Comment by legitster | Hacker News Reader

Comment by legitster | Hacker News Reader

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> "The national picture shows that murder is falling. We have data from over 200 cities showing a 12.2% decline ... in 2023 relative to 2022," Asher said, citing his own analysis of public data. He found instances of rape, robbery and aggravated assault were all down too.

> A Gallup poll released in November found 77% of Americans believed there was more crime in the country than the year before. And 63% felt there was either a "very" or "extremely" serious crime problem — the highest in the poll's history going back to 2000.

Violent crime is going down. The survey was about overall crime. So the premise of this article is misleading.

The dichotomies presented make more sense if you accept that overall crime is up even if violent crime is down: Police numbers can't prevent murders but they can prevent break-ins - homeless camps don't put people into danger but they do help fence stolen goods. A lot of low-level crimes are not even being reported anymore.

I won't speak for everyone, but I don't really spend most of my days worried about getting murdered or assaulted. But I do spend a lot of time worried about getting robbed or having my car broken into (again!).

I don't worry about being robbed or my car broken into, but I do worry about being hit and killed by a reckless driver. I don't think that's what people have in mind when they think of "murder" or "assault," but that's genuinely my biggest fear to my well-being.

One of the most powerful reminders of the powers-that-be's priorities is the observation that, given a set number of enforcement cameras, they will be used as speed cameras to generate revenue rather than traffic light cameras to get dangerous drivers off the road.

Phone scams are at an all time high. The same for identity theft and other forms of fraud. That article avoids it but I'm sure it's on people's minds. The FTC reported Friday that more than $10 Billion was stolen via fraud in 2023 (+14% from 22).[1]

Talking about crime writ large and only selecting homelessness and murder is such a narrow view of crime that it seems almost meaningless.

So I did some digging. I found crime trends in US Cities as put together by the Council on Criminal Justice[2] in mid 2023. Motor Vehicle Theft is up over 30% and homicide is down 9%. Even that doesn't even attempt to touch fraud (ctrl+f for fraud and scam both came up empty). The initial article says only "some nonviolent crimes like car theft are up in certain cities". This seems clearly contradicted by the other article I found.

The only thing clear to me having done this particular exercise is that probably both the reporting and the polling here are inadequate and incomplete, and that the people who are most being hurt aren't going to get one lick of help.

[1]https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/02/... [2]https://counciloncj.org/mid-year-2023-crime-trends/

Yea, I’ve been robbed twice in the last year (one car break in and a bike theft) and we didn’t even bother to report it. I don’t want to lose my insurance! I need to save it for something bigger.

I completely agree with your sentiment but it makes me wonder why we pay for insurance at all. It's a complete scam.

Pay money monthly to a company "in case" something bad happens.

Then when you need to collect, you are treated like a criminal and they will do everything they can to avoid paying you. Your comment hits the nail on the head... you are paying for something yet afraid to use it because "what if something else worse happens". You need insurance insurance now.

They are not in the business of paying claims. They are in the business of tricking people into monthly premiums so they can deny their claims. If they can deny more claims than they fulfill I bet it's very lucrative.

Insurance is (morally) the worst industry ever. It is a product built on a lie. You wonder why people have no trust in corporations. This is why.

Why would the insurance care what you tell the police?

Generally the response from the police about a burglary has me saying "why would anyone care what you tell the police?(including them)"

Had my car stolen and burglarized before, when I asked the cop if there'd be any follow up they literally just laughed and hung up the phone.

The other thing is that averages remove distribution information. As even the article admits, the crime is not evenly distributed across the USA.

Getting your car broken into almost never happens for most of the USA, though it's very, very, very common in a few cities.

We had a record 2023 year for murder here in Seattle, and our property crime really isn't subsiding. We are low for violent crime already (relatively speaking, southern and midwest cities make everyone else look much better), but property crime...the only reason it can go down is people give up on reporting it (since nothing is done anyways).

I don't trust surveys as much as I'm suspicious of official reported crime statistics. Murder statistics are actually incredibly reliable, since not reporting one is also considered a crime, whereas you can blow off reporting almost anything else.

If we weight crime counts by severity, than the total area under the curve is smaller, which seems like a good thing

Even if that was a falsifiable premise, that's not a very strong argument. If "average" income goes up just because there are a few more billionaires that move to my city, it doesn't actually mean I am richer.

If most people are living measurably worse lives because of crime, but the already low rate of murders drops a few points, I don't think we should rest on our laurels.

Murders have dropped by significant percentages, not just a few

To reverse this, it's like the billionaires being taxed heavily, and provides additional resources to administered for the rest

"And honestly, people conflate that with crime, with street safety," she said. "One thing I'm starting to learn in reporting on public safety is that you can put numbers in front of people all day, and numbers just don't speak to people the way narrative does."

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