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what do you consider the most dangerous american city?

63dot

63dot

macrumors 603
Original poster
Jun 12, 2006
5,269
339
norcal
growing up i used to hear about how "dangerous" new york city was, but then there have been steps (maybe or maybe not by prez candidate you know who) to clean up crime, as well as other mayors of the past from the big apple

well, kudos to them if that's true

cities (or sections of cities) i have heard mentioned as dangerous, which i have not been to are new haven, new orleans, south central and east los angeles, phoenix, norfolk, alexandria (VA), gary, sacramento, chicago, philly, and a few others i can't think of off the top of my head

of course, i have heard decent things about these cities, in no particular order... vancouver, seattle, austin, portland, madison, palo alto, mill valley, honolulu, and a ton of other places

UPDATE: after 54 posts on this thread of objective and subjective facts, feelings, and statements, and personal crime experiences of the people here, i did some research on alexandria and philly, mentioned above, and also looked at camden, detroit, and oakland and stacked the five cities in crime against the national average in post #55 of this thread
 
Alexandria, VA is not dangerous. it is protected by some of the best uniformed patrollmen in the country - those assigned to the greater Washington, D.C. area - because of its proximity to the nation's capital.

i've heard Newark and Camden, NJ are the most dangerous in the nation but i've also heard bad things from Southeast Washington, D.C. and parts of Los Angeles.
 
a lot of people say detroit, i lived there for a short while when i was younger, and it is pretty bad in some areas, but i think that its not as bad as some make it out to be. Although statistics show (i think) that detroit is definately up there with the worst of them. I am biased because i live near it, obviously. I hear Gary, IN is pretty bad sometimes.

edit: also, those really large cities are often up on those lists because of the fact that they are really big, and you cant really help but have some bad areas.
 
pianoman said:
it is protected by some of the best uniformed patrollmen in the country
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that's kind of a funny statement being that nyc in its worst moments of crime and urban decay were always protected by "new york's finest"

i always wondered what that meant??...was it that they were the best policemen in the usa?

or did it mean they had to be really good just to stay alive? ;)

or that did it mean that one has to be the finest to put themselves in harm's way so much?

i live in a town of fewer than 2000 residents with one murder which happened, in 1942, and in that case the deed could have been done elsewhere and the body hid here

i will always hear someone from a big city (50,000 people or more as defined by conde nast and others) say their city is safe because they have thousands of cops or that they have a large swat team, or that their mayor is tough, even brutal, on crime...but somehow it does not equate a place with being safe

in my county, there are a couple of police departments that have unarmed police officers and one city only has a first alarm type of rental cop organization (i hope i don't invite any criminals to my town :) )

my wife grew up in harlem, nyc and while she mentions that it was, and still is, a very dangerous place, she believes the police there are the best, and most polite police officers she has ever seen (for a big city)

not to mention heroic and good looking, like on tv :)
 
Having lived in South American cities, including Medellín and Bogotá, Colombia, the only U.S. (North American) city I've been shot at was in Memphis.
 
St Louis won the 'murders per capita', and 'felonious crimes per capita' award quite recently. But, all US cities pale in comparison to Manila, PI, and Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
 
St. Louis topped the list in Morgan Quitno's 2006 survey for cities of at least 75,000 people. As far as overall metro areas go, Detroit was the big winner (loser).
 
I'm always a bit skeptical of rankings that use the major individual city crime stats instead of ranking continuous metropolitan regions as a whole.

Some cities like Detroit are relatively small in population and area as compared to their metro areas in total, while cities like LA, Indianapolis or Houston are quite large.
 
Bibulous said:
I'm always a bit skeptical of rankings that use the major individual city crime stats instead of ranking continuous metropolitan regions as a whole.
Click to expand...

So use the metro area rankings.

Detroit does even worse when you include the metro area. They were second-worst as a standalone city, but the metro area (the Detroit-Livonia-Dearborn metropolitan division) came in dead last.
 
I would probably say Detroit or St. Louis.

Chicago is pretty bad too and I've had a couple of bad experiences there.
 
FleurDuMal said:
You get robbed left, right and centre. :p
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well, hehe, to have that happen, go to an apple store...thank god us macheads have catalogs and the internet to get some of our stuff cheap

i went to an apple store and bought my ibook some years back (before i knew about catalogs) and paid full retail price...then i was shown a catalog which, for the same price, offered the same ibook, double the ram, and a free epson printer thrown in

oh, but the catalog charged thirty bucks for installing the ram, but that's really no biggie and shipping was free

other catalogs and online places give out scanners, student versions of photoshop or ms office for mac, and other things for free
 
What's with all the St Louis hate? ;)

Nah, we did "win" the (rather dubious) award this year, but I've actually never really felt that unsafe here. The area encompassed by that study was St Louis city, not the entire county (and thus, surrounding areas that're still referred to as St Louis). It's somewhat misleading.

However, I've never heard the word "safe" and East St Louis (which is actually in Illinois) in the same sentence (unless it's to say "East St Louis is not safe").
 
WildCowboy said:
So use the metro area rankings.

Detroit does even worse when you include the metro area. They were second-worst as a standalone city, but the metro area (the Detroit-Livonia-Dearborn metropolitan division) came in dead last.
Click to expand...


omg, i forgot to mention detroit...i have always heard bad things about that city

and i recently read an article, newsweek or time, that in times of decreasing employment (and that is common in detroit's history over quite a few years since the decline of the us auto industry) only makes the picture gloomier as that chases away developers who would want to renew the city

while norfolk has been, and is still considered dangerous in parts (where my poor brother lives), has been subject to some of the most positive urban renewal projects in the country...but we are talking about renewing a city that was way down the drain so it will take time to clean it up the way nyc cleaned up times square over the years

i sure hope, somehow, there could be a renewal of the us auto industry, and of detroit and the surrounding areas
 
Alexandria VA?!?!?!

I have lived in Northern Virginia all my life and have never really considered any part of it to be dangerous

Baltimore, Detroit, and Los Angeles come to mind when i think of dangerous cities
 
epochblue said:
What's with all the St Louis hate? ;)

Nah, we did "win" the (rather dubious) award this year, but I've actually never really felt that unsafe here. The area encompassed by that study was St Louis city, not the entire county (and thus, surrounding areas that're still referred to as St Louis). It's somewhat misleading.

However, I've never heard the word "safe" and East St Louis (which is actually in Illinois) in the same sentence (unless it's to say "East St Louis is not safe").
Click to expand...
Still, I'd be leery to walk on foot at night around Sullivan Avenue, North Spring Avenue, Dodier Street and North Grand Avenue like I used to to go to the old Sportsman's Park. E. St. Louis, Madison, Granite City are all smaller cities on the IL side or the River, but have their own ambience.

The same with Memphis city limits, though, to wonder around Chelsea and/or other parts, is just not safe.
 
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