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Good find by the OP, have been studying the stats given in the links. However, when analyzing crime figures raw numbers for one year from one source do not always present a true or complete situation. Several years data should be looked at, and stats from as many sources as are available. Can start right here on CD, on the home page of most cities crime numbers from several years are usually given. An unusual event such as a multiple murder, a serial rapist, armed robbery gang, etc. can spike the violent crime rate for that year. Towns that are popular tourist destinations and have a large number of visitors often appear to be much more dangerous than they actually are. Often the crime data given are the FBI UCR figures. Even the FBI itself advises that their data should be used with caution. There are other sources and other sites that try to refine the data and present crime data in a practical manner. On occasion, two sources will contradict each other, complicating things. Best advice when researching a town or city as to its safety is to obtain as much data as possible from as many different sources as can be found for as many years as possible.
Something like 70-75% of the crime in Oakland is concentrated in a few neighborhoods. If you don't live in one of those places, you don't have much to worry about. That's what these stats don't tell you.
I'll add to your contribution jade, (it's an interesting topic to me)
Violent crime in Oakland, as in most big cities, is disproportionately concentrated in a few high risk neighborhoods.
Oakland is divided in several ways. One of the ways is, Oakland is divided into 7 councils districts. These council districts are roughly the size of small cities: some around 15 square miles. With that being said, 72% of all Oakland homicides occur within the 1 council district and the flatlands(portions) of 2 other council districts.
Furthermore, 90% of all violent crime in Oakland occurs within these same 3 council districts. However, there are only certain neighborhoods within these 3 council districts that contributes to the violent crime. In other words, within these 3 council districts, there are a mix good and bad neighborhoods.
Good find by the OP, have been studying the stats given in the links. However, when analyzing crime figures raw numbers for one year from one source do not always present a true or complete situation. Several years data should be looked at, and stats from as many sources as are available. Can start right here on CD, on the home page of most cities crime numbers from several years are usually given. An unusual event such as a multiple murder, a serial rapist, armed robbery gang, etc. can spike the violent crime rate for that year. Towns that are popular tourist destinations and have a large number of visitors often appear to be much more dangerous than they actually are. Often the crime data given are the FBI UCR figures. Even the FBI itself advises that their data should be used with caution. There are other sources and other sites that try to refine the data and present crime data in a practical manner. On occasion, two sources will contradict each other, complicating things. Best advice when researching a town or city as to its safety is to obtain as much data as possible from as many different sources as can be found for as many years as possible.
I was curious so I sorted it by population then looked at the 20 largest cities (the first page of the population sort) in descending violent crime per 1,000 residents order.
Oakland - (population 409,723) - 15.3
Stockton - (population 292,047) - 13.81
Sacramento - (population 472,469) - 8.7
San Bernardino - (population 199,214) - 8.15
San Francisco - (population 818,594) - 7.02
Modesto - (population 203,890) - 6.86
Bakersfield - (population 333,458) - 6.31
Fresno - (population 484,734) - 6.26
Long Beach - (population 462,267) - 5.88
Los Angeles - (population 3,841,707) - 5.59
Riverside - (population 301,859) - 4.8
Santa Ana - (population 340,240) - 4.44
San Diego - (population 1,313,433) - 4.28
Moreno Valley - (population 197,294) - 3.67
Anaheim - (population 338,492) - 3.43
San Jose - (population 970,252) - 3.31
Chula Vista - (population 229,060) - 2.89
Fremont - (population 205,477) - 2.37
Glendale - (population 196,877) - 1.41
Irvine - (population 217,193) - 0.55
Thanks for the list. I'll just point out though that the SFPD has been submitting incomplete aggravated assault stats to the FBI since 2005 at least (and were caught in 2009...yet they are still doing it), so it should jump up slightly to around 8 or 8.5 on the list, most likely coming out ahead of San Bernardino there (i got 8.5 by adding 1,200 crimes to SF's violent crime total, seeing as it's an estimated average of 1,200 aggravated assaults per year that the SFPD has failed to report properly).
Quote:
Originally Posted by NorCal Dude
I don't know how anyone could feel safer in Dt Oak vs Dt. SF.
