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I remember right before the Olympics Atlanta was rated number 1 in the country for highest violent and non violent crime rates, then all of a sudden a few days after the report Honolulu and Las Vegas were said to have been missed and given the number 1 spots respectively. It was later discovered that they had cooked the books in order to try to help Atlanta's image for the Olympics.
Nothing in any city rivaled the violence in Chicago's housing projects in the 90s. People use the term war zone a lot, but these places belonged in the Congo. They were bad. Police would go nowhere near them for fear of being sniped. Schools were closed on occasion due to violence and only reopened once a gang truce was reached. Rival gangs sniped at each other from the top floors of the high rises. Basic utilities only functioned on occasion.
In a single weekend in the Robert Taylor homes (population 27,000) there were 28 murders.
The worst I've seen on record in Chicago was Englewood in 91. The rate per 100,000 people was over 400 in that year, possibly over 500. But the projects were even worse than that so I can't imagine how the rate was in those places.
Overtown Miami, where tourist were getting murdered because they took the wrong turn. Or Liberty City Miami, during the Christmas Eve massacre, when 2 drug gangs were going at it. 4 retaliatory killings in a span of 2hrs from 2gangs in the liberty city neighborhood. Homicide detectives had to run from one killing to the next. They routinely put traffic lights on green in one liberty city neighborhood street because it was to dangerous for drivers.
Yeah, I remember Atlanta being really bad around 1993 or so. It seems to be headed back in that direction in the recent years. Atlanta was a lot safer in the late 90's after the olympics, which boosted the economy along with the tech boom. I'm hoping that things will turn around in the upcoming years and become like the Y2K era once again. One interesting thing is that Atlanta is supposed to demolish the last of its housing projects in 2010, becoming the first major U.S. city not to have any projects.
If Cleveland demolished all it's project, it'd leave 1/4 of the population homeless! Okay, that's a stretch, but there are 60 public housing developments with 53,000 people in Cleveland. The average income is $13,000. I know it's one of the top 10 largest housing in the states. I wish they were all torn down though... in Atlanta's case.. where did the people displace to?
Richmond VA also had a very high crime rate in the 90's. Richmond had 160 murders in 1994, making it number 2 in the nation for cities under 200,000 for murders. There were 120 murders for the year of 1995, giving the city a murder rate that was 59.1 killings per 100,000 residents. The crack epidemic hit the region hard. The cities crime rate has improved drastically over the last two years, and has finally moved out of the top 10 most dangerous cities lists.
To answer your question WeSoHood, many of them moved out to some of the cheaper suburbs (Clayton County in particular, which has seen its crime rate go up quite a bit in the last few years).
Nothing in any city rivaled the violence in Chicago's housing projects in the 90s. People use the term war zone a lot, but these places belonged in the Congo. They were bad. Police would go nowhere near them for fear of being sniped. Schools were closed on occasion due to violence and only reopened once a gang truce was reached. Rival gangs sniped at each other from the top floors of the high rises. Basic utilities only functioned on occasion.
In a single weekend in the Robert Taylor homes (population 27,000) there were 28 murders.
The worst I've seen on record in Chicago was Englewood in 91. The rate per 100,000 people was over 400 in that year, possibly over 500. But the projects were even worse than that so I can't imagine how the rate was in those places.
Yeah that sucked- and I know it's a big deal that Chicago has the most murders, but I tell people 500+ murders in 08' aint nothin', they should have been here in the 90s.
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