San Antonio may top crime list (Bowie: live, military, dangerous)

[perticusrex]

Didn't anybody learn anything from watching "The Wire?" The police is always playing with the numbers.

[rigas]

well i am in houston, been here like 12 yrs or so and i grew up in SA/NB. i would say crime here in hosuton is MUCH worse then in SA. i think the numbers are scewed some. the way i look at them is like this: these numbers are based on per 1000 people (ie 78 crimes per 1000 people in population). this sounds pretty bad but consider DFW and houston have MUCH larger populations these numbers are pretty inconsequential. (ok im new around here so i will warn you guys i aint winnin no spellin bees) houston as a population still had more total crimes by more then 35,000.

San Antonio crime increase tops in Texas (http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/San_Antonio_crime_increase_tops_in_Texas.html - broken link)

now the other thing i see is this list is crime INCREASE. it is not total crime. imo this is due in large part to the illegal alien (or as the gubmint likes to call then "undocumented workers") being un employed. SA is a major transition point on a trip to or from mexico so it presents a better target for some last minute theft or what not on the way out. (mexico has seen a large influx of "workers" returning over the last yr or so due to the current economy.)

[allenk893]

San Antonio Expected To Have Highest Crime Rate in US

Sorry I just stole this article from you Joyo1966. But I was pretty shocked.

How in the world is that?? Is this true? If I connect the dots I can see that San Antonio is not really one of the "safest" cities in the U.S.
I mean, everytime I watch KSAT news, it's some horrendous murder or psycho rape case that I can't even close my mouth. Actually now that I think about it, there is NEVER any good news on KSAT. It's always about some gruesume death that happened in the city. Strangest thing though, I have never seen that side of the city in real-time. I've never been there when someone gets arrested, never seen anyone drunk, never seen anyone killed, never seen gangsters in action, etc.

But I see it on TV all the time. Like just a week or two ago, I heard on KSAT that some old woman had beheaded her 3-year-old granddaughter's head because she wouldn't stop crying or something?? I'm confused about it but all I know is that it was dispicable and just the most digusting news I heard since Kailey Anthony. So do you all really believe it? I don't believe - well I have a hard time believing that San Antonio could ever have a crime rate higher than that of Detroit, or Los Angeles, or Chicago (used to live there). How is that possible? Los Angeles is full of gangsters and crime, Chicago has an abundance of kidnappers on the loose, and Detroit is a war-zone. How in the world does San Antonio TOP all that??

[majormadmax]

I think it is more along how crime is being reported--there was a thread earlier that said Dallas is now reclassifying how they report some crimes to decrease the rate. So in essence there really isn't a decrease in crime, but a fudging of the stats to make it appear that there is a decrease!

As Mark Twain said in his autobiography, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics!"

I refuse to believe that San Antonio is the most dangerous city in the US! I have traveled in every part of this city and whereas there may be some places where I wouldn't wander around at night with pockets full of cash, for the most part the city is safe. As a matter of fact, my hometown of Jacksonville, Florida has a higher homicide rate than SA. Murders are a daily things in most cities, we experience them a once every couple of days if I am not mistaken...

And San Antonio didn't even make Forbes list of the 15 most dangerous cities in the US for 2009 this year!

Plus, I watch a lot of those reality police shows (Cops, The First 48) and you never see San Antonio on those; but places like Detroit, Atlanta, Washington DC, Baltimore, Vegas, LA, etc always make the list.

As such, I think this is all a bunch of bullcrap!

Cheers! M2

[doss1]

This one is hard to believe. I can't see how it's possible for SA to be up in the list. Maybe the city is so sprawled out that we can't see the forest for the trees.

[ryneone]

It says the numbers where to be released yet I cant find them anywhere?

[DerpyDerp]

Originally Posted by majormadmax

Plus, I watch a lot of those reality police shows (Cops, The First 48) and you never see San Antonio on those; but places like Detroit, Atlanta, Washington DC, Baltimore, Vegas, LA, etc always make the list.

Surely it's a matter of choice by the producers of the shows and not an actual reflection of crime statistics. I assume the law enforcement agencies have to agree to appear on camera and perhaps San Antonio cops don't want to do it.

[lemonfresh]

That's the same article from back in May that dealt with only 9 cities with a city population of 1 million or over. Not every city in the country. WOAI just did a **** poor job of reporting it.

To that end the numbers for SA were incorrect. The FBI used 13 months for SA and the usual 12 for the other 8 cities. Because of a backlog, 13 months were used. Also, Dallas change the way they report crime and it benefited their ranking. Just look up murder rates for SA, Dallas and Houston. Both Houston and Dallas have way more. They have more crime as well.

Bottom line, old article, only ranking 9 cities, BS statistics.

MODS, please merge this with the original thread dealing with these rankings from three months ago. In that thread I break down crime rates fro city and metro and compare SA to lots of other cities and metros.

[ryneone]

Murders

LOS ANGELES 384

PHILADELPHIA 331

HOUSTON 294

DALLAS 170

PHOENIX 167

MEMPHIS 137

SAN ANTONIO 116

[lemonfresh]

Originally Posted by allenk893

How in the world is that?? Is this true? If I connect the dots I can see that San Antonio is not really one of the "safest" cities in the U.S.

But it is.

I mean, everytime I watch KSAT news, it's some horrendous murder or psycho rape case that I can't even close my mouth. Actually now that I think about it, there is NEVER any good news on KSAT. It's always about some gruesume death that happened in the city.

KSAT as well as all local news around this country tend to use negative stories moreso than positive stories. Most start of the news stories are crime related it's rare to get a positive story within the first few stories. At one point it was ok to show dead [covered] bodies on the news or just blurred out. This was back in the 90's.

The news reports whatever gets them ratings and making people scared by reporting scary stories gets ratings. It does. Sensationalizing the news with negative stories drives ratings up.

However, like so many people have said in life, don't use the news to paint your picture of the real world.

But I see it on TV all the time. Like just a week or two ago, I heard on KSAT that some old woman had beheaded her 3-year-old granddaughter's head because she wouldn't stop crying or something??

You'd confused the perpetrator but yes, that was gruesome. But that's an isolated domestic inc incident concerning a mentality disturbed woman. and It doesn't speak to SA's safety.

How in the world does San Antonio TOP all that??

It doesn't.