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Petty theft patterns in states that have passed ballot measures or counties that have taken executive actions reducing the penalties on petty theft to the point where the ROI is positive even if you get regularly caught should not be taken as indicative of the entire country.

I live in a city that most of HN would turn up their nose at. It's nothing like what people from the west coast describe as the status quo there. And it's not some city in a red state that spends big bucks on law and order either.

Yeah my parents moved from LA in california to rural Washington. People told them a kinds of things including that they wouldn't feel welcome .. we are brown skinned and they immigrated here. This area is deep red

The city they moved to is hours from am airport. Smack dab nowhere.

They didn't find it dangerous at all. To the contrary people there were extremely welcoming ... Very neighborly. They could leave their door unlocked and not be bothered.

The occasional (and I mean occasional) theft was big news and the guy was caught

Far cry from getting our house vandalized with gang graffiti

Having lived in several west coast cities, is largely a west coast phenomenon and policies enacted by these local governments. SF, Portland, LA, Seattle, etc. all have roots in common thread of policies (reducing or eliminating penalties for crime, dysfunctional governments, housing crisis, reduction in police funding, etc).

> In 2017 Portland ranked third. Now it has dropped to 66th out of 80: https://www.economist.com/united-states/2021/06/12/portland-...

And when you call the Police they just show up so that you can file a police report for your insurance and record-keeping. The more candid officers will tell you not to expect anything from "the investigation".

That kind of advise was par for course living in Amsterdam Zuidoost, as well as travelling around Berlin, Madrid, Santiago.... I'd say it applies to being anywhere with a significant crime rate or poverty burden

Hardly unique to the US

Advice I got in Amsterdam:

Buy a bike worth less than the lock.

Yup!

The nice thing is that when that bike inevitably breaks, the city's underworld provides an efficient and free bike disposal service

Most parts of the US aren't like that. Even California wasn't like that not too long ago.

Local policy matters.

Maybe it's your definition of 'extremely safe' areas?

I don't own security nuts, or special locks for my bike, or have ever had my home/car broken into despite not even knowing where my house key is at this point and never locking my car.

I don't understand the comparison to the other countries, either. Are you saying they don't have petty crime?

Ah I should be more specific: urban areas in those countries. The level of petty crime in any major city in the US is far higher than any city in those countries I mentioned.

In non-urban areas in the US things are better for sure, but you still have to deal with other things like having complete asshole neighbors that you really can't do anything about because small quality of life crimes like partying every night with loud music is not a crime.

If you move to rural areas this goes down even further, but then you give up a lot of amenities.

I dunno. Staying in an Airbnb in Seoul, I woke at ~1am to someone banging on my door and yelling for about five minutes. Pretty sure if it weren't locked, I'd be in some sort of trouble.

From another angle, I've been to a restaurant in a central part of Seoul where the owner kept his cash in a wooden box with no lock by the entrance. Pretty sure anyone could have grabbed that box and ran out the door, especially when the owner is in the back preparing the food.

This is a really awfully broad generalization. Crime in SF, NY, Chicago, Boston, LA or Houston are all vastly different situations. Even with shootings up a ton this past year, NYC is still safer per capita than places like Savannah. SF seems to have gotten very out of control, though. Fwiw, I would never leave my car unlocked anywhere, but I also wouldn't feel weird about leaving a bag out. And there is a ton of pick pocketing and petty theft in places like Barcelona, Lisbon, Rome and Paris. Big cities require some attentiveness.

> Big cities require some attentiveness.

The size of the city isn't the issue here. There is definately a correlation between size and crime, but that's not the real issue - what it is I don't know though.

I live in a mid-sized European capital (bigger than Lisbon), and it's one of the safest places I've ever lived. I could probably leave my car running, with an expensive camera on the dash, while going to get a coffee, and everything would still be there when I get back.

Compare this to some Italian cities I've been to - which are smaller - where I feel lucky all four wheels are still there when getting back (locking wheel nuts are easy to break btw). I lived in Rome for a while and if you left something that even looked like it could contain valuables on show, you'd come back to a broken window.

I really doubt that. If we focus in particular on bike theft (one of the examples above), some webpage says that Norway had 60k bike thefts in 2004, 20k of which was reported to the police[1]. This is out of a population of 4.5 million. Some other page says that in New York City, there are 75k bikes stolen per year with 15k reported to the police[2]. This is out of a population of 8.4 million.

So all of Norway (rural and urban areas together) had a higher per-capita rate of bike theft than New York City (which is all urban).

[1] http://www.sykkeltyveri.no/bicycle_theft.html [2] https://www.bicyclehabitat.com/articles/security-pg80.htm

Now to make things interesting, want to adjust this for per capita bike ownership or usage? Otherwise this is could just be picking places favorable to the point you want to make?

Yeah I think this is indeed skewed. Per capita bike theft is gonna be higher if those "capita" own more bikes!

Just for the record, this is happening in sleepy suburban areas also, like Palo Alto. People report CC thefts regularly on NextDoor, and urge neighbors to retrofit their Priuses so they don't fall prey as well.

Locked bikes are stolen in broad daylight in front of grocery stores and at schools. It's probably not as bad as SF, but it is still an issue in the suburbs.

I garner a _lot_ of downvotes every time I mention that the US in many locales shares more in common with a third world country than a first world country. So many people seem addicted to the notion of US cultural superiority because their jobs pay the most. Go on YouTube or Google street view and see for yourself.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1MveHv1lTVBzdM5VYZkcBQ/vid...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opo3OuUae5w

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UNvEcR_jM8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otwgkeJyuSo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKutkXy1Eeo

Yeah the "highest salaries = best country!" trend is strong on HN, but high salaries can't really buy you the things you get basically for free in a different country due to culture / government differences. Turns out you can buy a lot of infrastructure and social welfare programs with all the tax revenue not spent on $100 rolls of toilet paper and bombs for secret wars halfway around the world cuz "freedumb!".

Even when people point out how those "other countries" may tax you like crazy (which is only half true), the amount of time wealth you get back is significant, e.g. grade-school kids commonly commute to and from school by public transit where I live now (although sometimes with a chaperone if they're too young) and women go running at night in the relatively unlit park near my house, which I never saw where I lived in the US (even in relatively safe burbs). You also don't really have to own a gigantic money-sucking vehicle that you have to worry about insuring, parking, damaging, etc, in most European cities either.

Instead of anecdotes, how about we look at objective data?

https://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/

Certain suburbs like Irvine CA are for safety but not for diversity and culture of a city. Choose one.

Irvine is more diverse than the majority of the USA... What are you talking about?

Irvine is notable for it's sterility and being family friendly and clean. While it's safe (mostly) to walk around late at night, there's nowhere to walk. All of it is basically office park style landscaping mandated by HOA's and beige houses. The majority of businesses are chains. The selection of restaurants is not remarkable for california.

When I owned a car in SF, I always put a visible sign that said 'please don't break in' on it.

One of the reasons I decided to sell that car was the daily anxiety of it getting broken into.

I occasionally saw signs that said "nothing of value" on car windows near where I lived, but I always figured the thieves would assume that's what someone who kept stuff in their car would post. Did you get broken into a lot?

>Figuring out how to park on a hill to deter cat theft

Can you explain this one?

For a low car you would need to jack it up to get to the catalytic converter. Shouldn't do that on a hill as the car could fall off the jack. Usually you only hear about pickup trucks or larger vehicles getting their cats stolen as you can get under more easily.

Mostly in Democrat runs cities. Go ahead, down vote me because you can't handle the truth.