Shrinking City? (Kansas City, St. Louis, Cleveland: versus, statistics, safe)

[msamhunter]

Originally Posted by BoomBoxing

^Nobody on here has ever said St. Louis doesn't have a crime problem. When we talk about bunk crime statistics, we're just trying to show why St. Louis likely isn't the "most dangerous". And yes the population/crimes formula is well understood but it is a poor measure of what we're trying to measure here, which is in essence "danger."

The small size of the city is the biggest reason St. Louis shoots to the top of this list, whether anyone wants to believe it or not. It simply isn't a fair comparison to measure cities that include large swaths of suburbia in their city limits against a strictly urban area. Kansas City is 318 square miles while St. Louis is 66. Everyone knows St. Louis is a bigger metro area yet due to civil war era political decisions, STL's reputation gets marred because disengenious "researchers" want to make a headline.

And the most despicable part of it all is the damage done when these crap is published. St. Louis could get a handle on the inner city crime if we had a nice influx of new residents from the suburbs and elsewhere in the country. But how many will never consider it because of the reputation as "most dangerous?" Businesses, conventions, and people have all cited high crime as reasons not to move here. Crime is high, no doubt, but honestly it is not worse or much worse than the vast majority of metro areas.

The small size of the physical city limits is in no way shape or form the reason why St. Louis has a lot of crime. That's just pure BUNK! Cities today that are annexing, are normally annexing vastly unpopulated areas of land as the physical citizen count is negligible. So statistics or raw numbers is not based off of physical size, it's number of people. With the exception of Louisville, every consolidated city in this nation has been consolidated for at least 40 years so again, that's not even an excuse. Now, if you said, STL has a lot of poverty then yes, poverty often times lead to crime due to some of the means people go though to make ends meet. But please do not pass that as an excuse for crime in Stl. Fact, San Francisco is 805k people shoved into 46 sq miles of land but you look at their crime statistics and raw numbers and they don't even compare to STL.

[BoomBoxing]

^That would've been a great response if my argument was "St. Louis has a lot of crime because of its small city limits". That was not my argument, however. In fact, I am not even saying that St. Louis doesn't have high crime. The argument was that St. Louis' small city limits give off the impression that St. Louis is a more dangerous place than it actually is. You cited another city with small city limits to rebuke me, which is fine. San Francisco most certainly is a safer city than St. Louis. In fairness there's also DC, Pittsburgh, and Baltimore with small city limits that often also show up higher in crime rankings than they otherwise would.

My point was that when you just take the city limits and divide population by crimes you do not effectively compare different cities. Re-read what I wrote in bold. You are NOT comparing cities fairly or accurately. As for this...

Cities today that are annexing, are normally annexing vastly unpopulated areas of land as the physical citizen count is negligible

Yeah and that's ridiculous. That does not address nor accurately change crime, just the perception. And in case you didn't notice, St. Louis city is surrounded by St. Louis county so it can't exactly go out and "annex" land.

[kshe95girl]

Originally Posted by msamhunter

It's not really a distortion of fact.

Originally Posted by kshe95girl

No, honey, we dont take it personally.
Its that flat-out distortion of data that we take umbrage to.
By the same token of data skew, the town I live in has been named one of the top 10 for urban sprawl.
Seriously.

Perhaps the problem lies here. (See bolded)
You didnt even read my post and quote it correctly.

[msamhunter]

Originally Posted by BoomBoxing

^That would've been a great response if my argument was "St. Louis has a lot of crime because of its small city limits". That was not my argument, however. In fact, I am not even saying that St. Louis doesn't have high crime. The argument was that St. Louis' small city limits give off the impression that St. Louis is a more dangerous place than it actually is. You cited another city with small city limits to rebuke me, which is fine. San Francisco most certainly is a safer city than St. Louis. In fairness there's also DC, Pittsburgh, and Baltimore with small city limits that often also show up higher in crime rankings than they otherwise would.

My point was that when you just take the city limits and divide population by crimes you do not effectively compare different cities. Re-read what I wrote in bold. You are NOT comparing cities fairly or accurately. As for this...



Yeah and that's ridiculous. That does not address nor accurately change crime, just the perception. And in case you didn't notice, St. Louis city is surrounded by St. Louis county so it can't exactly go out and "annex" land.

They do not take the city limits. They take the population. City limits are in no way shape or form a factor in the UCR. Yes, St. Louis is landlocked outside of Lambert which is run by the city. Yes, I know the city tried to rejoin the county and the county has well rejected it so that should tell you something. It's a shame, it takes a few knuckleheads to completely change the perception of a city. Know all too well.

