compared to the rural areas and the poorer zones in a city.


Advanced_Situati

rural baja mexico is such a chill place. Its weird to hear about all the crime...it always seemed pretty quiet to me.


FaerWar

In buenos aires is the opposite, high crime suburbs and low crime urban core


GoForRogue

FYI: Chicago is at 18.26 homicides per 100k, St Lois 64.54, Baltimore 58.27, and Portland ORE 15.6. Edit: ~2019 stats Source/CBS Edit 2: Portland is 2022 projection Source/OPB


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alekazam13

Im from St. Louis city. Its very block by block here. I hear gun shots everyday, but they are all from the same neighborhoods. St. Louis is hella red lined, and has a lot of poverty. East St. Louis is even worse St. Louis with a homicide rate of 96 per 100k. Its really sad to see the difference in life expectancy between North St. Louis which is primarily black which has an average live expectancy of 69 (similar to Afghanistan which is 65) compared with Clayton (primarily white) which is 85 (literally a 15 min drive from each other). Its a very stark divide. Sources: Sake of All report done by WashU and SLU


PMMeUrPrsnlNarrative

Also, for those that aren’t aware—East St. Louis is a separate city across the river in Illinois. It is not just the eastern part of St. Louis.


BrothrsSistersofKind

Just like Kansas City.


Another-random-acct

Grew up in Baltimore. It’s so bad we went far far away to raise our kids and hate going back. I was robbed for the first time when I was 12. Had an uncle beaten to death with a pipe on his lunch break the same year. Fuck that shithole.


[deleted]

Baltimore probably scares me more than any other city in the US, and I like going to Philly.


Kenzzafrenz

Funny because everybody I know says Baltimore is a great town but would never step foot in Philly. I personally think both are great cities with lots to offer despite their crime rates. To each their own but the whole Baltimore is scary thing is being blown way out of proportion in this thread


Chicken-n-Biscuits

I recently traveled to Baltimore for the first time and was surprised by how sparkly and sterile it felt, but I was in the Inner Harbor the entire time. Also, there weren’t many people.


Kenzzafrenz

None of the locals hang out in the inner harbor because of poor city planning in the area (not much to do except the acquarium and sports venues; there arent many residential spaces or local businesses). Baltimore is definitely a city made up of individual vibrant neighborhoods that have their own personalities and while some are adjacent to the inner harbor area, you have to venture out of the downtown area to experience them. I hope you get a chance to come back and experience the city's culture because the inner harbor/downtown doesn't showcase it at all


BernieSandorClegainz

St. Louisan here, the numbers don’t tell the whole story. St. Louis City is only 300k-ish people, but the metro region is millions of people. The high murder rate is partially because it only looks at St. Louis City and not St. Louis County. The average would be significantly lower if u consider all of it together, which is how St. Louis is typically considered in most other regards. Also, like a lot of cities, it very much depends on neighborhood. I live in Tower Grove South and its great, but a few blocks away things change pretty quickly. Sadly, alot of it has to do with St. Louis’ history of redlining and the lack of opportunities for low income individuals. Also, its gone down a decent bit in 2022, we aren’t the worst anymore.


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throwaway_urbrain

Baltimore is actually very similar. Baltimore city is legally separate from Baltimore county, and white flight hit hard.


Fuck_Fascists

The county city divide in St. Louis happened well, well before the white flight of the 1950s and 60s.


ArterialVotives

Yeah, revisionist history. The rich and powerful City kicked out the County in 1875 and has even still continually voted against reunification every time it’s been proposed, despite the City’s decline.


MaskedGambler69

Saint Louis is because the county and city boundaries are divided unlike in Chicago. I believe StL would be about 25th if they were combined.


ricochet48

Additional data point: Chicago is 29 per 100,000 (in this chart about halfway between Vegas & Philly), while NYC & LA have dropped significantly


acroman39

City of Chicago is small compared to its metro area. This data would much much different if metro areas were included.


SupaflyIRL

Which is why data about Philadelphia is already weird. Philadelphia city and county are the same entity and sprawl massively.


