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From July 2nd to August 3rd, 20 people were shot in Roxbury alone.
Roxbury is about 4 square miles. Roxbury is about 45,000 people. This is a MONTH.
Thats 5 shot people per square mile for the month. Or 60 for the year. This is excluding stabbings.
Now I know people are go into why, how, whats wrong with Roxbury residents, and how at least its not West Baltimore and such, but that's not what I want to discuss. I just want to see if anyone else thinks Boston's crime rate is artificially low because of the number and proximity of high quality Hospitals in the area.
Over the Past 10 years Boston averages about 250 shootings and 50-60 homicides a year. Do you think that number would be higher if Boston wasn't chock full of good hospitals? Furthermore how high do you think the homicide rate would be we had more lax, more normal gun control laws. From here I ask what is it about Boston's inner city residents that makes them so...extreme? Remember in Boston your likely not to get caught if you kill somebody. 336+ unsolved murders in ten years.
Someone on the site compared Boston to Hartford and I had this response:
Hartford is really just an inner city though..this year its going through a rough phase. I think last year it had 18 or 19 homicides. The truth, the deep truth is. Roxbury and parts of Mattapan/Dorchester are the worst in New England, by far.
The amount of money poured into Boston's inner city neighborhoods + the wealth just 2 miles away + the sophistication of the Boston police + and the amount of community organizations against crime PLUS the toughest gun laws in the nation. And Boston still isn't one of the safest cities.
Odds still are in Boston if you shoot and kill someone you'll get away with it.. Boston has around 150 unorganized and reckless gangs that regular post 250+ shootings in a 15 square mile are of DRM. 250 shootings each year for 40 years in the same teeny tiny area. Boston gangs are huge 'no snitch' advocates and the only reason we don't have a homicide rate like Hartford's is because we have much better access to hospitals throughout the city and a better Shot Spotter system. Hartford police are not only underfunded, but they don't live in the city and therefore don't really care. If you put Boston thugs into Hartford they'd take the city over in 8 or 9 months easy.
I love the city. Normally feel safe in the city. THe city does betetr than other cities in a lot of aspects of crime. But why isn't Boston basically Seattle San Jose or San Diego? Is it simply a default of being on the east coast and the northeast? Or is it really a lack of oppurtunity. vv
All cities have misleading murder rates. The classification of murder is where they fudge the numbers to make it look safer than reality. Is crime and violent crime down since the 80s? Yes, definitely, but here is a degree of concealment going on, mostly to protect those in charge and keep their positions of power.
I think it is artificially low and high at the same time. I know that sounds confusing but let me explain.
The city limits and boundaries of Boston are very small and the Metro area so fragmented that some of the worst areas in New England are all located within the small Boston Proper boundaries. If Boston was laid out like most cities in the country, places like Cambridge, Somerville and Brookline would definitely be included and in turn drop the homicide rate even further than it is now. Many of the areas that are part of the urban fabric of the area are not included and also happen to be extremely safe with low homicide rates.
Conversely I do agree with your point regarding the areas hospital system. I work in the HC Industry and the hospital system we have here in Boston is regarded as not only the best in the country but the world. Industry people in other countries even go out of their way to comment on how rare it is to have this many high performing Level 1 Trauma centers within such a small distance of downtown Boston. Many of the people shot here in Boston would have died if it happened in many other cities, there is no way possible to deny that fact.
Another factor is due to strong gun control restrictions and laws, the weapons that the gangs have access to here are many times dated compared to other cities. I am not saying the gangs here are running around with BB Guns, but just sit down and watch a huge gang bust here in Boston and when they "put the weapons and dope on the table" What they confiscate is not as heavy as alot of other cities. I used to live in Central and South Florida and you should see the weapons that they come up with on those raids, weapons that are on another level and significantly more lethal than what is readily available here in Boston.
From July 2nd to August 3rd, 20 people were shot in Roxbury alone.
Roxbury is about 4 square miles. Roxbury is about 45,000 people. This is a MONTH.
Thats 5 shot people per square mile for the month. Or 60 for the year. This is excluding stabbings.
