Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I put very little faith in anything like this. In the last year, a lot of the real estate websites have incorporated crime stats and maps for different communities. I have researched a few of them, and it seems like they all get the same data that is collected by the local precincts and published by the FBI each year....yet most are horribly inaccurate.
Why? I imagine part of it is poorly written software, but beyond that it seems like none of these websites have any idea how to implement the crime stats properly. AFAIK, the FBI's report is done by precinct and census tracts. Census tracts never line up with municipal boundaries (town/hamlet/city/village) or ZIP codes, which makes everything a "close approximation" at best right off the bat. Then on top of that, they're likely using municipal figures for population (you need this to find the crime rate....total # of crimes divided by population) while using the raw number of crimes from some completely different, invented ZIP code/census tract hybrid area. These are the most readily available population stats....say you look up the population of an area on the Census website or Wikipedia, let's say Levittown, you will get the figures for the hamlet/CDP of Levittown, NY - not the Levittown, NY 11756 ZIP code which covers a larger area....completely skews things further....
It's just a total mess, don't believe any of it. Does anyone really believe that Hempstead and Freeport are two of the safer communities in the Town of Hempstead (as that map would have you believe)? They need Walter Greenspan working for them....he could really straighten things out.
Of course, unless you took the time to learn these sort of things - and I know most people on here could give 2 sheeeits about correct geography ("wah wah who carez all the people who live ther don't call it that") - you would just blindly believe these ridiculous statistics/maps which are nothing but layers and layers of BS. Kind of like most of the posts in this thread!
Out of all the sites I've found, relocationessentials.com (who go by ZIP code) seems to have the least buggy software and most accurate implementation, but it still isn't perfect. The most technically accurate crime stats can be found on your local police precinct's website, but those obviously cover a much larger area than just one community.
The problem with these maps is that they are not granular enough as most high crime areas are usually in relatively small pockets. For example, Huntington Station has bad areas but most of the HS area is pretty average to good as far as crime. What they are good for is giving someone a starting point for further research.
Eh....one of my left-wing whackadoo friends had me watch that a couple years ago. Between Addendum and the first Zeitgeist chapter, they lost me at "9/11 WUZ AN INSIDE JOB!!, 9/11 WUZ AN INSIDE JOB!!". ...
I hear you can buy a box set of Zeitgeist, Who Killed the Electric Car? and Loose Change as a "College Liberal Essentials Kit" at Trader Joes....make sure to print out your Huffington Post 5% online discount coupon.
I don't think 9/11 was an inside job. However, you don't live in Washington for 23 years and not know someone who knows someone, as it were, and before "Al Qaeda" even "claimed" responsibility for September 11, Rummy was waltzing into a meeting at the Pentagon with a big smile and a little, shall we say, bit of excitement, announcing, "We're going into Iraq." A number of people resigned in disgust that day. So while I don't think it was done inside, I think it was allowed to happen.
As for HuffPo, as a freelance writer, I stay away from there. The writers don't get paid, yet the site rakes in tons of money. As far as I'm concerned, HuffPo is another fine example of the rich exploiting those too stupid to know they should get paid for their work. It's a [URL="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mj5IV23g-fE"]big problem[/URL] in my field.
Yeah I think they have the colors mixed up, EI is blazing red while Bay Shore isn't seems strange to me seeing how I've never had a problem in my part of the woods but have had several issues in BS.
I can only speak locally.... but Centereach, Coram and medford are marked as below average crime compared to Sayville, holbrook etc that are marked high crime areas.... that does not sound right to me at all.
Don't forget that crimes range from murder to shoplifting. So for example if you have a lot of retail in an area things like vandalism, shoplifting, identity theft and stealing from open cars are common and increase the crime rate of even a good area. When researching an area you need to check what kind of crime is happening and where.
Then again the map could just be poorly put together.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