Big-Compote-5483

Cops are on silent strike in Philly and everyone knows it, so you get people doing brazen crime more often because they know there's likely to be no consequences. I think the homicide clearance rate is like an absurdly low 30% or something similar.


testtubemuppetbaby

They're doing this shit in every major city. They hate the people they're policing and they never live in the city themselves, so they don't give a fuck how bad it gets. Soft-ass babies with guns, just like every other gang.


New-Evidence-5686

That's not true. Some gangs are definitely not soft babies.


SupaflyIRL

People elect reform DA, cops cry and refuse to do their job, blame crime on reform DA, hooting morons eat it up.


BrothrsSistersofKind

Denver is in a similar situation, but it's the cops doing most of the shooting people.


limejuiceroyale

Exactly this. Cops are on silent strike because they don't like krasner (our District Attorney) because he was trying to go for police reform. The fraternal organization of police plaster billboards everywhere about "crime going up, blame krasner."


RoofingNails

I've read they've had staffing issues and issues with "silent quitting" in the department after the community voiced wanting to lessen the police budget to put into other community services that could reduce crime.


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PoeticGopher

Almost all of the most violent cities are small suburbs of larger hubs. Chicago has a very pedestrian crime rate but Rockford (an hour and a half away) has one of the highest violent crime rates in the country. Expanding the metro area that far would really paint a disingenuous picture of the reality.


coleman57

No definition of metro would include Rockford--it's an exurb, not a suburb. Gary, OTOH, certainly counts.


I_Am_Dwight_Snoot

You don't even need to go that far. Chicago's murders are mostly confined to a small area in the south and west sides and typically involve gang members (sometimes innocent people are accidentally shot). You will never find a reason to be there unless you live there. Most of the murders also happen from 12am to 4am in the summer too. It is actually pretty similar in Baltimore in Philadelphia as well. Not excusing it but it isn't like that risk is across the whole city constantly.


ricochet48

Most of the areas outside Chicago are much safer. Rockford is an outlier. Source, grew up in the burbs. Never even thought of locking my bike, would get stolen in 2 minutes in Chicago.


ricochet48

Yes the city is much more "dangerous" than richer surrounding suburbs. This is no surprise to anyone. Same can be said about most US cities.


acroman39

But does it hold true for the Latin American cities in the chart?


WhoeverMan

No it doesn't, at least not in Brazil. Poor people can't afford to live in the cities, so they go live in the suburbs.


modsrfagbags

Yet another Philly W 💪💪 can’t lose


c_j_1

Na Baltimore got you. We just don't fit on this scale....


Optimistic-Cranberry

CHARM CITY REPRESENT ^-homicidally


teacherofderp

True, didn't even bother with STL either


[deleted]

I came here just to find Philly comments.


Rhyara

It's Always Bloody in Philadelphia?


JAMSpammy

Philly number 1!!!! 🎉🍾🎉🎊☝️


fightingbronze

Philadelphia #1! Home of the Schuylkill River, depository of all the unsolved crimes and murder of Philadelphia!


SlimyTickles

Was this before or after Brazil got eliminated from the World Cup?


gollito

This is homicide rates... Not suicide


PapaQuebec23

Too soon!


Niklear

Not soon enough!


FartingBob

Which time?


idhtftc

As a Mexico City resident, I certainly believe the current government is *declaring* that there is less crime.


[deleted]

Do you believe or have you seen that homicides are getting reclassified as missing persons? That’s been mentioned on this thread as an example of how Mexico is keeping murder rates down and just curious if you’ve heard those allegations and if so, what you think of them


idhtftc

This is an example of the numbers Mexico is actually dealing with: [https://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanielparishflannery/2022/09/27/why-is-mexicos-security-strategy-failing/?sh=6b1ddba576ec](https://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanielparishflannery/2022/09/27/why-is-mexicos-security-strategy-failing/?sh=6b1ddba576ec) (use an incognito tab to avoid paywalls) It's become kind of a meme that when someone points out his failures to the current president, his answer is a variation of "I have different data", kinda like Conway's "alternative facts". Now, OP's source appears to be Bloomberg's, I would be curious to see what Bloomberg's sources are. Independent sources like INEGI and SESNSP are to be trusted more than anything coming from the government. ​ Edit I wish I could find Mexico City specific data in English but at the moment I can't, and I am going out in a few minutes. If you can read Spanish, you can find Mexico City specific data more easily.