Drawing conclusions on the basis of a single month are an outright abuse of statistics.
Month to month has huge variations, not to mention that summer is by far the peak of shooting incidents on an annual basis. I could just as easily cite February where probably no one got shot and say crime rates are really low.
Similarly, talking about "people shot per square mile" is a piece of data that makes absolutely no sense from any perspective....population densities vary. 1 person shot per square mile in a rural area might mean that half the town got shot. 1 person shot per square mile in Manhattan would be pretty impressively low.
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Now I know people are go into why, how, whats wrong with Roxbury residents, and how at least its not West Baltimore and such, but that's not what I want to discuss. I just want to see if anyone else thinks Boston's crime rate is artificially low because of the number and proximity of high quality Hospitals in the area.
Over the Past 10 years Boston averages about 250 shootings and 50-60 homicides a year. Do you think that number would be higher if Boston wasn't chock full of good hospitals? Furthermore how high do you think the homicide rate would be we had more lax, more normal gun control laws. From here I ask what is it about Boston's inner city residents that makes them so...extreme? Remember in Boston your likely not to get caught if you kill somebody. 336+ unsolved murders in ten years.
Boston's medical centers are great, but in most cases that more matters for people seeking specialty treatments. A city with a lot of violent crime is also a city that's going to have an ER more experienced with handling it. I doubt there's really that material of a difference.
MA has fairly weak gun control, and is also bordered by states with nearly nonexistent gun control (such as VT and NH). Regardless of your opinion on whether or not gun control is a good idea, it seems rather unlikely that it's having a significant effect on keeping criminals from getting their hands on guns given what goes on right next door.
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Someone on the site compared Boston to Hartford and I had this response:
Hartford is really just an inner city though..this year its going through a rough phase. I think last year it had 18 or 19 homicides. The truth, the deep truth is. Roxbury and parts of Mattapan/Dorchester are the worst in New England, by far.
So we are comparing the worst neighborhoods of one city (Boston) against the whole of another city (Hartford)? That's not a very valid comparison.
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The amount of money poured into Boston's inner city neighborhoods + the wealth just 2 miles away + the sophistication of the Boston police + and the amount of community organizations against crime PLUS the toughest gun laws in the nation. And Boston still isn't one of the safest cities.
I'd like to see what crime rates look like if you gave Boston more normal and sane borders. Boston has most of the better parts of the city cut out of it, which gives you a higher crime rate overall. By the standards of most other "safe" cities, Boston ought to include Brookline and Cambridge at minimum, more likely a lot of the other close in towns as well.
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Odds still are in Boston if you shoot and kill someone you'll get away with it.. Boston has around 150 unorganized and reckless gangs that regular post 250+ shootings in a 15 square mile are of DRM. 250 shootings each year for 40 years in the same teeny tiny area. Boston gangs are huge 'no snitch' advocates and the only reason we don't have a homicide rate like Hartford's is because we have much better access to hospitals throughout the city and a better Shot Spotter system. Hartford police are not only underfunded, but they don't live in the city and therefore don't really care. If you put Boston thugs into Hartford they'd take the city over in 8 or 9 months easy.
"250+ shootings in a 15 square mile area"? Didn't you just say above that the whole city has 250 shootings? Are there none elsewhere in the city?
Yes, bad areas have typically been bad areas for a while. I don't think gangs or criminals in general are ever fond of "snitches".
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I love the city. Normally feel safe in the city. THe city does betetr than other cities in a lot of aspects of crime. But why isn't Boston basically Seattle San Jose or San Diego? Is it simply a default of being on the east coast and the northeast? Or is it really a lack of oppurtunity. vv
Seattle has a FAR more homogenous population and only half the % of population in poverty as Boston does. San Jose is even more extraordinarily wealthy.
Gun control laws don't stop criminals from getting guns. Anyone who thinks they do is delusional.
I think the issue with crime in Boston is that most violent crime occurs in a few poor neighborhoods that were basically written off by most as dangerous a long time ago. That coupled with a strong no snitch policy pretty much gives gangs free reign to do whatever they want as long as they don't try to branch out into other areas.
