Kansas City ranked 9th most dangerous city.... (St. Louis, Columbia: lower-class, 2014)

[rwiksell]

Originally Posted by luzianne

No, I am saying crime in KC has been really bad this year. All the things you suggest I am "proposing" are your words, not mine. The news media has been talking about it...are they "proposing" something too? I'm sorry that you don't like the message, but it is what it is. I should just shut up unless I am saying KC is wonderful, right?

Read the title of this thread. My post is appropriate.

All I'm saying is that you are definitely proposing something. Doesn't have to be one of the things I suggested. Just like the title of this thread is proposing something. And unless you specify what that something is, people will assume you're saying "AVOID KC".

[luzianne]

Originally Posted by rwiksell

All I'm saying is that you are definitely proposing something. Doesn't have to be one of the things I suggested. Just like the title of this thread is proposing something. And unless you specify what that something is, people will assume you're saying "AVOID KC".

Think whatever you'd like to think. I don't really care.

[kcmo]

Originally Posted by luzianne

Well, there have been 7 murders over this holiday weekend so far in KCK and KCMO. So KC is living up (down?) to its reputation. It's gotten crazy here. Murders in the metro are just about an everyday thing now. And the Stolen KC Facebook page is shocking with the number of cars, motorcycles and other things stolen all over the metro every day.

That's a lot. Were they all in the typical high crime areas? If so, it shouldn't effect all the people moving back into the city. If these types of crimes start happening to random people in relatively safe areas (River Market etc) then growth could slow. KCK seems to be getting worse. I wonder if all the gentrification in KCMO is pushing the bad element into KCK. You see that type of stuff happen in cities all the time right now.

Although DC and especially Baltimore are both higher crime cities and they both go through spurts of many murders over a short period of time and sometimes the victims are random and in nice parts of the cities. Yet they both just keep building new urban apartments and condos like there is no tomorrow. It's almost like when crime happens, people get out more and make it known that crime will not stop people from living in the cities. DC had a pretty rough stretch when people were constantly getting mugged on an urban bike trail. Rather than staying away, people spread the word to use the trail even more. Don't let these people win.

It's still sad how so many of our cities have so much violent crime. There is just no easy answer, but KCMO is doing what most cities are doing. Pushing the crime out of areas that used to have crime. The more people that move into the city the safer it gets. However, crimes could actually happen more because there are more opportunities for crimes to happen now. 20 years ago, there was barely anybody downtown after 5 to rob or any nice cars to steal. So you will see a lot more crime now with more people down there living close to higher crime parts of the city. The more people that move in, the less chance of them becoming a victim though.

[luzianne]

kcmo, it is really getting to be all over the metro. You know about the Indian Creek murders. That's not an area that you would normally have that happening.

This article shows a map of the weekend murders. Not all in the usual bad areas.

A deadly 24 hours over July 4th weekend in Kansas City A deadly July Fourth weekend of shootings in Kansas City | The Kansas City Star

[goillini8]

Not to dismiss the severity of crime or let these cities off the hook, but I almost think there should be two rankings - (1) the one that exists and looks at the city overall - for policy makers, law enforcement, and the people who actually live in the crossfire of most of the violence; and (2) something more practical for people who will generally never get near where most of the violence happens - sort of a "tourist" ranking for lack of a better term (even though it applies to residents as well); something that would quantify your chances of being a victim of violent crime in the relatively "good areas" where people who don't live in the worst parts actually live and go. I've lived in a few (Chicago being the biggest example) and visited a lot of the cities on the list and have had extremely minimal exposure to violent crime and found a lot of these places actually to be incredibly nice. A violent crime ranking tells me nothing if it doesn't tell me the chance of violent crime spilling over into the places I'm going to work in, live in, or visit; i.e., how concentrated it is in certain areas.