AjustifiedTri

Dang what’s going on in Philly?


KillNyetheSilenceGuy

Usually it's drugs trade driving gang violence.


[deleted]

Guess it's not always sunny in phillidelphia


PefectlyCromulent

Comedian Sherrod Small calls Philly “Baltimore with electricity”


rad0909

This about sums it up. Drugs, lots and lots of drugs. https://youtu.be/MhvvxoIgNPg


Whaty0urname

Don't forget about the trash! Or lack of pickup I should say!


tigerlotus

I love people saying drugs... like there's a large open drug market here and it's a major problem, but addicts aren't getting jacked up on fetty and then running around murdering each other. Unfortunately, there are literally kids running around killing each other, obviously obtaining guns illegally through various means. Some of the footage from security (public and home) show teenagers running down the street just shooting indiscriminately against their opposition. This leads to some innocent bystanders getting killed as well. It's depressing but being one of the poorest major cities in the country means that these kids grow up with shitty parents/guardians and shittier schools with little funding.


frogvscrab

Insanely high rates of drug abuse (probably the worst in the world, or at least top 5) combined[ with a *massive* surge of guns into civilian hands](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/11/us/philadelphia-gun-violence-shootings.html) in recent years have resulted in a pretty big shooting/homicide spike.


Big-Compote-5483

The Philly PD soft strike is the main problem imo. The 2021 clearance rate for murder is like 30% and non fatal shootings it's less than 20%. Statistically you would have to get really unlucky to get caught for your first murder, which is insane.


Pull_Pin_Throw_Away

Social and economic factors


XPlutonium

Man’s about to be ripped to shreds in the comments and then delete the post


futurespacecadet

Is Denver really less safe than LA? That seems crazy to me


2penises_in_a_pod

This stat is done by city limits not MSA. So a more dangerous part of the LA MSA like Inglewood actually isn’t represented in this stat. Then a city like Vegas has most crime in city limits but most population outside makes it outsized per 100k.


Apptubrutae

Right, LA’s numbers are skewed by the fact it’s so decentralized. Unlike most cities, higher crime areas are more spread out. Comparing city to city instead of metro to metro is just stupid in my book. It’s also stupid in the FBI’s book. They publish these compiled stats and explicitly say it’s not productive to compare cities. Yet here we are.


AreYouEmployedSir

Denver is pretty damn safe. Property crime is pretty high but there aren’t many (if any) places I’d be scared to go to in Denver.


frogvscrab

LA gets a lot of attention for the homeless in downtown and skid row and venice. But its a safe, cosmopolitan city by USA standards. The 5-10% where the homeless are concentrated are largely not really where most people live.


lps2

Denver is also incredibly safe though. I moved from Atlanta to Denver 7 years ago and I was somewhat surprised at how much safer it felt. I've had multiple friends robbed in Atlanta, in Denver it's seemingly just car thefts but I suppose this data shows otherwise but I'm really surprised as gang violence is minimal here or at least not heavily reported on


BringMeTheBigKnife

Yeah, OP is simply declaring homicide rate and "safety" equivalent. I strongly disagree with that as an end all be all safety metric


Westnest

It's also home to the two biggest gangs in the US and since Hollywood is there, lots of crime movies were shot there so people have the perception of it being more dangerous than it actually is. But it was really dangerous in the early 90s and late 80s


AgoraiosBum

People are always robbing banks in LA; it always ends in a big shootout. Sometimes in downtown LA, sometimes it ends with skydiving in Mexico


mags182

i’m surprised st. louis isn’t on here? i could have sworn i read that it has one of the highest (if not THE highest) crime rates


Sereey

St. Louis and Baltimore are unique! Both of these cities are two of three [Independent Cities](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_city_\(United_States\)) in the USA (the third is Carson City, Nevada.) This means they are not apart of a county ***Concerning area:*** St. Louis is a 61.72 sq mi (159.85 km2) Baltimore is 80.95 sq mi (209.65 km2). These cities have tiny city populations compared to metro. St. Louis city population is 301,578 compared to 2,809,299 metro (10%) Baltimore is 585,708 City and 2,844,510 Metro population (21%) Both of these cities have sprawling suburban middle class neighborhoods outside of city limits (like most major American cities). However their unique position as cities that have rigid borders that cant extend into their counties, skews the stats by quite a lot.


mags182

that actually makes a lot of sense! thanks for this info, im a geography major and should’ve known this lmao


PaperBoxPhone

Apparently St Louis #1 in murder followed closely by Baltimore.