[aragx6]

Originally Posted by msamhunter

They do not take the city limits. They take the population. City limits are in no way shape or form a factor in the UCR. Yes, St. Louis is landlocked outside of Lambert which is run by the city. Yes, I know the city tried to rejoin the county and the county has well rejected it so that should tell you something. It's a shame, it takes a few knuckleheads to completely change the perception of a city. Know all too well.

I would do some more reading on this subject, as it seems you don't really have a firm grasp of the politics at play. There are many in the county who would like to see St. Louis City enter the county as a municipality.

[msamhunter]

Originally Posted by kshe95girl

Perhaps the problem lies here. (See bolded)
You didnt even read my post and quote it correctly.

Really, that was such a poor attempt. The data is data and the same application is done across the board for all cities with a minimum population (100k). Only difference is STL is on the wrong side of that. If it weren't you along with countless others would be praising that same data to say how great STL is and here's why just as you do when STL is ranked one of the top 10 best this for that which is so rampant across these boards with every city; myself included. Take the good with the bad.

[kshe95girl]

Originally Posted by msamhunter

Really, that was such a poor attempt. The data is data and the same application is done across the board for all cities with a minimum population (100k). Only difference is STL is on the wrong side of that. If it weren't you along with countless others would be praising that same data to say how great STL is and here's why just as you do when STL is ranked one of the top 10 best this for that which is so rampant across these boards with every city; myself included. Take the good with the bad.

See below, your rambling post makes no sense whatsoever.
You really do need to do some more reading, and some analytical brush-up wouldnt hurt either.

Originally Posted by aragx6

I would do some more reading on this subject, as it seems you don't really have a firm grasp of the politics at play. There are many in the county who would like to see St. Louis City enter the county as a municipality.

[BoomBoxing]

Originally Posted by msamhunter

They do not take the city limits. They take the population. City limits are in no way shape or form a factor in the UCR. Yes, St. Louis is landlocked outside of Lambert which is run by the city. Yes, I know the city tried to rejoin the county and the county has well rejected it so that should tell you something. It's a shame, it takes a few knuckleheads to completely change the perception of a city. Know all too well.

This is semantics but my point was they measure the population of the city only, whereas the city limits of St. Louis are much smaller than most cities and encompass a mostly urban area. Like I said before, I would wager that if you spread out the city limits even just a little amount...let's say to 80 sq. miles putting it in line with cities like Cleveland...you would see St. Louis drop off the top 5.

By the way, did you know Chicago doesn't even get ranked due to conflicting reporting methods of the ISP versus FBI? That's pretty ridiculous if you ask me. I just think that if you are going to compare cities and figure out which is more dangerous, then you should come up with a uniform methodology that does several things...

1) Weights different crimes fairly. IE: Car break-ins are worth much less than a homicide

2) Controls for urbanized area inside city limits versus outside. For example, if the "city" is 95% urbanized like you could say St. Louis is, it should be weighted as such versus a city like, say, Oklahoma City which may only be 25% urbanized. Vast amounts of suburbia and farmland should not be taken into account when we're looking at "most dangerous". I still suspect that such a method would result in St. Louis being ranked high, but I bet it would no longer be "most dangerous". Or if you want to keep the current ridiculous method, let's just combine St. Louis county inside of I-170 with the city's numbers.

[BoomBoxing]

Finally, as often the case when you stick up for STL's unforunate high crime rankings you are often painted as ignorant or uncaring about the many social ills that plague the city. I'm well aware and few things anger me more than the amount of crime in St. Louis. It really sucks I can never wrap my head around the actions of the fools that plague our great city. I do think the "most dangerous" thing is mostly hype though...and I hope to be back in STL one day and will do my part to counteract the lowlifes

[msamhunter]

Originally Posted by kshe95girl

See below, your rambling post makes no sense whatsoever.
You really do need to do some more reading, and some analytical brush-up wouldnt hurt either.

Really, since you can't comprehend let me be clearer. Those STATS is the same methodology done ACROSS THE BOARD for all cities with 100k population it's pretty simple math and pretty standard. There was nothing different done for St. Louis. That bs excuse about city limits which isn't even taken into account when doing those statistics is laughable. Bottom line, those stats are what they are. If those same stats put STL in a good light YOU along with countless others would be praising them as to show how great STL is; just like any other list out here on this site that details STL as being one of the best of "pick your subject".