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Yeah, a lot of the thugs priced out of New York have moved down to Atlanta and Florida. And New Jersey.
Florida has had crime problems before all the NY thugs were priced out and moved to Florida. Heck, Florida had an even higher murder rate back in the 70's before all the NY'ers moved down. Even before cocaine flooded Miami. Same with Atlanta. Most New Yorkers living in Florida are retirees and young families anyway.
I don't know about the whole, but another area that had terrible crime that comes to mind is Miami and Dade County. From the late 70s through the mid to late 80s saw the city and metro area were besieged by crime.
Florida in general had a higher murder rate back then. If you look at the murder rate's for Florida, you can see homicdes started to skyrocket around the mid-70's, even before the large influx of Cocaine in the late-70's early-80's.
If you mean cities then yes. Suburbanization had left many cities income bases dangerously erroded from almost nothing. Most cities, even those booming during this time had huge crime problems. NYC had huge crime problems along with most cities in the country. Even phoenix, arizona had crime problems far more severe then today. Now days most cities are becoming safer or staying the same with the exception of a few cities. NYC is now all polished and clean with some rough edges still intact.
I think the main causes for the increase in crime in cities during this time was subrubanization and the lack of planning to improve the city.
I remember those movies about the Gardian Angels having to go around the New York subway due to the high crime, or those vigilante movies starring Charles Bronson. I just saw the documentary Gangland New York on youtube, and they focused on those years and really looked like a war zone, even Manhattan. Mafia tycoons, drug dealers, criminals of all sorts did everything they wanted in streets of the big apple.
So I wonder if this situation was similar in the rest of the USA, or was just only a local New York thing, due to the particularities of this city: many people, huge inequality, racial tensions, drug and cash flow,etc.
PS, by the way, New York nowadays is a very safe and trendy place.
Death Wish 2 took place in Los Angeles, California but you could throw in Son of Sam killings to replace it.
Growing up in NYC during the 80s and still living in NYC, crime was much more visible and spread out. Chicago, during this period was worse. So was LA with infamous parts like Compton and Long Beach. The 70s was not only the period known as the sex revolution but it spiked on the aftermath of civil rights, Black Panthers, gangs formulating. During the 80s, it spiked on drug trafficking and with that alone many different kinds of crimes occur: prostitution, stealing, robbery, grand theft auto, killings, and gang fights converted into gang wars. A person above said that Brooklyn and only included Bed Sty to be the bad part of Brooklyn. Everyone who is really from Brooklyn will tell you all the neighborhoods bot to cross (and it truly depended on the color of your skin): if you were black worst neighborhood to walk to was Bensonhurst. If you were Latino, worst neighborhoods were Bay Ridge and Bed Sty. If you were white, the list was huge: East New York, Brownsville, Prospect Heights, Bed Sty, Bushwick; Flatbush, Canarsie, and Coney island.
I remembered when drugs was out in the open. Kids woud smoke crack right on the sidewalk in Brooklyn (in "good" neighborhoods, too). I would remember prostitutes walking in broad daylight in Boerum Hill and Downtown Brooklyn where Barclay Center is now, and let's not forget the infamous Times Square where it was filled with the worst looking prostitutes you would ever see and all the closed down dilapidated theaters and X-rated movie theaters that were abandoned for homeless to sleep on all over them.
People used to be more mugged back then. Kids like me were told repeatedly to not walk this block, never be in that neighborhood, and hear our own parents have stories of being mugged repeatedly in the streets of NYC.
Even certain parts of Park Slope, even during the 90s was not a safe place, especially in Union Street and 4th Avenue. Brooklyn has changed. Queens wasn't so peachy as someone pointed out before. You had LIC and Jamaica highly known for their gangs and turf. That what we called them: turf, not neighborhoods.
Brooklyn is highly gentrified now. Manhattan is strictly for the rich or the ones who've been there for decades like the Harlemnites. Numbers and data can be misleading, but even the rankings prove that NYC is a much safer place. Back in the 70s and 80s; NYC was always ranked top 3 most dangerous cities in America along with LA and Chicago. Now, all 3 cities have taken a turn, NYC being the most that changed.
Anyway...the murder rate in the U.S. peaked at 10.1 in 1980, before seeing a slight depression during the Reagan years but another rise in the Bush I presidency. New York's murder rate is what, 5 now? The latest homicide rate is 4.2 / 100,000 for the entire U.S.
NYC's homicide rate is below 4.0, it's lower than the national average.
In 1981 Houston was the murder capital of the US, with 701 murders. At a 1980 population of 1,595,138, that makes Houston's 1981 murder rate at 43.9 per 100,000.
Houston's murder rate bottomed out in 2011 at 9.2 with 198 murders. Last year Houston had 302 murders with a rate of 13.3, still a far cry from 1981, and not even in the bottom 20 today.
I used to go to Manhattan about four times a year in the 1970s. There wasn't much going on in the areas visitors, tourists frequented. I remember that the area around the bus station was pretty nasty, but it wasn't dangerous. At least it didn't seem so.
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