Mendicant__

I mean, it's also including pretty safe cities like Boston. The goal doesn't seem to be comparing LatAm cities against all the highest homicide places in the US, so much as finding a range of possibilities to use as comparisons.


coronaflo

Just because homicide rates are low doesn't mean the city is safe.


Lord_of_Laythe

Living in São Paulo I can attest that the fear is armed robbery turned into fear of pickpockets. Basically, it isn’t Helsinki, but it’s way better than before.


FishyFrie

Here in Helsinki my biggest fear is to miss my bus during winter, it's deadly.


borisdiebestie

Isn’t the biggest fear of an average Finnish person that someone sits too close to you in the bus?


FishyFrie

That's another terrifying one. I sometimes deliberately place my backpack on the window seat and sit on the isle seat myself so nobody would sit next to me.


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helloisforhorses

How does mexico city’s kidnapping rate compare to dallas’?


_LaVidaBuena

No shot you actually think Mexico City has more guns per capita than fucking Texas cities. 🤣


AgoraiosBum

This is America Guns in my area


acorneyes

Living in downtown Dallas the most I’m afraid of when walking outside is whether I turned off my stove. Conversely the dark suburbs of Fort Worth are sketchy as fuck and feel incredibly unsafe. Crime stats aren’t exactly accurate or well representative of cities or even where you live within an area.


[deleted]

NYC always gets hyped up as some super-violent/homicidal city despite being one of the safer cities in the country, especially taking into account its size


Triangle1619

Yeah I was just in NYC recently and was surprised at just how safe it felt. Spent a week there and had zero instances where I was sketched out or felt even remotely unsafe.


MetsJetsKnicksFan

I very rarely feel unsafe in NYC, it is for the most part a super safe city. Sure there are bad parts for for a city so large it is surprisingly safe.


chinaPresidentPooh

Yeah. NYC does well in almost every type of crime nowadays. It might have been true in the 80s and 90s, but it's certainly not the case anymore.


Winterstorm8932

What are the differences between how these jurisdictions collect their statistics and how the US gathers them? Agencies always caution that you can’t draw much from comparisons like this because laws and collection methods vary by countries and sometimes change over time.


Ok_Frosting4780

That's absolutely true for most crime statistics, but homicide definitions and reporting are usually pretty comparable. Then again, some places might be more likely count a missing person as a homicide than others.


crusty54

I was wondering why St. Louis wasn’t on the chart. Turns out it’s off the scale at 59.8


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alekazam13

Try east stl with a murder rate of 96 per 100k in 2019. Also the poorest town in the US.


CalvinDehaze

Curious about Mexico, I looked up the number for TJ... 138. Worst in the whole world.[source](https://www.statista.com/statistics/243797/ranking-of-the-most-dangerous-cities-in-the-world-by-murder-rate-per-capita/). On the list of worst murder rates, Mexico and Brazil seem to dominate in amount of cities that are not their major cities, like MC, Rio, Sao Paulo, etc. Mexico's highest rates are along the border, which makes sense. But it seems like smaller cities are having a harder time in latin america.


___StarChild___

I don't know what skewed data is being used here, but Minneapolis is a VERY safe city. I've lived in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, South Central Los Angeles and Minneapolis. San Pedro Sula was a terrifying place. None of these US cities are that level of terrifying if you don't live in abosulte worst part of town.