Here I thought this latest round of gun control legislation in MA was going to make us safer.
Over the Past 10 years Boston averages about 250 shootings and 50-60 homicides a year.Do you think that number would be higher if Boston wasn't chock full of good hospitals? yes
Furthermore how high do you think the homicide rate would be we had more lax, more normal gun control laws. no different. the gun laws in MA really only effect the law abiding. The assault weapon ban, LTC restrictions are not reducing crime. Reality is a specific segment of society is committing a vast majority of these crimes, they are not the law abiding LTC holders.
Drawing conclusions on the basis of a single month are an outright abuse of statistics.
Month to month has huge variations, not to mention that summer is by far the peak of shooting incidents on an annual basis. I could just as easily cite February where probably no one got shot and say crime rates are really low.
Similarly, talking about "people shot per square mile" is a piece of data that makes absolutely no sense from any perspective....population densities vary. 1 person shot per square mile in a rural area might mean that half the town got shot. 1 person shot per square mile in Manhattan would be pretty impressively low.
Boston's medical centers are great, but in most cases that more matters for people seeking specialty treatments. A city with a lot of violent crime is also a city that's going to have an ER more experienced with handling it. I doubt there's really that material of a difference.
MA has fairly weak gun control, and is also bordered by states with nearly nonexistent gun control (such as VT and NH). Regardless of your opinion on whether or not gun control is a good idea, it seems rather unlikely that it's having a significant effect on keeping criminals from getting their hands on guns given what goes on right next door.
So we are comparing the worst neighborhoods of one city (Boston) against the whole of another city (Hartford)? That's not a very valid comparison.
I'd like to see what crime rates look like if you gave Boston more normal and sane borders. Boston has most of the better parts of the city cut out of it, which gives you a higher crime rate overall. By the standards of most other "safe" cities, Boston ought to include Brookline and Cambridge at minimum, more likely a lot of the other close in towns as well.
"250+ shootings in a 15 square mile area"? Didn't you just say above that the whole city has 250 shootings? Are there none elsewhere in the city?
Yes, bad areas have typically been bad areas for a while. I don't think gangs or criminals in general are ever fond of "snitches".
Seattle has a FAR more homogenous population and only half the % of population in poverty as Boston does. San Jose is even more extraordinarily wealthy.
Shootings per square mile is too say that A lot of people SEE these murders and bare the psychological effects.
Im taking this one month because this is a relatively low crime year compared to virtually the last 25 years preceding it. Im taking this high crime month in a low crime year to be representative of the lived situation on average (if there is such a thing) for the year.
I say in DRM because 80% of shootings happen in Roxbury Dorchester and Mattapan.
Also I feel like Cambridge Brookline and other nice parts of the metro have been staying separate for Boston for a REASON (crime and unwanted ethnicities..) for hundreds of years now. They voted down annexation.
I compare Boston to Hartford because Hartford is 17 square miles of which. $ square miles of which is nearly uninhabited...(South Meadows and North Meadows) So its really only 13 square miles. About the same land mass as Roxbury Dorchester and Mattapan Combined.
Im using summer crime figures becuase thats what people are really concerned about anyway.
