Safe and descent cities in Montogomery county (Baltimore, Silver Spring: low crime, how much)

[14thandYou]

Originally Posted by tercel95

People that live in places like Olney, Bethesda, and Potomac worked hard to get there

...

Aspen Hill, Wheaton and Silver Spring all of which I consider rough areas.

There are lots of misplaced assumptions being thrown around in your post, Tercel.

[14thandYou]

Originally Posted by cpterp

Okay, to Mr. and Mrs. "14th & You" I wrote that off the top of my head after a half a second of thought. I also think I was venting frustration, and calling the program "idiotic" was way too harsh. Let me first say that I am not an elitist, and I disagree with earlier posters who say that MoCo is virtually overun with crime (as you can see by my previous posts). There is a crime element in a few communities (something that is impossible to avoid with densely populated urban/suburban), and I do agree with previous posters that required low-income housing is a plausible culprit. I live in Germantown (which is an excellent CNN/Money top 100 community with relatively little crime), and I've seen and heard things that would support this.

Fair enough, however I would urge you to do some research on the subject of low-income housing and the efforts being made to undue the disaster and wretchedness that 1960s-1990s urban planning brought to the country; namely, that of large, poverty-ridden, crime-infested public housing complexes.

It's interesting, everyone wants to "do something" about poverty, but no one wants "those people" living in their neighborhood.

[tercel95]

Originally Posted by 14thandYou

There are lots of misplaced assumptions being thrown around in your post, Tercel.

"safe" and "rough" areas are a matter of opinion, I'm not assuming anything... You may think those areas are great and thats fine, but I disagree... I lived in Olney and I lived in Silver Spring... I have plenty of first-hand experiences with those areas...

[14thandYou]

Originally Posted by tercel95

I'm not assuming anything.

Originally Posted by tercel95

In MO county there just aren't many places you can live where you are not right down the street from a rough area

That's a pretty enormous assumption.

[tercel95]

Originally Posted by 14thandYou

That's a pretty enormous assumption.

I still stand by that statement, I have lived in Olney and Silver Spring... My sister lives in Germantown and my Dad has lived all over Mo county and DC...

I feel like I have enough experience in the area to say that there aren't many areas in Montgomery county that are even "mostly" isolated from the crime of the other areas...

What areas are "safe" in your opinion?

[14thandYou]

Originally Posted by tercel95

What areas are "safe" in your opinion?

Most of them. I lived in Gaithersburg for years prior to moving into DC. My wife grew up in MoCo, and both of us have numerous friends that live all over the county--from Silver Spring, to Olney, to Rockville, to Takoma, to Bethesda, to Potomac, to Germantown, to Kentlands, to Kensignton, to Chevy Chase...and no one we've ever known, and nothing we've ever experienced, have ever led us to conclude that these are, or are close to, "crime infested" neighborhoods.

Not every neighborhood in the county is free of crime of course, no place is. But MoCo is overall a very safe place to be. It's unfortunate that your perception is otherwise. But to say that there's hardly any place you can be in the county that isn't "just down the street" from some crime-ridden area is a far-fetched and unsubstantiated opinion. Nonsense, in fact, is how I would describe it.

[tercel95]

I'm talking from my own first hand experience, so call it nonsense all you want... When I lived in Silver Spring our house got broken into multiple times, that is when my Dad decided to move to Olney... In Olney I have been jumped, held at knife point, had our house broken into, had a number of things stolen from outside our house (including my power wheels, yes I am still bitter about that), our cars on the road were vandalized multiple times... I went to elementary middle and high school in Olney and I can remember seeing lots of drugs in the schools and a lot of the conduct that goes with drugs... I saw kids with guns and knives in the high school, fights all of the time, someone firebombed the computer lab, someone got stabbed at a football game... Perhaps you haven't seen things from a youthful perspective?

Maybe you are right and I just had a really bad experience... I'm not just talking out of my @ss here like you are trying to make it seem...

I use my time in Southern MD as a comparison... I finished up high school there... There was hardly any violent crime and crime as a whole was much less of an issue... The high school I went to was safe and I can only recall one or two fights the whole time I was there... Again perhaps I just had a traumatic childhood in Mo county but I felt so much safer in Southern MD...