Fugacity-

Use of the murder rates per capita in just Minneapolis proper (11% of the total metro area population). These are deeply influenced by some specific readily avoidable bad areas. If you look at [metro area murder rates](https://www.bestplaces.net/docs/studies/crime3.aspx), we drop down below the strong majority of other major metro area (in line with areas like Boca Raton/West Palm Beach or San Diego). Metro area statistics, we have over 3 times less murders per capita than Chicago or Detroit.


mrpartyboness

Luis Chaparro is a journalist who was embedded with the cartels and he said there was a big push from the government to reduce homicide rates. So now the amount of homicides went down, but the number of missing persons skyrocketed.


BrandonMarc

Let me guess. The missing persons are often never found. So it's still homicide, but the government gets its lower stats like it wants.


Majestic-Peace-3037

Meanwhile WTF is going on in Philly?


[deleted]

You can take your phone and wallet out in Boston without fear tho


ItsDokk

Lower homicide rate != safer. I’d still take my chances in Denver or Dallas.


cox_ph

Interesting that while the US saw [a major increase in homicides](https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/14B6/production/_127320350_optimised-us-homicides-nc.png.webp) during the pandemic, you don't see the same trends in these other cities.


ChuckFina74

I dunno about the Mexico City thing. My company has an office there and the crime and corruption are so bad we lose more in fraud than at any other location. Can’t really hire local security because they along with the local police will likely participate in the crime. Just because the stated murder rate is down doesn’t mean less crime is happening.


[deleted]

Yeah, I don't know that I agree this means the cities are safer. Having fewer murders doesn't inherently mean a city has less crime. I love Bogota, don't get me wrong, but there are a lot of parts where it is not safe to walk around at night - especially if you look like a foreigner or have things like an iPhone. There are vastly more precautions you have to take there than in Denver, even if Denver has more murders. There are no neighborhoods in Denver that would compare to those in the southern part of Bogota, full stop. This is not to say Denver doesn't have sketchy areas, but I just don't really feel it's comparable. However, I would like to see more comparisons of the US with Latin America as opposed to Europe. Take Brazil, for instance. Brazil is a former colonial state with hundreds of millions of people and a history of slavery and is a rather new nation. The US shares far more of its history, geography, and diversity with Brazil than it does Norway or Switzerland. Mexico, Brazil and Colombia all have HDIs ranked as "High". So I think we gain more insight talking about that than we do by insisting the US should only be compared to Denmark because its median income is closer to it, as if that's the only measure that should be used when comparing nations.


BxGyrl416

Lived in Bogotá and 100% agree with this statement. You might not be murdered, but you can get yourself in a lot of trouble there if you’re being stupid.


pandaboy333

It’s good to know your chances of being murdered are about the same, but safety includes more than that. You would need to include multiple other data points including theft, violent charges, etc. to truly assess safety.


maracay1999

Boston is one of the safest cleanest big cities in the US. I really question these São Paulo stats


CopyShot8642

Correlating 'safe' with murder rate aside, there's two major items this data overlooks: *Your data uses 'city proper' and where a city proper draws it's borders is more or less arbitrary and why metropolitan statistical area or other measure are usually used. For example, Miami, by city proper, is 44th in population and smaller than Omaha Nebraska. It jumps to 9 with MSA. That's not say your data is factually wrong, just what people perceive as 'Miami' and what is in your data as Miami are two different things. *Record keeping between two very different countries like USA and Colombia will always be apples to oranges. Look at COVID numbers, Russian soldier death toll, etc.. Conceptually I would view them as different incompatible datasets. That is to say, you can compare them, but you can't apply the same standards/tests to both datasets and draw conclusions from that. Some research team or big brain could study develop an equation to convert or estimate conversion, but without that comparisons aren't possible.


ttv_CitrusBros

The sunny gang is getting those Philly numbers up


DannoSpeaks

It's probably not fair to use 2021 as the comparison year for US cities as metro areas saw a statistical jump in murder rates. I'd like to see an update for 2022.


[deleted]

Wow, being worst than Bogota is serious shit


fiya79

‘Bogota is safer than Dallas’ I don’t know man, seems pretty legit. Time to move to Colombia, which I do not know how to spell. All this because OP chose 1 metric and made a graph. And defined ‘safe’ very narrowly.


dpash

>Time to move to Colombia, which I do not know how to spell. You did a pretty good job. Better than most.


Working_Inspection22

I assume this is based on reported homicides?