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I'm sure its been commented on before. But the statistics are skewed by the fact that St Louis City is a relatively small area. St Louis has a crime rate of 825 per 100,000, which is higher than Chicago (500) and much higher than the national average (301).
However, when metropolitan areas are ranked, the following are found to have worse crime than the St Louis area: Atlanta, Philadelphia, Houston, Kansas City, Baltimore, Oklahoma City, Detroit, New Orleans, Nashville, Tucson, Columbus and others.
This is definitely true and it's often-cited, but I do think this excuse masks some of the issue though. People need to start comparing St. Louis neighborhoods to similar neighborhoods in other cities to see how things stack up more honestly.
-Austin is a high crime and notorious neighborhood on Chicago's west side. Their violent crime rate is equal to West End/Visitation Park in St. Louis, which is one of the nicest parts of North City.
-West Garfield Park is the most dangerous neighborhood in the Chicago. It's violent crime rate (316 per 10K when you trend their population down) is just a bit above average when you do the same for North City. The worst parts of North City are substantially more violent than the worst neighborhoods in Chicago. That's saying something.
Crime is declining in the city, but it's not dropping as quickly as in other cities. Ideally, I'd like to see big improvements all over the city, but I don't think that's realistic. I'm hopeful that what we can see happen is that gentrification and investment continue to get dumped into areas like Fox Park, Tiffany/Botanical, and the Cherokee corridor in South City. Then that bigger portion of South City is more or less stabilized. Maybe Midtown can continue to enhance Grand Center and we continue to make progress in ONSL and the West End gets further investment from the Loop.
This should increase the tax base and allow the city to consolidate some of its gains and improvements. Then you've got more money and resources to start tackling the more difficult issues. For example, police presence can drop a bit in the established neighborhoods and personnel can focus on areas like Gravois Park and most of North City for example. I just don't think a piecemeal approach all over the city is going to cut it. Most any ambitious project you build, develop, establish, etc just gets overwhelmed by all the poverty and crime.
This is definitely true and it's often-cited, but I do think this excuse masks some of the issue though. People need to start comparing St. Louis neighborhoods to similar neighborhoods in other cities to see how things stack up more honestly.
-Austin is a high crime and notorious neighborhood on Chicago's west side. Their violent crime rate is equal to West End/Visitation Park in St. Louis, which is one of the nicest parts of North City.
-West Garfield Park is the most dangerous neighborhood in the Chicago. It's violent crime rate (316 per 10K when you trend their population down) is just a bit above average when you do the same for North City. The worst parts of North City are substantially more violent than the worst neighborhoods in Chicago. That's saying something.
Crime is declining in the city, but it's not dropping as quickly as in other cities. Ideally, I'd like to see big improvements all over the city, but I don't think that's realistic. I'm hopeful that what we can see happen is that gentrification and investment continue to get dumped into areas like Fox Park, Tiffany/Botanical, and the Cherokee corridor in South City. Then that bigger portion of South City is more or less stabilized. Maybe Midtown can continue to enhance Grand Center and we continue to make progress in ONSL and the West End gets further investment from the Loop.
This should increase the tax base and allow the city to consolidate some of its gains and improvements. Then you've got more money and resources to start tackling the more difficult issues. For example, police presence can drop a bit in the established neighborhoods and personnel can focus on areas like Gravois Park and most of North City for example. I just don't think a piecemeal approach all over the city is going to cut it. Most any ambitious project you build, develop, establish, etc just gets overwhelmed by all the poverty and crime.
I know Chicago has done some changes in how they classify homicides. Not sure about the details but some changes has been made and many have complained about the statistics where watered down. Also it's tough to do a city by city comparison when there isn't a standardized way of collecting data.
With that being said as a whole I feel safe in St. Louis conducting my day to day life and in many ways I feel safer than I did in Chicago. Maybe I am wrong for saying this but homicides don't affect my day to day life due to my demographic. Robberies and assaults are what I'm more concerned about.
Imo, if there where 5 homicides in St. Louis that would be too many but to do a side by side comparison with Nashville, Chicago or what ever is not going to give the full picture unless we are on the same page as far as data is collected.
Stop the black on black violence in America.. where is the outrage.. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.. hello where are you? Let me guess you only care when a white person kills a black man.
Stop the black on black violence in America.. where is the outrage.. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.. hello where are you? Let me guess you only care when a white person kills a black man.
You need to stay in Lexington until you talk to Al and Jesse and get your facts straight.
Stop the black on black violence in America.. where is the outrage.. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.. hello where are you? Let me guess you only care when a white person kills a black man.
Because Al Sharpton never does anything to address black-on-black violence.
Do you get all your news from Rush Limbaugh or something? What's the matter with you?
I know Chicago has done some changes in how they classify homicides. Not sure about the details but some changes has been made and many have complained about the statistics where watered down. Also it's tough to do a city by city comparison when there isn't a standardized way of collecting data.
With that being said as a whole I feel safe in St. Louis conducting my day to day life and in many ways I feel safer than I did in Chicago. Maybe I am wrong for saying this but homicides don't affect my day to day life due to my demographic. Robberies and assaults are what I'm more concerned about.
Imo, if there where 5 homicides in St. Louis that would be too many but to do a side by side comparison with Nashville, Chicago or what ever is not going to give the full picture unless we are on the same page as far as data is collected.