[mjtinmemphis]

Originally Posted by goillini8

Not to dismiss the severity of crime or let these cities off the hook, but I almost think there should be two rankings - (1) the one that exists and looks at the city overall - for policy makers, law enforcement, and the people who actually live in the crossfire of most of the violence; and (2) something more practical for people who will generally never get near where most of the violence happens - sort of a "tourist" ranking for lack of a better term (even though it applies to residents as well); something that would quantify you're chances of being a victim of violent crime in the relatively "good areas" where people who don't live in the worst parts actually live and go. I've lived a few (Chicago being the biggest example) and visited a lot of the cities on the list and have had extremely minimal exposure to violent crime and found a lot of these places actually to be incredibly nice. A violent crime ranking tells me nothing if it doesn't tell me the chance of violent crime spilling over into the places I'm going to work in, live in, or visit; i.e., how concentrated it is in certain areas.

I think most cities have many options for safe living. Some are better then others.

[Floorist]

That city ranking is misleading. My city, Nevada, Mo. is listed as third most dangerous city in MO. in the latest ranking. We have had one murder in the whole county in the last seven years. Assaults are very rare.

[dallasgoldrush]

The recent discussions about crime in the city cause me to reflect on the community of my upbringing. Has anyone else lived or spent a significant amount of time in any of the city's higher crime areas? What did you learn from it, if anything? How did it change you, if at all? I think the day-to-day culture and overall psyche of high crime urban areas can be interesting, to say the least.

For one, "criminals" were rarely as nameless and faceless to me as they are now -- the people involved in violent crime were multi-dimensional human beings rather than merely abstract concepts. It's because they weren't much different than I was and, in some cases, they were my friends.

As in most other neighborhoods across the country, there were several multi-generational households on my block. Not only did the neighborhood kids grow up together, in many cases our parents, aunts and uncles had grown up together also. Our grandparents might have known each other for several decades. Ultimately everyone chose their own path in life but, at the outset, we were all the same.

As my neighbors and I matured, a certain subset of neighborhood kids got involved in progressively more serious antisocial behaviors and activities. There were shootings on the block -- not many. There were spikes in that type of activity from time to time. Ironically I rarely felt truly unsafe living there. Again everyone on the block knew our family, as we knew theirs. And there was mutual respect all around -- everyone at least had relatives who had lived antisocial lifestyles at some point. Everyone was equal.

Generally no one had to worry about the well-being of their elderly relatives or anything like that. The neighborhood kids who sometimes grew into aggressive young men still knew to put the nonsense on pause if someone's grandmother came into a room, for example. In fact the vast majority of us were raised by single mothers, so our respect for women ran deeper than most outsiders might have realized.

That being the case, everyone still practiced common sense. You locked your doors. You didn't go out walking alone at night. In fact you didn't walk at all at night. And you often didn't even stray too far from your block, or from your friends' and relatives' blocks. Being someplace else in itself was generally not an issue if you were not participating in the antisocial lifestyle, but things could get out of hand quickly when a person didn't know what to expect in different surroundings.

It's easy and obvious to use examples of those who were imprisoned for violent crimes as cautionary tales, but the vast majority of neighborhood residents never committed any violent crime -- so in light of that, the outcomes for the rest of us were unbearably tragic as well. We were mostly just regular folks trying to live decent lives, but were dejected by the depressed physical and psychological state of our community, and thus uncertain about how much progress could be made in one lifetime. The pessimism is what would often do the rest of us in, the notion that any simple effort to improve one's life was incapable of producing desirable outcomes, and was thus a waste of energy.

I felt I had to practically flee that community to rediscover my optimism and thus create a future for myself. I sincerely hope the recent violence in KC is no more than a short-term spike, that it does not indicate a long-term trend. Also along those lines I hope the culture of antisocial behavior and pessimism in some communities has not spread beyond its already overly-wide borders.

[rwiksell]

Originally Posted by luzianne

Think whatever you'd like to think. I don't really care.

Did you know that if you don't care, you don't have to respond?

[MoNative34]

2 more makes 74... Over 40% increase from this time last year.