Comment by solidsnack9000 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by solidsnack9000 | Hacker News Reader

The list of crimes counted includes: ...Larceny Theft, Malicious Mischief, Assault, Burglary, Motor Vehicle Theft, Fraud, Lost Property, Warrant, Drug Offense, Robbery, Missing Person and more.

It doesn't seem like "Warrant" (someone with a warrant is apprehended?), "Missing Person", or "Drug Offense" are relevant to general safety.

The author concludes with:

We notice this more when analyzing the heatmap of incidents. Incidents across Mission are much more spread out than incidents across Tenderloin. Therefore, it's unfair to say that the neighborhoods are equally dangerous.

I am not sure why it is not fair to say the neighborhoods are equally dangerous! Notably, the author does not tell us what it is fair to say. What does the degree of dispersion tell us about which one is more dangerous?

An area where it is common for someone with an arrest warrant to be apprehended seems reasonable to be considered unsafe.

Similarly for an area where people go missing.

Getting arrested for drug use in San Francisco is pretty hard to do - if someone accomplishes it you probably wouldn't want to be around them.

Why? If the three only crime reported in a neighborhood is a bunch of arrest warrants, why is that less safe than a place that has a bunch of violent crimes reported? I think you are implying that as neighborhood that has a bunch of criminals is inherently unsafe. But it is only unsafe if those people commit crimes there. There may be a relation, there may not be one.

I think this is basically the right insight, yes.

At the level of a state, there is probably a close connection between warrants served there and crimes committed there, because most people spend most of their time in one state. At the level of neighborhoods, though, there probably isn't, because most people travel across numerous neighborhoods every day and warrants are served wherever it happens that the criminal is found by police or stopped for an unrelated reason.

My thoughts are to represent general crime around the areas represent it's safety. The best way to normalize the data is viewing the crimes per capita, in which case Tenderloin is the highest. It's not fair; simply because the Mission is much larger in area.

Either way, I will be making updates to the site and data with time, this was a quick 1 day project!

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