On The Media

Just another arrogant opinion by somebody that doesn't count. Anybody that lives in Detroit knows it's a scary place and in fact the # of murders is UNDERSTATED - not overstated. What are they supposed to do - ignore this reality? Papers publish all kinds of speculation about globalm warming everyday - where is this bozo when that happens?

I look forward to driving this fool around Detroit something and letting him enjoy the view.

Gene Wiley

So what investments does Rosenfeld have in St. Louis. In spite of its expensive p.r. campaign, St. Louis is a more dangerous city than Mafia-dominated Camden, N.J., or gang-infested Oakland, Calif. Instead of claiming this is unfair, criminologists would do better to try and correct the situation, reform the corrupt St. Louis police department, and get law enforcement to attack political corruption. How a city located in the idyllic and innocent midwest could be more dangerous than Camden, N.J. (I have visited there, and what a horror it really is) says volumes that something has desparately wrong in St. Louis.

Rosenfeld's response is a typical attack the messenger instead of dealing with the root problem. It's not just a one-year issue: St. Louis has ranked among nation's most crime-riddled cities for many years. The FBI says St. Louis was 3rd in per capita crime in 2000, 3rd in 2001, 1st in 2002, 2nd in 2003, 3rd in 2004, 3rd in 2005, and it won the top prize again in 2006. Oh, but the crime statistics are unfair because they don't include the (low-crime) suburbs, city defenders say. Utter nonsense. Tell that to the crippled, dead and other unfortunates who tried walking the streets of this crime-riddled horror of a metropolis.

PLACES WHERE YOU'RE

ALL THE RICHER

FOR A ROBBERY

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According to the AP, Mission Viejo in California has just won the label of “safest” because its criminal statistics score was a MINUS 82. Hey, what’s going on? Are bad guys on the Coast so mellow they just sashay around doing the Lord’s Work? It makes you wonder.

For instance, in cities where crime is at a "negative":

-- Do their flashers only flash Public Service Messages?

-- Do their burglars always vacuum up before leaving?

-- Do their muggers tip their ski masks everytime they mug a little old lady – and then escort her across a busy intersection?

-- And, the first time bank robbers enter a new bank branch, do they give the teller a toaster?

Hey don’t get me wrong, I kind of like the idea of hardened criminals going around doing good works. I can just see a Southern chain gang working on a rural highway, wearing those big Martha Stewart floppy gardening hats as they scatter wildflower seeds and herbs by the roadside.

You can learn a lot from an evil-doer . . . or from a statistician.

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Warren Berry is an editor and writer now based (safely) in New York who lived in Hollywood when it still had a crime rate worth boasting about and Washington when it was just entering the bigtime.

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I think his main point was that looking at the raw data that the FBI and other agencies compile can be misleading in the sense that looking at the overall crime rate of a city is not an accurate picture of the crime rate there. I actually relate to and take comfort in his point that comparing NEIGHBORHOODS is more accurate than comparing cities. For example, I grew up in Atlanta - a high crime city historically - and I lived in an area that was more or less safe but if you drove 5 minutes down the road you didn't feel so great. Now I live right outside Baltimore and I'll tell you that there are areas where I feel comfortable and others that I will not go into. It's not that the entire city of Baltimore is unsafe, or that the entire city of Atlanta is unsafe.... but certainly within those cities there are neighborhoods that clearly have more crime than others. It is, in my opinion, and in Dr. Rosenfeld's, that comparing crime rates city to city is misleading OVERALL.