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Comment by akjainaj | Hacker News Reader

>How we can't go anywhere without the fear of being shot and killed by other black people.

I'm not from the US but this really looks awful. I wouldn't set foot on this city even if you paid me a million dollars. http://crime.chicagotribune.com/

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I know many people who live in that city, very happily and safely. The comment is ignorant and it's important we don't, in our ignorance, connect skin color with other personal characteristics; it leads to very bad outcomes that hurt many people.

You know what is easy? Looking at the data now and coming to a conclusion that you believe to be sound. What is difficult is doing a little research to figure out how Chicago got the way it is. How gang culture took hold. How it was passed down from generation to generation. What policies were put into place that caused people to turn to illegal activities. Do a little research and try to get a full picture. Everyone agrees that crime, especially violent, should not be the norm in any place be it Chicago, Aleppo, or some random Brazilian city, but you need to understand how and why it got there before you give your final judgement.

I would absolutely love to hear more about this. Any book/documentary/movie you can recommend?

Although not directly related to crime rates in Chicago, 13th by Ava DuVernay is a wonderful documentary on Netflix regarding mass incarceration of minorities as a new means of racial segregation.

As a resident of that very city, I thank you for not bringing your bigoted behind here. Stay away, please.

Edit: okay, that was not a great thing for me to say. Sorry. I'm just fed up with the repeated vilification of a great American city by the buffoon-in-chief. Yes, violence in the city is a big problem, but it's hardly its defining characteristic.

Edit 2: apology rescinded.

Yes, don't worry--I'll stay away from a city that has 250 property crimes and 80 violent crimes every day while those in power keep looking the other way to be politically correct.

15 humans lost their lives yesterday in shootings, 268 during January: http://crime.chicagotribune.com/chicago/shootings

I suppose that'll end when Trump sends the Feds as he's promised on Twitter, though.

>Yes, don't worry--I'll stay away from a city that has 250 property crimes and 80 violent crimes every day while those in power keep looking the other way to be politically correct.

Wonderful. Stay away from the world-leading food and culture scene as well. More for the rest of us.

>That'll end when Trump sends the Feds as he's promised on Twitter, though

Under what authority? And which Feds are we talking? Just more delusional talk.

Trump has implied in twitter that he'll use the army and national guard to deal with the problems in Chicago.

http://dailycaller.com/2017/01/27/illinois-gov-we-dont-want-...

So, he just declared he will violate the Posse Comitatus Act?

There's modern precedent for the President's sending in Federal troops as part of law enforcement activities [1].

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0925.h...

Chicago is a huge city. Yes, it has a crime problem. Yes, "something" needs to be done. That doesn't mean policies like Trump's are necessarily the right ones. I've visited Chicago. It was a beautiful and wonderful place, and I did not have any fear.

Yes, there's problems in Chicago. But the violence is heavily concentrated in the South and West side. I live in a nicer part of Chicago and I've never felt like I was in any danger where I live. Even walking home by myself at 2 AM.

Every city has bad and good areas. Chicago is no different.

Cities in the US seem particularly polarized. Where I grew up there were neighborhoods with better off and worse off people but there wasn't any part of town where you would feel uncomfortable or at risk of violence walking at any time, day or night. I visited Chicago in the early 90's and I remember being told never to go past a certain stop on the train. The US has serious social problems going back a long time and I'm not sure trying to pretend otherwise will help in solving them.

There are bad neighborhoods in Paris and Rio; how does Chicago stand out?

Last year, it had more murders than both Los Angeles and New York combined. Both cities are larger than Chicago.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/chicago-murders-shootings-2016-m...

My question was about the good/bad neighborhood polarization issue in the comment above it.

I have difficulty comprehending your follow up remark. If it is smaller than both those cities AND has more murders than both combined AND there are some safe neighborhoods, it seems obvious on the face of it that the polarization there must be pretty seriously extreme.

Rio has a reputation as being one of the most violent places in the world. So I guess it'd be hard to stand out against that.

I think Paris is much safer than Chicago: https://www.numbeo.com/crime/compare_cities.jsp?country1=Uni...

France overall has a murder rate of 1 per 100K. Paris I believe is slightly above average. Chicago is something like 15.

I wouldn't necessarily consider Paris to be some sort of golden standard either. You should aim for much better.

If you feel that having an x15 murder rate isn't "standing out" and it's just that you've got some bad neighborhoods than IMHO you're deluding yourself.

EDIT: And assuming the murders are not evenly spread out but rather focus in the "bad" neighborhoods is support for the polarization argument. We can look at some stats but I'm pretty sure they would support my notion that the bad neighborhoods in US cities are much worse than the bad neighborhoods in safe cities worldwide. Try comparing violent crime statistics of major US cities to major European cities over 50 or 100 years. This didn't start yesterday.

EDIT2: Don't take all this to mean I support Trump's rhetoric or actions on this topic. I do not. But I do think Americans need to do some introspection here

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