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Comment by mfi | Hacker News Reader

Where in Stockholm do you live? IMO, you're giving an unfair and exaggerated view of Stockholm as a whole. Yes, there are some areas that are more affected by criminal gangs than other areas. But I wouldn't go as far as saying that there's a high risk of getting robbed "around Stockholm".

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I've lived in the inner city parts of Stockholm most of the time (Östermalm/Norrmalm, Södermalm, Kungsholmen).

I would definitely not wear 500-600 USD headphones in any of those areas.

But I think crime in Stockholm is a bit off topic. However I don't think the inherent risk of being robbed - wherever you are in the world - is off topic for the discussion.

People rob kids of Airpods all the time, because it's a status item. These new Airpods will be a status item too. This will increase the risk of robbery - be it in Europe or the US or elsewhere.

I'm sure there are larger cities in the world where the likelihood of getting robbed is low (Tokyo?), but that'd be the exception rather than the norm.

> I would definitely not wear 500-600 USD headphones in any of those areas.

I would say that the risk of being robbed in any of the mentioned areas is very low, even during night-time (if you don't actively are looking for trouble)

I'm afraid I have to disagree. Every time I had to pass through some of those places at night it was a scary experience. Got robbed twice, I can't remember how many times I had to leg it. And I only lived in Sweden for 2 years.

Whether you are targeted for a mugging is dependant on whether the criminal thinks you are an easy target. Most muggings will be crimes of opportunity.

I used to live in a very dodgy part of Spain near Gibraltar. I was never mugged or beaten up. I've been told by people "You look like you can handle yourself". Some of work collegues which were skinner, more fresh faced got robbed, beaten and in one case had what they believe to be a gun pulled on them. I never had any problems. I don't look like an easy target due to my appearence and size, those guys unfortunately do due to their size and appearence.

There might be a risk for a kid getting robbed of expensive gear - but adults not wearing headphones for the robbery risk? Never heard of it as a fellow Stockholmer.

Not yet. But considering there have been 136 robberies for expensive watches in Stockholm in six months, it is just a matter of time.

https://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/y3G4Pg/polisen-varnar-k...

You probably need to rob about 136 AirPods Max in order to get the same amount of value from a single expensive watch.

On top of that, tech doesn't have nearly the same resell value as high-end watches.

I have to imagine it's easier to steal wireless headphones though. You'd just hook them and pull as you leg it past

For one headphone maybe, but I’m finding it harder to imagine a maneuver to grab one from each ear while you run past someone.

Headphones (AirPods Max), not earphones (AirPods).

Ahh I read wireless and my brain thought AirPods.

Is this because of pandemic where economy are not as good and crime rate are higher? Or is that a norm?

I have always thought Stockholm as somewhat safer than ( Greater) London in my book.

Lol this dude reminds me of my parents who wouldn't let me walk ten blocks home at night in my tiny ass Canadian home town because of how "dangerous" it gets after dark. Never mind the crime rate is literally an order of magnitude below any of the various American metros in which I've lived (and walked home after dark in, never experiencing any issues).

Some peoples' perception is entirely driven by watching too much local news, and yet they somehow convince themselves they or their friends have personally have experienced all of this. Hook them up to a lie detector and it would draw a perfectly flat line as they spin their tales.

> Never mind the crime rate is literally an order of magnitude below any of the various American metros in which I've lived

A discussion about Sweden and you couldn't help yourself huh.

The "the local crime rate is apocalyptic" personality tendency knows no borders.

> Hook them up to a lie detector and it would draw a perfectly flat line as they spin their tales.

I don’t follow.

A flat line on a polygraph (whose accuracy is a debate for another time) would indicate they are telling the truth, or rather that they believe to be doing so.

I get that you’re claiming their perception of reality is skewed, but deriding people for saying what they genuinely believe to be true is odd.

It's just a weird feature of the human psyche you notice as you get older. People convince themselves that things they heard about from the news or other people actually happened to them or their friends. Maybe it starts out as a simple story told at a gathering, exaggerating for entertainment & abridging context for simplicity - "one time my friend..." - but after repetition and several years becomes a thing they believe literally happened as they told it. You often see this manifesting as tales of local criminal acts or encounters with homeless people. This sincere fabricational tendency, while humorous, does ultimately amplify a very skewed & harmful perspective in local politics.

It's the reason why boomers swear they were present at every major event during their lifetimes, as though we're surrounded by Forrest Gumps.