I feel 1 million times safer on Market after 9pm than on Franklin or Broadway in OAK.
No crime in downtown Oakland? In what outer world dimension? Here on earth the VIOLENT crimes in Downtown Oakland(south of grand, east of lakeside that is) just in the past week :
Sept 22: Robbery- firearm, 1:27 am @ 16TH AND MLK
Sept 21: Robbery-strong arm/ fists, 9:27 pm @ Broadway and 14th
Sept 19: Robbery-firearm, 9:30 pm @ Jackson and 15th
Sept 19: Assault- firearm, 3:35 am @ 17th and Franklin
Sept 19: Simple assault, not aggravated, 12:30 pm @ Franklin and 15th
Sept 21: Simple assault, not aggravated, 3:04 pm@ Harriston and 14th
Sept 20: Assault-fire arm, 4:30 pm @ Webster and 10th
Spet 20: Simple Assault, not aggravated 8:29 pm @ Franklin and 7th
Sept 22: Robbery-strong arm, 12:20 pm @ 7th and Webster
I think you have no idea how much crime actually occurs in DT SF. I present to you: reported violent crime in downtown San Francisco, from Sep. 20-22:
Downtown SF apparently has more violent crime in two days than DT Oakland does in a week. You should feel fine in DT Oakland if you feel fine in DT SF. And why would you expect it to be any different if you actually think about? DT SF is the main DT for millions of people, and it also has the Tenderloin, a highly populated and impoverished hotspot for drugs, prostitution, robbery, etc. DT Oakland has no such area.
A couple more examples for you, of recent shootings in DT SF that have injured or killed tourists (when was the last time that happened in DT Oakland, or anywhere in Oakland?): SF Police Arrest 7 Suspects in Killing of German Tourist - The Bay Citizen
5 wounded in S.F. shooting - man arrested - SFGate (http://articles.sfgate.com/2011-06-26/news/29704925_1_gang-shooting-pride-festival-pride-event - broken link) (two tourists were hit here: one from England, one from Florida)
Of course that won't stop the mouth-breathers of this world from being scared of downtown Oakland though (it has "Oakland" in the name, therefore it's bad, remember?). Reality be damned. You think downtown Oakland is supposed to be worse for crime than DT SF, based on stereotypes, therefore it is so to you
According to statistics released earlier this month by Federal Bureau of Investigation, cities in Northern California run the gamut from the most dangerous in the state to zones that are virtually crime-free.
The San Francisco Business Times complied all those stats into a single list ranking all the cities in California based on their rates of violent crime per capita in 2010.
Check out the full list here.
How does your hometown stack up?
Also the Huntington Post slideshow presents a list of cities as supposedly being in order but then leaves a bunch out(like Compton) that are in the FBI rankings. But honestly it's hard to compare small rural towns to larger urban towns and cities. For one crimes are reported differently--any minor incident can be called an assault depending on how the departments report them(a lot of crimes in big cities don't get reported or followed up on either).
And seriously--there's no way in hell that I'd feel safer in Richmond than Capitola. I have family in Santa Cruz--and the area is not half as bad as plenty of places in the East Bay unless you're specifically involved with drugs. Capitola is mostly a quiet beach town. And even Oroville, which has it's sketchier elements, is basically a poor, rural town isn't as bad as Stockton or Richmond or towns around South Central LA like Lynwood or Compton.
Just a case where some statistics were thrown together and wrapped into another scary media list...
Also the Huntington Post slideshow presents a list of cities as supposedly being in order but then leaves a bunch out(like Compton) that are in the FBI rankings. But honestly it's hard to compare small rural towns to larger urban towns and cities. For one crimes are reported differently--any minor incident can be called an assault depending on how the departments report them(a lot of crimes in big cities don't get reported or followed up on either).
And seriously--there's no way in hell that I'd feel safer in Richmond than Capitola. I have family in Santa Cruz--and the area is not half as bad as plenty of places in the East Bay unless you're specifically involved with drugs. Capitola is mostly a quiet beach town. And even Oroville, which has it's sketchier elements, is basically a poor, rural town isn't as bad as Stockton or Richmond or towns around South Central LA like Lynwood or Compton.
