Crime stats give clues to how bad...

Crime stats another method to judge how bad it is... but to get a real sense of how things truly are you have to look at the current stats for cities not prone to violence.... not places we know are bad like Detroit and Chicago...

Since I live out west I'll share two some what safe big western cities
San Francisco CA
And
Portland OR
to be fair I will include my own city
Albuquerque NM

When you click on the links keep in mind the map defaults to only show crimes that have occurred within the past 14 days... when you look at all those symbols keep in mind crimes of all types have gone up at least 30% over this same time last year...60% for San Francisco...already it's become clear local law enforcement is past strained but with more budget cutbacks it's only a matter of time before these places just explode!

wow, over 500 crime reports in SF in 14 days...um scary

This is utterly disturbing! Great thread!

What is "Proactive Policing"?

I noticed in the SF stats that that's by far the biggest category, following by Traffic.

Seeing as how this IS a conspiracy web-site I would like to say;

Couldn't this also be representative of the establishment 'classifying' and reporting crimes differently? Or perhaps diminishing police presence in certain areas to increase the numbers?

There's a plus side to this for law enforcement. They get to ask for more funding, justified by the statistics. Also, there are numerous 'commercial' policing corporations out there..., all vying for contracts to 'help' in law enforcement. Privatization is a problem, especially when the corporate concerns that benefit from the figures are the same as the one's who will provide the 'solution.'

Just a thought.

[edit on 20-11-2008 by Maxmars]

I've noticed a jump in crime from the police blotter where I am but they arent the typical "I've got no job and need money" like theft. It's a spike in petty vandalism (no, not metal thefts) and druken/intoxicated public stumbling.

Stupid crime for stupid crimes sake committed by stupid people who, as a taxpayer, I have the unfortunate pleasure of supporting.

reply to post by Maxmars

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Normally I would agree with you but one thing to take into account is these cities rely heavily on tourists and high crime stats are not the types of thing you want inflate... not when money is so tight... if anything you notice the cities like Dallas and Phoenix refuse to post their stats... Phoenix seriously does not the world to know the Mexican drug war had spilled into their seemingly quiet retirement community,,,but it has and in a big way... for the most part we can assume the numbers shown are jilted towards the low end...

I have no reason to believe that a conspiracy is in place. I was just pointing out that crime-control is a profitable business, and there are those who have taken advantage of such scenarios before. All in all, I think you are correct.

Because I gave reference to Phoenix and the Mexican Drug wars I added that as a separate story you can read there here.
Mexican Drug war post

reply to post by DaddyBare

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Uh, I was born & raised in New Mexico and parts of Albuquerque have always been widely considered to be a butcher shop where gang violence & just seemingly random acts of crime are concerned. I also lived 5 years in Arizona, from 2001 to 2006. Phoenix & Tucson were both hotbeds of crime ranging from some of the highest vehicle theft rates in the nation to encompassing some of the largest concentrations of meth labs.

I cannot speak for any other place you mentioned, but I think at least where Arizona & New Mexico are concerned, this has been building since long before the current economic disaster.

If I may, this is very true. But I suspect the economic trouble has exasperated the middle-tier members of a large international black market. Crime collectively (although organized predominantly) are stratified similarly to the rest of society. There is a middle-class there as well. When they need money, crime will rise. The big boys don't really feel it, and the poor they feed off of have always been at the lower strata of both markets - so the economic downturn is effectively salt for the perpetual wounds of life.

There is an element of society that survives on crime and crime alone. When our currency fails they compensate by 'enhancing' their revenue flow - at the expense of us all. Sound familiar?

your quite right of course... the southwest has long been home to groups ranging from small local gangs to the biggies like the Russian and Mexican mafia lets face it we border Mexico and they bring in drugs and take away cash and young girls... what you all didn't really think so many kids just run away to be with their boyfriends did you?.... but even then those crimes were not so numerous and in the case of a recent shooting in downtown Phoenix never involved fully automatic weapons before!

Hmm..nice site, but I'm having trouble manipulating the data. It won't change the data displayed. For example it won't show crime data from 9/08-10/08...is it a firefox issue or a site issue?

I first posted this back in Nov. Now that I revisited the cities over all crime has more then doubled