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From: geb@cadre.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.flame,net.politics
Subject: Re: Crime in New York
Message-ID: <155@cadre.ARPA>
Date: Sat, 12-Jan-85 13:21:26 EST
Article-I.D.: cadre.155
Posted: Sat Jan 12 13:21:26 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 15-Jan-85 00:59:46 EST
References: <166@abnji.UUCP>
Reply-To: geb@cadre.ARPA (Gordon E. Banks)
Organization: Decision Systems Lab., Univ. of Pgh.
Lines: 30
Xref: watmath net.flame:7677 net.politics:6831
Summary: 


>Actually, it is rather amusing to hear people complain about crime in
>New York City when it is 10th in the United States in violent crime.
>

Actually, it is amusing to hear people quote such statistics.
I am originally from Albuquerque, and lived in Chicago for
8 years.  Before I went to Chicago, there was a sensational
story in the Albuquerque papers concerning the fact that Albuquerque's
crime rate was one of the highest in the nation, including Chicago
and NYC.  Now certainly there is a lot of petty crime there, and
a lot of burglery too, but mugging was unheard of, and in order
to get shot or stabbed you had to frequent the wrong bars or
the wrong peoples wives.  After going to school in Chicago for
4 years, probably about a third of my medical school
classmates had experienced personally some form of person-to-person 
crime, and several of them (out of a population of about 100) were injured.
Several others had been present when one of their companions was
shot or otherwise seriously injured.  All my life in Albuquerque,
I had never known anyone who had been mugged.  So, the caveat
is to ask what kind of crime?  Another problem is much of the crime
in NY and Chicago goes unreported, since the police have very
little interest in it unless someone was killed or a bank was robbed.

(Fortunately all I personally ever lost was in Chicago was my
car radio.  However I narrowly escaped a mugging when two large
teenagers sprang out of the bushes while riding my bicycle on
the lake front and chased me until I was able to outdistance them.
I have also had my car broken into in NYC, on one of my few visits there.)