I appreciate your Seattle and San Jose comparisons. I agree, but often times Boston residents dont take into account the demographics of the city, many would still argue, rightfully so that if Boston was Seattle's size the demographics would be the same. But my argument is Boston wouldnt be the size of Seattle, ever. The city, has historically been culturally different from the surrounding towns and thats part of why its historically developed it's own cultures (many of which were negative) and didn't annexx out endlessly. Its a farce to think Watertown is the same as Boston neighborhoods, even the nicest Boston neighborhoods...more socially conservative, more parochial, more religious)
Also I feel like Cambridge Brookline and other nice parts of the metro have been staying separate for Boston for a REASON (crime and unwanted ethnicities..) for hundreds of years now. They voted down annexation.... But my argument is Boston wouldnt be the size of Seattle, ever. The city, has historically been culturally different from the surrounding towns and thats part of why its historically developed it's own cultures (many of which were negative) and didn't annex out endlessly. Its a farce to think Watertown is the same as Boston neighborhoods, even the nicest Boston neighborhoods...more socially conservative, more parochial, more religious)
The annexation problems were over 100 years ago and I don't think crime was the issue so much as the old "local control" thing. In Boston as in Hartford, it was never just one settlement that got bigger, but many settlements and some of them rivals to one another. Cambridge wasn't just some non-entity in the path of Boston's growth; it had its own identity and governance from the beginning. Most of these towns didn't want to be acquired by anyone else. In fact there's been more splitting up than annexation over the years, with towns like Chelsea and Watertown, once with 100 or more square miles of territory, breaking up into several different towns and being reduced to very small areas. Same with Charlestown, but there, what remained after all the spinoffs joined up with Boston rather than continuing to go it alone. Brookline is a little different-- apparently it did belong to Boston once but got independence early in the 19th century. Later on in the century, after becoming a wealthy suburban enclave, it declined joining up again. Someone compared West Roxbury to Brookline saying that in Brookline they figured out how to provide high quality municipal services to undercut the annexation appeal. In West Roxbury they kept taxes low and didn't provide much in the way of town services and by the time of the annexation vote people said yes because Boston would bring quality water, streets, lighting, sewerage, and other things the town government wasn't up to providing.
The annexation problems were over 100 years ago and I don't think crime was the issue so much as the old "local control" thing. In Boston as in Hartford, it was never just one settlement that got bigger, but many settlements and some of them rivals to one another. Cambridge wasn't just some non-entity in the path of Boston's growth; it had its own identity and governance from the beginning. Most of these towns didn't want to be acquired by anyone else. In fact there's been more splitting up than annexation over the years, with towns like Chelsea and Watertown, once with 100 or more square miles of territory, breaking up into several different towns and being reduced to very small areas. Same with Charlestown, but there, what remained after all the spinoffs joined up with Boston rather than continuing to go it alone. Brookline is a little different-- apparently it did belong to Boston once but got independence early in the 19th century. Later on in the century, after becoming a wealthy suburban enclave, it declined joining up again. Someone compared West Roxbury to Brookline saying that in Brookline they figured out how to provide high quality municipal services to undercut the annexation appeal. In West Roxbury they kept taxes low and didn't provide much in the way of town services and by the time of the annexation vote people said yes because Boston would bring quality water, streets, lighting, sewerage, and other things the town government wasn't up to providing.
I would agree with the local control thing but have to make two other points.
I beg to differ in that Crime was most definitely an issue. By the mid to late 1800s and certainly by 1900 many people didnt want to be living in close quarters to the Jews Irish and Italians living in Roxbury South End South Boston Dorchester Mattapan etc...there was definitely a worry of ethnic mixing and crime. Remember the Brookline of 100+ years ago was a country suburb, much of it country, and almost all of it entirely gentile and WASP.
Also eventually, throughout the course of the 20th century by the mid 20th century, when annexation was still feasible, to allow a then cramped Boston to spread its development more evenly, these cities and towns had developed their own cultures, that made them different from much of the city of Boston. Sommerville an irish thug type thing. Cambridge was a townie/hippie another thing. Chelsea/Revere was a jewish/italian thing. Brookline was the waspy/liberal thing. Although, the entire area had a workign class feel to it Boston was its own very unique thing, and alot of that has to do with its sheer size and just being designated as Boston and thus 'a big city' and alot of it has African Americans living almost exclusively in Boston in the Boston metro until the 90s and 2000s. Other towns simply developed a culture void of African Americans and thus racial violence or even self segregation, and I think thats part of it.
Boston has a lot of safe upper class areas and a small number of safe middle class areas which makes it different than Hartford, which is a much more dangerous city overall year in and year out.
I would say that in New England sections of Hartford and Springfield are more dangerous than any place in Boston, though there are some sections that close. Even the worst sections of Boston have redeemable qualities where these other cities are very rundown outside of specific neighborhoods
Maybe the Boston gangs could take over smaller cities, maybe they already run those cities and send the loose screws to enforce things while they enjoy the amenities and relative tranquility of Boston? who knows really
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