Just a case where some statistics were thrown together and wrapped into another scary media list...
The stats are skewed based on crime reporting and responding. In smaller cities the police will respond to the majority of the crimes reported because they have residents willing to report and enough cops able to respond. In places like Oakland many crimes go unreported and many don't even get responded to by police because they have to prioritize there calls based on importance.
I never would have suspected Nevada City to be on the list. My aunt had a restaurant there on Broad St. and I would jump at the chance to go up and visit. I thought the town was so beautiful and peaceful and businesses were thriving. I didn't see or hear about crime. Nevada City has always been on my short list of cities where I'd locate to.
But I would never step out of a BART station into Oakland
Not even to get to Oakland Airport? I mean, I don't live in Oakland and I don't have a strong opinion about crime in Oakland in general, but I do use Oakland Airport a lot because it's the closest airport to where I live. I often use BART to get there.
SF is dense and you can have one street that has among the grossest, most sordid blocks in the US, like Mission Street, just one block from a really lively, fun street like Valencia with lots of shiny new bars and restaurants and shops. While crime is concentrated in SF, everything is so close together that you get a lot of spillover. In Oakland you get large swathes of crappy parts then large swathes of nice parts, usually with a halfway decent part in between as a buffer zone.
This is true. Bad areas in SF have always been block by block. This makes a lot of sense seeing as SF is the most densely populated city on the West Coast. I grew up less than a block away from one of the most dangerous and murderous streets in SF and the entire West Coast in the early 90's on a street called Ramsell which intersected the notorious Randolph Street in the southernmost half of SF. Even though our entire neighborhood was considered to be "the hood" for a few blocks in every direction from our house, our street was quiet, looked immaculately clean and middle class with single family homes and was nearly indistinguishable from much safer neighborhoods in the Sunset. However, Randolph Street a few feet away was characterized by an over-abundance of liquor stores, decrepit project buildings with boarded-up windows, crack houses, hundreds of loitering people all hours of the day and night, wandering spaced-out junkies and winos, open air drug dealing of hard drugs, armed robbery, daily gunfire and murders every month. But I never saw anything too crazy growing up because we literally never walked down the street! The corner store at the bottom of the hill and the entire Randolph Street was strictly off limits for the entirety of my childhood. I never knew why until I got a little older and watched the local news and realized those frequent popping sounds I heard every night as a kid were gunshots! But I had a normal childhood and my family lived a very comfortable stress free life even though we lived literally a few feet away from homicide central.
It is the same story for other sketchy parts of SF like the world-famous postcard image of the Painted Ladies which are about a block and a half away from some of the historically most violent blocks in the City in and near the projects in the Fillmore. The Tenderloin is right in the middle of downtown. Certain blocks in the Tenderloin have a crime rate that is exponentially higher than the citywide average:
The highly concentrated high crime areas of SF account for much of the City's total crime. In certain years, the Hunter's Point neighborhood has accounted for 50% of the City's total homicides. Most tourists and citizens of wealthier neighborhoods have never even see the most violent intersections of Hunter's Point.
In comparison, Oakland seems much more dangerous because swaths of the city are dangerous and bombed out whereas the mostly unseen tucked away and random bad blocks of SF, that the media doesn't talk about, are worse than the bad parts of most cities. The projects in Hunter's Point, Potrero Hill and Sunnydale in SF have been ranked as some of the worst and unlivable in the country year after year while most of the projects in Oakland have been rebuilt and renovated.
Last edited by goldenchild08; 10-02-2011 at 11:18 PM..
also the asian gangs in oakland are crazy but very quite. I have a feeling that they are going to be the ones thats going to take over Oakland CA.
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My aunt had a restaurant there on Broad St. and I would jump at the chance to go up and visit. I thought the town was so beautiful and peaceful and businesses were thriving. I didn't see or hear about crime. Nevada City has always been on my short list of cities where I'd locate to. 
But I had a normal childhood and my family lived a very comfortable stress free life even though we lived literally a few feet away from homicide central. 
