Crime in Wilkes-Barre? (Scranton, Back Mountain, Washington: middle-class, apartments, crime rates)

[1ejp]

My daughter is applying to Wilkes University for their nursing program. We have visited and liked the college and campus alot.

I have received some information from this forum which has been helpful (thank you paul)

I have since been reading the local Wilkes-Barre newspapers online and have seen many reports on crime. Is it a safe city? Are there many things to do in and around the city? Will my daughter be forced to stay on or close to campus for safety reasons?

Any help is appreciated.

[MollyMe]

An 11 year old was raped on her wait to the bus stop in Wilkes-Barre about a month ago. There is a lot of drug-related crime there too. And a lot of poor poor families there too. My friend is a teacher to some of these kids and she said its sooo sad to see these little kids(1st grade) hungry-dirty-and wearing the same clothes for a few days in a row.

[1ejp]

Now that's not encouraging! I have some realy different opinions on this matter. When I was there I was unable to tour the entire city but did drive a little through downtown and it seemed dead to me. A little run down even. I did spot one or two homeless people and overall I was unimpressed.

[Vinny536]

will she be living on campus or elsewhere? wilkes-barre isn't nearly as bad as a lot of the locals make it out to be.

but, be sure she is alert and knows some self defense. college areas usually have higher crime rates in any city, since most college kids are easy targets.

[ashley19]

I have lived in the Wilkes-Barre area my whole life and I would not walk in downtown W-B myself. It is no where as bad as Philly but there are a lot of crimes that go on and are kept out of the papers. I really don't hear to much when it comes to the college kids. By no means don't let the little crimes discourage her but make sure that she does not walk alone at night or go to Kirby Park by herself. There was just a recent problem there. All in all, the crimes usually are not major ones, drugs is a big one, but of course we locals knew how good it was years ago and it discourages us from having a positive attitude. Paul should be able to give you more info since he attends college there.

[SteelCityRising]

Crime in Wilkes-Barre isn't a citywide issue. If anything, I'd say that the campus of Wilkes University is probably amongst the safer sections. King's College, on the other hand, is in a very bad neighborhood of the city, even though it's only roughly a half-mile north of the Wilkes campus. Just last night there were reports of a female student being stabbed on our own basketball courts, and now students here are on edge. A few weeks ago there were multiple complaints about a juvenile male flashing King's women near our commuter parking lots. Earlier in the year a female King's student was raped while she was out for a run, so both incidents now have many male students, including myself, outraged that our campus is being targeted so frequently, and many of our females are worried about personal safety. Crime in Wilkes-Barre is awful for a city of just 40,000 residents, but it is largely isolated into just a few small pockets (as I mentioned in our DM). My friends at Wilkes never worry about their safety the way King's students do. As a King's alumnus himself, Mayor Tom Leighton ought to be ashamed of himself for not visibly beefing up the police protection in and around our campus.

Anyone who labels all of Wilkes-Barre as a slum or ghetto is probably just a suburban Chicken Little who was born to fear anything urban. There are perfectly safe, friendly, well-kept neighborhoods in the city, such as Parsons, Miners Mills, Rolling Mill Hill, Riverside Park, Barney Farms, and the historic district adjacent to the Wilkes campus. There are also neighborhoods that have been going downhill in recent years, including parts of South Wilkes-Barre, parts of The Heights, and the entire neighborhood surrounding the King's campus. Your daughter shouldn't by any means go jogging alone in the city at night, but the Wilkes campus is in a much more desirable area of the city. While our campus seems to attract a lot of vagrants and lowlives because we're one block west of the soup kitchen and two blocks north of Public Square, Wilkes has a lot of white-collar foot traffic since it is so near to Arts YouNiverse, the Osterhout Library, and the professional offices along Franklin Street. I cringe whenever I get panhandled near my own campus, but I notice that when I decide to take a stroll down to Wilkes on a nice day the undesirables seem to be far less numerous. Public Square attracts a lot of scummy drifter-like people because it is home to the Martz bus terminal, but I just don't pay any attention to them as I walk to Barnes & Noble to browse.

Wilkes University is in a fairly-safe neighborhood of Wilkes-Barre, and I wouldn't steer you wrong. Once you head south of campus (Academy, Hazle, Hutson, Dana, Sambourne, etc.), that's when you run into issues with lowlives again. King's attracts the trashy elements along Bennett, East Jackson, East North, North Main, Meyers, and North Washington. The projects along Coal Street in The Heights give it a nefarious reputation as well. Otherwise much of the city is perfectly liveable.

[Bagldot]

SWB - What do you know about the Penn State extension campus in W-B? Daughter is looking at college options here in Jersey and in PA, wondering about that. I know it's small but it does offer housing. Is this a safe area or not? Do you know how it compares to the Dunmore Worthington Campus? (We've seen Dumore, but not W-B).

