Drugs and gang activity; worse in cities or rural? (Charlotte: sales, crime)

[Skout]

Originally Posted by enlightenme

These crime stats that Sperling and city-data report are confusing me! I looked up the Winston-Salem area and was shocked by their high numbers. I asked a realtor about it and she was puzzled and laughed. She said she has never felt like the area had bad crime and has grown up their her whole life. But, then when I looked up in a town in my area which I know has bad crime and gangs first hand, it had lower crime stats than Winston-Salem. So, what gives??? Are these reports accurate?

I see you like those "stats" too. Sperlings seems to be right on for the areas I looked up. Kinda wondering about that too.

[Skout]

Not sure about that. Those guys are making more money now and buying houses and becoming your neighbor. Haven't you heard people on the news? They say..."I never knew he was doing that". If there is no trailer park, they have to make it some where. Supply and demand.

[LauraC]

The gang thing isn't overplayed and overhyped. In some of the most affluent counties of Maryland and Northern Virginia, gang related crime by MS-13 is really bad. They're using the FBI to take down these gangs now, it is so out of control.

Most people don't do this but you can set up a News Alert on Google News that will search for your key word(s) in any online newspaper across the country (and some international) so that anytime your keyword is mentioned in the media you get an e-mail with a link to the story. You can set it up so that you get this e-mail just once a day with all of the links or as it happens.

It's a very useful tool for you to stay on top of the latest information on any subject.

[Kacy]

I see this thread about people reading high crime rates statstics for certain areas. Often it does not mean they have a lot of crime, but for the size of the pop. it is considered high. For instance 3 murders in a place with a pop. of say 15,000 & 3 murders in a place with a pop. of 100,000 are still 3 murders, but in a small town it is more significant.
it is just an average they come up with. Don't know I have explained it well or not.
Almost all cities have an area that one doesn't go into, I lived in Washington DC area and most of the city was very safe; crime rate was very high but then they also have a large low income area and most of the crime takes place there. Atlanta is the same way!
Instead of using publications that are made for general reading, I usually try to get something directly from the city to see for myself.
On Hendersonville NC, when I lived outside of Brevard we use to go to Hendersonville; at that time it had more retired people than younger families.
Whenever we are looking at a new area I always try to contact a realtor who is willing to take us around and show us the place and point out areas that one might not want to consider living in.
When checking out the Triangle, we had a realtor who was born and raised in Raleigh, he knew we weren't seriously house hunting just trying to determine if the area was for us; he took us all around Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill and Cary, telling us what each area was like. He sold us on the area & we are currently planning on moving to Raleigh, it is a friendly and clean city. Most real estate offices have realtors that specialize in relocation and are willing to spend the time with you; knowing that it might mean a sale in the future. This is a good way to see a place and get info. Many TV stations in decent size cities have websites; another good way to find out what goes on in a place on a daily basis.
We retired in 1995, left Northern Va and we are on our 5th move so I have figured out how to go about checking a place out.

[mm34b]

Originally Posted by eva-girl

I like Hendersonville but:

city-data reports for Hendersonville:

# City-data.com crime index = 645.3 (higher means more crime, US average = 321.8)

And, Sperling's reports:

violent crime an 8 with 3 being the national average
property crime a 7 with 3 being the national average

Both sites don't paint a very good picture of Hendersonville. Additionally, it appears there is a large influx of undocumented workers and the taxes are going up and they are even quarreling about building a new school there. Not saying that undocumented workers always translates into increased crime; however, with the published crime rate already high, I am uneasy about Hendersonville. Think I will consider just putting up with possible meth labs in the Madison or Yancey area and hope the people do 'keep' to themselves. I don't bother them and they dont' bother me.

I did some further research on my hometown of Hendersonville, NC with a population of around 11K. Hendersonville has 3 zip codes and 1 more for post office boxholders only. When I check crime on Sperling's for Hendersonville and use the city name as an identifier, it says Violent Crime - "8" & Property Crime is a "7" with the U.S. Average being a "3" & "3".

When I use Hendersonville's 3 zip codes as an identifier I get the following results:

28792 - "3" & "3"

28791 - "4" & "5"

28739 - "5" & "5"

As you can see, even if Sperling's took an average of the crime rankings of all of Hendersonville's zip codes, they still would not end up with a "8" & "7". The only conclusion I can see is that the numbers are faulty or Sperling's definition of "Hendersonville" includes more than the Hendersonville area. My advice would be to search on a specific zip code for the area in question instead of the city name.

[emann65]

you may want to try "city-data" site for stats on everything. (http://www.city-data.com/city/Canton...-Carolina.html) is an example of Canton NC stats provided by this site. I have found the increase in crime stats are generally due to the increase in population. Western NC is definately growing. As far as gangs, I migrated to Western NC from New York and have found the gang thing to be way overrated down here and a whole let less serious crime related to "gang activity". I think most of these folks in this thread are correct in saying the media is hungry for news brecause there "aint much goin on". I think you need to worry more about things like going into a pub with a anti-bush t-shirt rather than gang activity.

[Sugar Magnolia]

That is what I thought as well after our visit. I think me and my tee shirts will be the biggest gangsters in town. hehehe. It is all relative to what you are used to. Plus, gangs aren't the cause of all of the crime. Where we live its the hoodlum college kids who are causing all of the trouble with armed robberies and drug dealing and shooting up parties. These are affluent kids with supposedly a lot going for them who are being busted, not gang members.

Don't get me wrong, I don't want to live among gang activity any more than anyone else does, but I just think that what I preceive is bad and what others do is going to be different because of what I'm used to being around.

Originally Posted by emann65

you may want to try "city-data" site for stats on everything. (http://www.city-data.com/city/Canton...-Carolina.html) is an example of Canton NC stats provided by this site. I have found the increase in crime stats are generally due to the increase in population. Western NC is definately growing. As far as gangs, I migrated to Western NC from New York and have found the gang thing to be way overrated down here and a whole let less serious crime related to "gang activity". I think most of these folks in this thread are correct in saying the media is hungry for news brecause there "aint much goin on". I think you need to worry more about things like going into a pub with a anti-bush t-shirt rather than gang activity.

[a1m1700]

Yeah Sperlings stats are not correct. That was my only research point for months. I was going by their climate stats, I think they had a 1 for tornados. I just discovered on this site NC had tornados. Can't trust those stats.

[eva-girl]

Thanks for the info. I will search on zipcodes for stats and the suggestion about Google key word news alert sound like an excellent idea.

[giapn73]

Can you tell me where the ghetto areas are so I can steer away from them?