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Old 10-07-2016, 01:42 AM
 
Location: Charleston, WV
91 posts, read 133,991 times
Reputation: 51

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Living on the West Side of Charleston, I find that people have somewhat exaggerated how dangerous it is here. I've been on the West Side for almost 2 years now, and I've never truly felt uncomfortable walking at night out here. Before I got my car, I used to have to do it every night to get home from work, and I've been just fine.

yet there are people I know who act like it's a war zone or something.

And these same people act like Huntington should be avoided at all cost, because it is too dangerous.

I'm wondering how much of that danger is just "typical of any city" type stuff, and how much of is actually legit problems that are particular to Huntington.
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Old 10-07-2016, 06:14 AM
 
Location: Huntington, WV
4,934 posts, read 8,880,544 times
Reputation: 931
From my experience, Huntington is only dangerous if you participate in risky and dangerous activity. If you pay close attention to the news reports when something does happen, it involves people doing things that are typically against the law. I've lived in the city proper for 8 years now, walking to work every day and walking many other places I've needed to go and I've never had an issue. If one simply takes some precautions and uses common sense strategies that most law enforcement agencies will tell you to use, it's pretty easy to avoid crime. Most crime seems to be centered in the West End and the Fairfield East neighborhoods but they currently have strategies in place to help bring those numbers down.

My guess for the people in Charleston claiming that Huntington is worse, they are downplaying or ignoring their own issues while over exaggerating those in Huntington. If you actually look at the crime statistics (2014 was the most recent year I could find for both) Charleston actually has over twice the violent crime rate of Huntington. When you take the number of violent crimes and multiply to get a rate per 100,000 people, Charleston had a 2014 rate of 1,227 while Huntington had a rate of 595. Plus, just paying attention to the news, it seems that violent crime happens at a far higher rate there than here. The City of Huntington has worked hard for sometime to change the nature of downtown and we haven't had shooting or other major incident in the downtown area for several years now.

So come visit, walk around and draw your own conclusions. Here's where I got the data from to if you'd like to look at other info. And remember, to get a crime rate per 100,000, you have to take the population of the city, divide that into 100,000 and multiple the number of crimes by the resulting number. Let me know if you have any other questions.

https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s..._City_2014.xls

http://www.hpdwv.com/docs/HPDReport_2014_web.pdf
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Old 10-07-2016, 07:31 AM
 
Location: West Virginia
16,583 posts, read 15,505,007 times
Reputation: 10820
I don't know where you got the impression that Huntington is more dangerous than Charleston. Both cities have some areas that are best avoided if you can. This usually means that there have been some drug related crimes in those areas, often involving firearms. Somebody made a comment about Charleston's East End in another thread, but failed to narrow things down to that part of the East End north of Washington St. between the baseball park and the Capitol Complex. Same issue applies on the West Side. It depends on where on the West Side. JMadFour probably knows the details of that area better than most.

TBailey know Huntington well. There are a few areas in the city that have the same problems that Charleston has. If you have an area in mind, ask him about it. My direct experience is too many years ago to be helpful. (Areas I knew to be problems have been leveled and rebuilt since I lived in Huntington.) I've got family living in Huntington now, and try to get there a few times a year to go to a game, but TBailey is there every day. Trust his advice about Huntington. I know one area is safe enough that the grandkids can have free rein of the neighborhood.
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Old 10-07-2016, 09:05 AM
 
Location: Charleston, WV
91 posts, read 133,991 times
Reputation: 51
I mostly got the notion from people I work with who know I am planning to move. I'm thinking that maybe they are just being snobby about it. They were iffy on Morgantown as well, but for different reasons.

Either way, I have a car now so I can make the trip more often. I gotta go up to the VA Hospital at some point soon anyway.

Last edited by JMadFour; 10-07-2016 at 09:22 AM..
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Old 10-07-2016, 05:37 PM
 
583 posts, read 577,739 times
Reputation: 502
Up until a couple of years ago I would have said that overall Huntington is more dangerous but now I'm not sure that's the case. Shootings(sometimes multiple) seem to be making the headlines for Charleston much more often than in Huntington.

Plus there's a lot more vagrants in Charleston now than I've ever seen with no visible attempt being taken by the city to remove them other than taking out benches in various locations. These folks also now tend to be from out-of-town and exhibit more aggressive behavior than the local bums. It would be interesting to find out where they are coming from and who is sending them in and put a stop to it. Bigger cities are exporting their problems here and we have enough problems of our own without adding in some new ones.
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Old 10-07-2016, 05:47 PM
 
Location: Huntington, WV
4,934 posts, read 8,880,544 times
Reputation: 931
Again though, I would have to argue that is perception more than reality. Huntington has almost always had a lower violent crime rate than Charleston. Just look back through the crime rates.
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