Glad Pittsburgh doesn't make this list!

[Uptown kid]

Lol this list... Chicago is the murder capitol of North America (even more homicides than Mexico City). More American people have died in Chicago three years than Americans in Afganistan in the past three years... There are currently over 100,000 gang members living within the city limits and there have been over 400 homicides in eleven months! Over 80 innocent people have been gunned downed by stray bullets while walking down the street during drive by shootings and what not. In one day 30 people got shot in drive by shootings. There are individual neighborhoods that have more killings than some of the largest cities (including Pittsburgh) so far this year. There is a gang in every neighborhood that is low income-working class. And everybody who is low income black/hispanic knows someone who has been shot (at least non fatally) in the past 3yrs. My only issue with Obama is that he ain't doin' a damn thing to help them out! Shoot right now it's worse than LA/Compton in height of the gang wars. It's not just black on black or brown on brown it's both! There are super gangs like the Vice Lords Gangster Disiples Black P. Stone Rangers Lantin King Manic Latin Disiples & Spanish Cobraz that base their hierarchy like the military who run the city as terrorist... Call the National Gaurd dang'it!

[LIRefugee]

Originally Posted by SteelCityRising

Memphis is a pit. I would frequently go there for training while working for my former employer in DC, and outside of Beale Street and the immediate central business district many of the other neighborhoods are impoverished slums with intimidating-looking people loitering all day. I walked all the way from our suburban hotel to Beale Street and back one day just to "explore" a bit and felt very uneasy as I trekked through some areas where people were shouting racial slurs at me (I'm white) from their porches---in broad daylight.

But it has great barbeque!

I also spent a lot of time on the southern side there because of my employer and outside of downtown and midtown (which is quite nice), a large part of it looks very poor and devastated. Then you get to suburbs like Germantown and you can see where the money is. Around the airport and Graceland, though, it is unsavory.

I've felt a little uneasy only once in Pittsburgh, at the S Oakland side of the Birmingham Bridge.

[TheYO]

Originally Posted by Uptown kid

Lol this list... Chicago is the murder capitol of North America (even more homicides than Mexico City). More American people have died in Chicago three years than Americans in Afganistan in the past three years... There are currently over 100,000 gang members living within the city limits and there have been over 400 homicides in eleven months! Over 80 innocent people have been gunned downed by stray bullets while walking down the street during drive by shootings and what not. In one day 30 people got shot in drive by shootings. There are individual neighborhoods that have more killings than some of the largest cities (including Pittsburgh) so far this year. There is a gang in every neighborhood that is low income-working class. And everybody who is low income black/hispanic knows someone who has been shot (at least non fatally) in the past 3yrs. My only issue with Obama is that he ain't doin' a damn thing to help them out! Shoot right now it's worse than LA/Compton in height of the gang wars. It's not just black on black or brown on brown it's both! There are super gangs like the Vice Lords Gangster Disiples Black P. Stone Rangers Lantin King Manic Latin Disiples & Spanish Cobraz that base their hierarchy like the military who run the city as terrorist... Call the National Gaurd dang'it!

I don't know where you're getting your stats from, but according to the FBI data base Chicago didn't even have the most homicides in America last year. NYC had 515 and Chicago had 431. Given NYC's huge population, those 515 homicides equal 6 per 100,000 residents, compared to 16 per 100,000 in Chicago. That still pales in comparison to New Orleans which had 58 murders per 100,000, the most in the country.

Those are all mild compared to the most dangerous city in North America: Juarez, Mexico, just across the border from El Paso. In 2011 the city had 1,974 homicides or 148 per 100,000 residents. That's over 5 homicides a day, and in one 72-hour span in February, 53 people were murdered. And that was a "safe" year compared to the 3,117 in 2010.

FWIW, the FBI doesn't report Chicago's total violent crimes because of the way Chicago reports rape/sexual assault statistics. So Chicago is never ranked on these "most dangerous cities" lists.

I'm not saying Chicago doesn't have some of the worst neighborhoods in the country. The violence has seemed to escalate there lately. But to call it the murder capitol of North America is far from the truth.

[gg]

Originally Posted by Uptown kid

Lol this list... Chicago is the murder capitol of North America (even more homicides than Mexico City). More American people have died in Chicago three years than Americans in Afganistan in the past three years...

This is really odd since you put it that way. Wonder if Rush Street is still a good place to enjoy, or is it overrun? Sure are wild numbers up that way.

[Uptown kid]

I'm not saying Chicago doesn't have some of the worst neighborhoods in the country. The violence has seemed to escalate there lately. But to call it the murder capitol of North America is far from the truth.

Sorry Chicago is/will be the murder capitol of the US in 2012...

[steindle]

(a) The generalizations being thrown around in this thread are pure, classic City-Data.
(b) These lists are stupid, skewed hype, and the reason should be obvious to a person of average intelligence who thinks about cities. They are based on a formula so lazily simple that it's virtually meaningless: take the number of murders in the entire geographical area defined as City X and divide it by the population within that same arbitrary boundary.

The flaw here: sensational "studies" like this judge cities like St. Louis (62 sq miles, ~5k density) or Buffalo (41 sq mi, ~6.4k density) using exactly the same formula as "cities" like Houston (600 sq miles, ~3.5k density) or Phoenix (517 sq mi, ~2.8k density). Obviously there is going to be more crime per capita in cities where we are looking almost exclusively at the actual, often impoverished, urban core vs. "cities" where we are actually looking at the traditional urban core plus vast tracts -- in the case of Houston, an area almost the size of Allegheny County -- of well-to-do suburbs. If you include St. Louis County in the statistics (which would make the sampled area approximately the same size as "Houston"), "St. Louis" drops to one of the safest cities in the country! The current methodology is like taking an air quality sample next to the Edgar Thomas Works and calling it representative of West Deer.

In my opinion, there are two ways of "fairly" reporting something like this: either pinpoint very small geographical areas of crime (e.g., at the neighborhood or block level), or vastly widen the scope to rate crime based on the entire metropolitan area. (The latter has been done and Memphis and Detroit admittedly still come out very poorly -- but, e.g., St. Louis falls drastically, as does Buffalo, Atlanta, New Haven, Hartford, DC, etc. -- link). This absurd middle ground does nothing but stir up uninformed generalization and misplaced animus toward the same undeserving cast of characters each year.