[14thandYou]

Your experienced sucked, no doubt about it. And I'm sorry to hear about all of the issues you had. You're right, perceptions of safety are indeed very personal.

But they are also anecdotal, and if you examine crime rates and statistics for the County--which has nearly a million residents--the rates across the board are very, very low. I know that doesn't change your experience, but the statistics are what they are.

I grew up in an upper middle class suburb of Columbus, Ohio, and the crime rate was virtually non-existent. Still, my car was broken into twice, our garage was broken into, and I witnessed a knife fight behind our high school. One of my classmates raped a girl in the basement of the school, and a kid got arrested for flashing a gun in the hallway. And this was in one of the most affluent, high-performing school districts in the state. I'm not raising these examples to discount your experiences, but rather to point out that near any significant population center you will fiind this type of behavior. Sometimes it's worse or more frequent than others to be sure, but it's nearly always there.

[tercel95]

Originally Posted by 14thandYou

Your experienced sucked, no doubt about it. And I'm sorry to hear about all of the issues you had. You're right, perceptions of safety are indeed very personal.

But they are also anecdotal, and if you examine crime rates and statistics for the County--which has nearly a million residents--the rates across the board are very, very low. I know that doesn't change your experience, but the statistics are what they are.

I grew up in an upper middle class suburb of Columbus, Ohio, and the crime rate was virtually non-existent. Still, my car was broken into twice, our garage was broken into, and I witnessed a knife fight behind our high school. One of my classmates raped a girl in the basement of the school, and a kid got arrested for flashing a gun in the hallway. And this was in one of the most affluent, high-performing school districts in the state. I'm not raising these examples to discount your experiences, but rather to point out that near any significant population center you will fiind this type of behavior. Sometimes it's worse or more frequent than others to be sure, but it's nearly always there.

My Dad still lives in Olney and he doesn't run into too many issues anymore but he wants to leave for different reasons... He grew up in SE DC and I think he will finally move out west and get away from all of the congestion...

Perhaps I was around more of the crime because of my age and people I hung around with but my sister is 13 lives in Germantown and is having a lot of the same problems I had in Olney...

As a point of reference I just had no such issues in Southern MD... Two months ago I moved to Jacksonville, FL and experience no such issues here even with the population... Of course there are bad parts of Jacksonville as well but proportional to the size of DC and Baltimore the crime is much less pervasive...

I guess some people would disagree but when I would visit my Dad and get off of the beltway and drive down Georgia avenue it looked pretty shady and rough almost until you got to Olney...

There were parts of Olney that I liked and places like Bethesda and Potomac still appeal to me but I don't see how anyone can justify the cost of living in those places... To me NO place is worth what it costs to live there... I hope to move back to MD one day but after living in FL I just don't feel like MD will ever be worth the price of admission...

[cpterp]

Originally Posted by tercel95

To Cpterp we disagree on this all of the time but allow me to explain my viewpoint... While I don't neccesarily think the Montgomery county is overrun with crime I like to apply the rule of proximity... In MO county there just aren't many places you can live where you are not right down the street from a rough area... Olney for instance seems like a really nice area but its right down the street from Aspen Hill, Wheaton and Silver Spring all of which I consider rough areas... There is no magic fence that keeps all of the crime out... I was a bit of a rough kid when I was growing up so I can attest to crime in the area...

Well I can definitely understand that. For instance if it was Arlington bordered SE DC and not PG County, the latter probably wouldn't have the highest suburban crime rate. Remember though that Silver Spring and Wheaton have improved in recent times, with Duncan's redevelopment of Downtown and other improvements. So, the area is probably safer now than when you were living there as a kid.

It's interesting to read your last post about Jacksonville. I have an aunt and uncle living there now, and I've visited a few times, and the area seemed pretty nice, until my uncle told me that it was the murder capital of the country (or something to that effect). I honestly didn't believe him after spending so much time in what seemed to be a very livable \, low-crime city, but where he's living is virtually spotless as far as crime is concerned and apparently there are some very bad areas. Also, I was talking to a European foreign exchange student about a month ago who stayed in Jacksonville, and he said he hated it. He said that the city was still practically segregated and divided between really poor, heavily-minority areas and wealthier areas with very few minorities (the exact reason MoCo has the low-income housing requirement). I have yet to see this for myself though, and to me Jacksonville is still a very nice city.