Research Crime stats for E. TN (Johnson City, Kingsport: house, high crime, retirement)

[garth]

I'm just doing my research and have come up with the following info off of Sperling's site. They have a numerical comparison of Property Crimes and Violent Crime, per capita, as part of the site. They are compared against a U.S. average where the higher the number, the greater the per capita incidence of crime.

I was surprised to see the numbers given for one of the Tri-cities in E. Tenn. It gave numbers of "6" and "6" for the two catagories where the U.S. average is "3" and "3." The other cities were similar.

In other words, property crime (i.e., theft, bruglary, etc.) and violent crime (i.e., raper robbery, murder, etc.) is higher in the three main E. Tenn cities than the average elsewhere in the country. What's going on? Is the crime rate apparent and affecting one's life in the area, or is the crime that contributes to the higher rating located in a specific area so that it never affects you?

I'm quite familar with the old saying that "Statistics don't lie, Stataticians do." I'm hoping that someone's been lieing or the entire picture isn't being shown. Does anyone have any insight into it for me?

As a comparison, I ran the numbers for a big city, Los Angeles, CA, and came up with a "7" and a "6." That would put the per capita city crime rate of E. Tenn towns pretty close to Los Angeles. That's what concerns and surprises me.

I'll look forward to any insight you can provide.

[insanesmooch]

Well, I haven't lived in the area long enough to really be up on the crime, but I can tell you what I have observed. The closest small town to me has the police report and the court reports in the paper. I see a lot of drug charges, DUIs, and bad checks. I wouldn't say those problems are more rampant in the area just that here you can read about them. In larger cities, they don't print every little thing like that. I have seen a few charged with thefts, but the court part does not really differentiate between if they stole from a person or a business. In the regular news part the thefts reported are usually about businesses. I don't think there is an overwhelming amount of them.
I believe about a month ago the news said that Kingsport was the one with the highest crime. As far as violent crime, it seems to me like it is more domestic situations. Like on the news tonight a guy from Johnson City was caught in NC and he allegedly murdered his live in girlfriend. Since moving here I haven't noticed so much crime that I am scared to be out or anything. But it was that way for me in Middle TN.
I live in an area to me that feels like it is way out. We are maybe 10 minutes from 'town' though. I have had plastic tubs of our 'junk' sitting outside on the front porch awhile and then several on the back deck for sometime and no one bothers them. Good thing to because when I was going through one I found a spare key to my car. Normally, I am a worry wart and would never leave things out like that. But here I feel okay doing so.
That's just my take on it. You could also look up the news in the area. www.tricities.com is one of the sources where you can get news from the area. It is the site for one of the local tv stations. You could also look up the newspapers.

[LauraC]

From what I have been told throughout my retirement research is that places that have a tourist population will tend to receive a high crime score and compare unfavorably to towns with no tourists. The reason is they only divide the number of crimes into the year 'round population instead of dividing the crime numbers into the entire population. So for example, if you live in a place where the population doubles in the summer (or the winter), you're going to come out looking bad because the number of crimes is divided into the smaller number of people, which would be the population in the off-season.

If you want to get a good feel for crime in an area before you move there, subscribe to a local newspaper online and read it daily. In many instances, the crime stories will include an address either of where the crime took place or of the person being arrested. (Some name the community.) If you are an outsider, those street addresses won't mean anything to you but then after you get a few, plug them into Mapquest. Pretty soon, the bad neighborhoods/bad parts of town will become obvious (when you see those addresses clustered within a few streets of each other), as will the type of crime associated with them.

When I was once contemplating Asheville, NC, I subscribed to their Asheville Citizen Times online (it's free and it's a good informative newspaper). After a few months of keeping track of arrest addresses and plugging them into Mapquest, it became pretty obvious which part of town I didn't want to live in or live near. Don't be fooled by house prices. Sometimes very ritzy neighborhoods are in close proximity to very bad ones.

[mbmouse]

I have lived in East TN for almost 10 years now, in 3 different counties of East TN. I have yet to ever feel "unsafe" in anyway. Yes, all towns have their "problem areas" a few streets or so where the drugs and such are. The one difference I have found here is that doesn't last long because the police forces here are great, they get the people doing the bad things. And most of what I see in the papers are domestic situations where it is concidered a "violent" crime. It does happen that two people who know each other or are related, get to drinking then a gun or something is pulled out and some one gets hurt. The difference is the general public heras about it for 3 or 4 days and the case is followed all the way through on the news, because something like that doesn't happen on a daily basis. Now in big cities like Los Angeles, you wouldn't even hear about that, even as a blip on the evening news because that happens many times over on a daily basis there...see the difference? Just my take on it.