Quote:
Originally Posted by Comrade
3. People don't expect it. Because they don't expect it - not much has been done to stop it. I think we live in a state of denial here. The homicide rate in Salt Lake is higher than it is in Denver and New York. It's the same with WVC. But we kinda just shrug at that because it doesn't fit the narrative.
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The homicide rate in Salt Lake is NOT higher than Denver. The 2012-2016 average per 100,000 (I prefer using 5 years because 1 year rates are highly variable) in Denver is 6.6, in Salt Lake City it's 4.5. Now you are correct about New York City - their rate is 4.2 over that same period. However, I'm sure the distribution in New York is very uneven. There are likely still neighborhoods in New York that are more dangerous than any neighborhood in Salt Lake. That's just what happens in a city as large and diverse as New York. They're not even really comparable.
Of course, the key thing to note is that all of these numbers are very low.
I grew up and lived in Sugarhouse. We had no break-ins or issues there. Worst thing that happened in our neighborhood was a stabbing in the house across the street from us, but it wasn't just some random stabbing. My apartment in South Salt Lake WAS broken into once (someone was home and scared them off, so they only got away with one item). Never had any issues in Sugarhouse. I've heard of people who have had issues with break-ins or stealing in all areas of the city, but only the occasional violent crime.
I have spent a lot of time in nearly all areas of the city, including downtown, the Central Ninth, Liberty Wells, Fairpark area, around the SLCC South City campus, and in South Salt Lake, and have only clearly witnessed a single violent crime - I did see a gang beating someone up once. This happened on 2100 South around 2200 East. Not exactly an area of the town people would think of when they think of gang activity.
I think the point here is that it can happen anywhere. There are no single neighborhoods in Salt Lake that are significantly more dangerous than any other except for the Rio Grande area, and I'm not sure if that's still true after the crackdown. Violent crime is probably around the average for a city of its size. To paint the violent crime rate as "high" is disingenuous at best, and it's why I don't trust any of these "best or worst cities" rankings. They use very broad, generalized, and often cherry-picked statistics to create their lists, and besides what is deemed "best" and "worst" is often in the eye of the beholder. That particular ranking compared Salt Lake City's violent crime rate to the OVERALL national average (including cities, rural areas, suburbs, etc). Some people may not care about certain statistics when they're looking at a place to live, or they may care about something else much more than other people would. Those lists are worthless for all I know or care about.
Now Salt Lake DOES have a high rate of property crime, and I believe those statistics. I don't really know why that is though, and I do think local and state government is in denial about that. I also agree that even though our violent crime rate is not high, I do think the perception that Salt Lake and Utah is safe, and our local leaders' desire to keep our perception that way, does mean that we do tend to overlook legitimate issues that we have. It wasn't until the series of violent crimes that occurred around Rio Grande started making some national news that we took a serious look at the issue.
Anyway, I don't want to go down this path because we know what happens when we do on this forum. I've probably made this a bigger/longer post than I should have already. I just hate the kinds of narratives that these "best/worst cities" lists can create.
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