Thanks in advance,
Barbara

[wilkes-barretruestory]

I don't know what ScrantonWilkesBarre is talking about. wilkes and Kings are two blocks apart, and they are both in the middle of the worst crime in NEPA.
Go to the local papers' web sites. Wilkes-Barre PA news, sports, schools, entertainment, and shopping | timesleader.com - The Times Leader, The Citizens Voice - News - Top Stories and search for "crime in wilkes-barre" or "stabbing in wilkes-barre" or "homicide wilkes-barre" or best of all, now that I think about how the school year began here, try "sexual assualt wilkes-barre". Seems to me that ScrantonwilkesBarre just wants your kid to move here... for whatever reason.
I live in South Wilkes-Barre, and in a short while (when I have finished school) I will not be living anywhere in Wilkes-Barre. Sure, the odds are that you won't be a victim, but the odds are much better if you don't live in the middle of this dump.
The Penn State campus is out in the middle of nowhere and is in a safe area.
Try this link:
The Citizens Voice - News - Top Stories

[SteelCityRising]

Originally Posted by wilkes-barretruestory

I don't know what ScrantonWilkesBarre is talking about. wilkes and Kings are two blocks apart, and they are both in the middle of the worst crime in NEPA.
Go to the local papers' web sites. Wilkes-Barre PA news, sports, schools, entertainment, and shopping | timesleader.com - The Times Leader, The Citizens Voice - News - Top Stories and search for "crime in wilkes-barre" or "stabbing in wilkes-barre" or "homicide wilkes-barre" or best of all, now that I think about how the school year began here, try "sexual assualt wilkes-barre". Seems to me that ScrantonwilkesBarre just wants your kid to move here... for whatever reason.
I live in South Wilkes-Barre, and in a short while (when I have finished school) I will not be living anywhere in Wilkes-Barre. Sure, the odds are that you won't be a victim, but the odds are much better if you don't live in the middle of this dump.
The Penn State campus is out in the middle of nowhere and is in a safe area.
Try this link:
The Citizens Voice - News - Top Stories

I'm sorry that you think I have sinister intentions behind assuaging a parent's fears about her daughter attending school at Wilkes University, which is in a SAFE neighborhood. King's and Wilkes are not two blocks apart. The King's College campus anchors the northern end of downtown and is in a trashy, run-down, disgusting part of the city where bums hit up students for money and residents don't take care of their homes. If it were up to me, Mayor Leighton would just take a wrecking ball to the rowhomes on Meyers Court, the soup kitchen, the abandoned warehouses on North Washington Street, etc. and start fresh with new middle-class apartments. Wilkes, on the other hand, anchors the southern end of downtown and is in a more stable, middle-class area. Check the police blotter over the past several months in Wilkes-Barre, and you'll see that very few of these crimes occurred on or near the Wilkes campus. On the contrary, most were concentrated in South Wilkes-Barre, The Heights, or the neighborhood around King's.

Yes, Wilkes-Barre is a more dangerous city to reside in than Scranton, but as with ANY city it has its bad parts and its good neighborhoods. I never understood why NEPA has so many people in its boundaries who do nothing but whine and kvetch about how much they hate it here, yet when you ask them why they don't either try to make things better or pack up and move away to their "greener pastures," they freeze up. The sooner the malcontents get out of Wilkes-Barre and Scranton, the sooner we progressive twenty-somethings can move in and actually reshape them from donwtrodden, poverty-infested areas into hip and trendy places to call home.

If you're so miserable in Wilkes-Barre, then why are you still here? Nobody forced you to go to school here. I happen to attend King's, which is in a HELLISH neighborhood where I've had to run to my car at night on more than one occasion, yet I have only myself to blame for that. I could have very easily gone to Wilkes, which IS in a better area than King's, contrary to what you want to tell people.

[SteelCityRising]

Originally Posted by Bagldot

SWB - What do you know about the Penn State extension campus in W-B? Daughter is looking at college options here in Jersey and in PA, wondering about that. I know it's small but it does offer housing. Is this a safe area or not? Do you know how it compares to the Dunmore Worthington Campus? (We've seen Dumore, but not W-B).

Thanks in advance,
Barbara

The PSU-Wilkes-Barre campus is actually out in the Back Mountain, a very affluent suburban area. Crime is nearly unheard of out here. The only bad thing about the campus is that traffic congestion on Route 309 can be hellish at rush-hour, as many of the 30,000+ residents of the Dallas area commute to Wilkes-Barre for work. The campus is very small, but it is very beautiful and leafy. I was always a fan of the historic Hayfield House on campus. Other than the traffic, there's really no complaints on my end about the PSU-Wilkes-Barre campus. Be sure to stop on the way back from your visit at Hillside Farms for some great dairy ice cream!