What has happened w Chicago crime rates has been an understatement of various crimes at different levels since the new police chief took over. The city still reports federally using UCR standards, but some crimes have been creatively classified down to reduce the numbers. NYPD has been written up about this as well in the media, and neutral observers have noted this is something that very likely occurs in just about every PD...St. Louis included. NYPD and CPD make news though.
An audit found that crime was understated by abt 25% using UCR's standardized methodology, but the issue is that it's easier to understate events related to property issues than it is violent crime (assault, robbery, rape, and homicide), so the crimes that people are more concerned about are likely to be understated at a rate far less than 25%. Example: a media outlet that stays up on crime (using scanners and such) noted possibly 10 more homicides that went uncounted in 2013. That would be an increase of only 2.4%. There could be very good reasons for excluding these 10. Someone gets shot in Oak Park and runs back into Austin (Chicago) to flee collapses and dies in an alley. A known heroin user from Aurora is found burned in a dumpster in K-town (heroin central). It's pretty likely the person OD'd in a heroin house and they dumped the deceased to avoid getting busted for narcotics. A person with no known connection to Chicago is found bound in an abandoned car. This happened in my old neighborhood to a woman from Milwaukee who was killed at home by her boyfriend, brought here and abandoned in a car.
The thing is, even if you control for the likely understatement of violent crime (and assume the same things don't happen here), the violent crime rate in "bad" neighborhoods here is considerably worse than Chicago. Chicago has problems. Our rate here definitely looks worse at the city level due to city boundary issues, but people need to stop pulling that out as their default excuse. At the neighborhood level (which avoids the city boundary issue), we're still much worse off.
Your experience may differ based upon how and where you live here vs. Chicago, but statistically it's less safe here. If I was a poor African American confined to living in an overwhelmingly poor and black neighborhood whose sole criteria for Chicago or St. Louis was crime and neighborhood safety, I'd pick Chicago hands down. If I was a middle or working class black man who was seeking a decent commute and a diverse area where I wasn't the token black man (or two) on my block, I'd pick STL easily. Chicago doesn't do AA integration at the block level well at all. The near south side, near west side, and Rogers Park are integrated at the community level, but it is black living in one area (typically poor and working class) and white/Asian (typically working up to full fledged yuppie/upper middle) living in another separately. The only place I can think of reasonably close to the Loop where that exists is Kenwood and some parts of Hyde Park, both of which are safe (but expensive) and even those areas butt up against some very bad areas like Woodlawn. Uptown maybe, but that's not partNothing else exists in that category until you get out to the far south and southwest sides. You can find that here in Fox Park, Shaw, Botanical Heights, the Grove, Skinker-Deb, even some parts of the CWE, West End close to the Loop, etc. From that perspective, I can see how someone's day to day here is safer. Their budget here can get a moderate crime, moderate income, economically and racially diverse area that doesn't offer a crushing commute. There is no comparable area in Chicago.
I lived in Hyde Park for most of my time in Chicago. I was in West Lakeview for a year and suburban Oak Park for 6 months.
I agree with you on paper, statistics seems to favor Chicago when it comes to crime. I would also say the average White Lincoln Parker would find neighborhoods like the Central West End to not be as "safe" as they would like. I can remember one couple who swore up and down that downtown lofts where all section 8 and they had to move to Creve Coeur to feel safe and then complained that St. Louis wasn't exciting enough for them. They where looking for the remake of Lincoln Park in terms of wealth, safety, density and energy and it just didn't happen and probably won't happen in St. Louis or a city this size.
I would also agree that St. Louis offers a better quality of life for working to middle class African Americans in terms of safety and options to live in diverse neighborhood's. Based upon my experience I would say it's not bad at all. As a African American professional, it is easier living here as well but you can also tell St. Louis hasn't been a magnet for well educated African Americans like you would find in DC or Atlanta. But compared to Chicago it's easier to live work and socialize here if you're looking at it from a Black and White perspective.
In my 6 years of living in Chicago, I got very tired of the hustler attitude from other African Americans. Almost every time I leave home I was hassled about cigarettes, money, "car fare" or something. The gang culture is a lot more deeply entrenched and visible in Chicago as well. Even in upscale Lakeview I saw occasional gang graffiti and I did witness some crime towards the boys town area. (I heard that area lead the city in robberies last year) From the way friends talked about the violence at the Pride fest on Wilson and Broadway and Montrose Beach, I don't recall ever experiencing a site like he described anywhere else I've live. The Pride fest here was almost uneventful from what I saw though a much smaller crowd that was just as diverse. I think a lot of that has to do with crowd size as well. I can also remember visiting friends on the Gold Coast getting off the red line at Chicago Ave and really not feeling comfortable with the size of the thug crowds and never quite experiencing anything like that here or anywhere else. Once again the size of the thug crowds makes a huge difference in terms of safety perception. It just seemed like anything can jump off at anytime in Chicago and you have to always be watchful.
One last story I met an African American pharmacist in his early 20s from St. Louis who lived in Uptown who said he enjoyed Chicago but really felt threatened by other African American young people in his day to day life. They would see him in his BMW 3 series walking into his luxury high rise apartment building near lake shore drive and would get a serious "mean mugging" from his peers. He would also have to deal with the opposite side of things coming from the Chad and Trixie scene of trendy Lake View and Lincoln Park with the racist attitudes. He had a rough time like I did in finding a happy medium with like minds and feeling safe at the same time.
I still say that I feel safer in St. Louis as a professional African American than I did in Chicago even though on paper Chicago was safer. I can also see a White person from Chicago may have a experience that may be the opposite.
They were busy last night, six shootings in three hours.
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