Darby's violent crime is almost twice as bad as Camden NJ (Mercer: health, population)

[Steinish]

Originally Posted by pman

Most likely they are using different crime rates. This article includes more than just the murder rates. Presumably chester has lower rates of other crimes

Thank you.

[cpomp]

Originally Posted by pman

Delaware County should be embarrassed to have two on that list...interestingly upper darby is not one of them. Upper darby should be easier to bring back as the terminal area is still busy the other two lack people. Camden is indeed awful, it's so far gone (like chester) but crime is down there and location is good but it's in nj

It's not Delaware County's fault... Every county and every city has dangerous and poor areas. I find Delaware County unique because even with Chester and Darby the county still holds it weight very well against all other counties in the metro region.

[Burger Fan]

Originally Posted by pman

Most likely they are using different crime rates. This article includes more than just the murder rates. Presumably chester has lower rates of other crimes

no, chester is high in just about every category. As someone else pointed out, this list is worthless because small municipalities (like darby) end up with skewed crime rates when a relatively small number of crimes occur. It looks far worse when 1 murder occurs in a town of 1,000 than one with 100,000 for instance.

most reputable crime reports just exclude towns under 10K in population because of this, and Darby is right on that border with 10K residents or so. Chances are this company knew what it was doing when it found the smallest possible town it could reasonably use to generate headlines for its report. "Chester is the most dangerous town in pennsylvania!!" generates no attention, because we all know this. "Small town you wouldn't expect!!!" does.

larger municipalities with crime problems (like chester, or upper darby) will just about always come out favorably when compared against towns like this, since their larger population makes the rate look more reasonable. No one in their right mind thinks Darby Boro is somehow more dangerous than Chester is.

//www.city-data.com/crime/crime...nsylvania.html


//www.city-data.com/crime/crime...nsylvania.html

Despite Darby's higher crime RATE overall, they rarely average more than 1 murder per year- and have been at "0" for several years in a row. Chester clocks up more than 20 TIMES this amount per year, despite having only about 3 times the population. Chester in fact is higher in just about all categories across the board, even when its higher population is taken into account. (note that there seems to be an error in darby's rape statistics for the most current year though- spiking from 11 a year to 87, which doesn't seem plausible- this spikes it's crime rate from an average of about 1200 on the crime index to 1700 for 2013 and is clearly an outlier year or an error in reporting).

This is a garbage article. Darby is no paradise but it's deliberately misrepresenting the data.

[pman]

Darby is a dump, I wouldn't go either place. Delco should be embarrassed. That isn't to say Delco is a bad place, if it were it would be more understandable

[southbound_295]

Originally Posted by pman

Delaware County should be embarrassed to have two on that list...interestingly upper darby is not one of them. Upper darby should be easier to bring back as the terminal area is still busy the other two lack people. Camden is indeed awful, it's so far gone (like chester) but crime is down there and location is good but it's in nj

Camden is the gold standard for awful.

[drro]

I never heard about 'Darby' before and had no idea there were small towns worse than the usual suspects like Flint, Detroit, or Oakland. I noticed that nearly all the high crime cities look rough and run down, are there any run down cities that are actually safe crime wise?

[MB1562]

Originally Posted by drro

I never heard about 'Darby' before and had no idea there were small towns worse than the usual suspects like Flint, Detroit, or Oakland. I noticed that nearly all the high crime cities look rough and run down, are there any run down cities that are actually safe crime wise?

There are safe parts of even the worst cities. Detroit, infamous for it's crime and blight, even has some nice neighborhoods. Though in general, most run down cities are usually high-crime areas overall. Economic hardship and crime pretty much always go together, whether that be in a big city or backwater hick town.

[StealthTaurus]

Darby has always looked like a crap hole. Leaving Yeadon going into Darby is like "how can this happen so quickly?"

[Healthgang]

Originally Posted by Pennsport

I don't know about that. Darby has gotten seriously jacked up over the last decade. I mean, Michael Chitwood is interviewed almost daily about some of the most heinous crimes I can recollect. A lot of West Philly has been driven further west into Darby borough or at least they prey within the borough.

Chitwood is the commissioner of Upper Darby. They're close but are two different municipalities. Darby is a small little borough while Upper Darby is the biggest township in the country. Also crime in Upper Darby is limited to certain parts. Otherwise it's pretty nice.

[Flyers Girl]

Originally Posted by pman

Darby is a dump, I wouldn't go either place. Delco should be embarrassed. That isn't to say Delco is a bad place, if it were it would be more understandable

Well, there's Delaware County and then there's Delco. Delco has a somewhat negative connotation. And I say that as a lifelong resident of Havertown.