Yes, I understood your larger point. What I don’t get is the relevance of the polygraph line, which essentially amounts to “but they think they’re telling the truth”. Well, yes, I sure hope they do and are arguing in good faith rather than deliberately lying.

That sentence appears to argue that you think them passing the polygraph is a bad thing—why make the comment otherwise—which doesn’t make sense to me. It doesn’t affect your larger argument, but it doesn’t support it either and thus stood out. It’s as if you had ended your post with “bananas are radioactive”—true, but I’d be left wondering why you had felt the need to mention it.

I don't think it can reasonably be called good faith - it arises from a sort of carelessness with the truth, wanting to be embalmed in justification of the worst cruelties of our society at ground level so as not to critically engage with them. Much more preferable to deal with cynical political operators who don't believe what they say. Those are quite rare, and usually more transparent, so would not explain why this sort of thing pops up so much online.

If that answer doesn't satisfy you then call it observational humor regarding urban & suburban neuroses. Not really sure what you're driving at otherwise.

Let me assure you, your "tiny ass Canadian home town" have little in common with Stockholm 2020

Perhaps, but not in the sense that you mean. Stockholm is by all accounts one of the safest cities in the world.

It is because of huge immigration and extremely poor integration which has lead to lots of segregation which is now manifesting in violence and crime.

You made quite a few big leaps there. Care to expand how all those are linked and immigration is therefore the cause of violence and crime?

Well, for obvious reasons no one in Sweden wants to maintain clear crime statistics that would capture perpetrators' backgrounds, but there's this:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-45269764

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-50339977

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_Sweden#Birthplace_of_p...

Sweden has taken in way more immigrants than our systems can swallow, this means the system as a whole is leaking. This has lead to lots of segregated areas where there is no future, just people living on welfare getting nowhere in life, as much as 60% of kids fail to even finish High School in these areas, even thou they get 3x-4x of the funding compared to other schools in "good areas". And you get NOWHERE in Sweden without education.

The vast majority of the immigrants is also men which has skewed the male/female ratio in certain age groups.

The violence we see now is mainly from second-generation immigrants because they have no real connection with their home country and they have no real connection with Sweden either since they have grown up in areas where there are no Swedes.

These aimless young men + a system that have failed them + a fast growing gangster culture that promises money and respect + no real consequences for young criminals (4years max for murder, rape is a couple of months maybe if anything at all) leads to a very fast growing criminal networks / gangs.

The gangs now also have an endless supply of young men willing to do whatever it takes since we a constantly taking in more people even thou the system is showing no signs of being better at integration people.

I wanna be very clear thou, this is not due to race/skin-color or other racist bullshit, it is simply input vs output, ANY system in the known universe that gets overburden crashes or starts behaving in unfavourable ways and that is where we are now.

How do you think this situation could best be remedied?

By pulling the break, give the system time to adjust and come up with efficient ways of integrating the people already in the country and when we start to see positive numbers then we can start taking in more people again.

Not parent but I think there is no efficient remedy. The shift in Swedish demographics are so significant that we are basically in a new era.

I just checked sweden's sentence lengths. The penalty for rape is 4-10 years and murder is often 10+ years.

Atleast that part of your claims is wrong.

I wrote "young criminals" I should be more clear, the gangs often use people below the age of 18 to commit murders since you then you get 4 years juvenil but are usually out before that due to 2/3 rule. There is even a saying in these circles: "Att brösta en 4:a för att bli en 100-gubbe" meaning Do the 4 years and become a 100-man, in other words commit a murder and you get respect and will be taken care of when you get out.

No, it is because of a demographic shift due to oversized non-workforce immigration. Due to this, there are more and more areas characterized as "special vulnerable" (my translation of a Swedish police term). This is partly explained in English on this wikipedia page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulnerable_area

The page shows how they have evolved since 2015 but if you go back to 2000 or so, they were just a handful.

Basically, the immigration has been larger than the society can "organically" integrate, and the result are new structures in society which did not exist before.

> But considering there have been 136 robberies for expensive watches in Stockholm in six months, it is just a matter of time.

136 robberies of expensive watches in an area with 2.3 million people. Of them 64 happened in the city proper (1 million people).

Yeah, "it's just a matter of time".

Ah, so this is just anticipatory fear-mongering, that thing some people who get off on fantasizing about bad things happening do.

Got it.

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