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Comment by aqme28 | Hacker News Reader

My first week working in a finance firm in midtown Manhattan there was a significant shooting. These things happen everywhere (edit: in the US) unfortunately. I'm not convinced that a more suburban location that forces people to drive would actually be any safer.

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If by "everywhere" you mean "major megapolises with crime problems", then yes, everywhere. Otherwise, no, not everywhere, and yes, in a suburban location a chance of a shooting happening under your very office window is extremely low. Living/working in a megapolis has its advantages, but let's not paint over its downsides also. Criminals want the same advantages too.

You're right of course, but it's sort of meaningless. I live in Germany where there isn't nearly as much gun crime, but Musk isn't about to move Twitter to Germany.

Don't your police regularly jail people for non-violent speech? I don't see Musk moving to Germany.

If by non-violent speech you mean roman salutes or nazi quotes, yes.

It is more or less enough to in public say why you don't support Likud nowadays to be arrested in Germany.

They jail people for antisemitic and nazi speech, if for you this is "non-violent", I have a history lesson on 1939-1945 to show you.

I saw a video of a German activist being hauled off by the police for giving a seminar about censorship the other day. Your country controls speech through force. Like I said, it's highly unlikely Musk would move anything to your country.

> it's highly unlikely Musk would move anything to your country

And yet Musk proves you wrong: https://www.tesla.com/giga-berlin

Tesla does not operate a social media platform.

You certainly did not see an activist hauled off by the police for giving a seminar about censorship the other day.

So ... can you link that outrageous video, that we can judge whether it really was the way you said it was?

Marie-Thérèse Kaiser. Apparently it is illegal to state that more Afghan refugees in Germany lead to more rapes in Germany.

https://freespeechunion.org/young-afd-politician-convicted-f...

Björn Höcke. Apparently the slogan "Alles für Deutschland" (Everything for Germany) is strictly verboten because a Nazi organization used it. I didn't know that before the Höcke verdict and I doubt most Germans did. I also very much doubt that it was in any way used as a Nazi reference.

Germany's penal code does ban certain non-specified symbols -- which makes a lot sense based on Germany's recent history. Unfortunately, the law is applied extremely selectively and in quite creative ways for opinions that some people just don't like.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strafgesetzbuch_section_86a

Why does Germany pretend Die Linke (The Left -- the renamed East German Communist Party) is a perfectly normal and legal party and at the same time that the perfectly normal and legal (and not very much on the right) party AfD is quasi-Nazi?

Cities tend to have a lower per-capita crime rate, it's just dense and visible.

This is just suburban paranoia. Crime happens.

No, it's not just suburban paranoia. Travel to Tokyo or Singapore and then to S.F.

We recently spent a month in Tokyo. It is ridiculously safe and law-abiding. I'm surprised they have any crime at all. In our entire time there, I saw one (1) individual piece of small rubbish on the street.

Tokyo is not safe. People who are arrested for suspicion of crimes are held for weeks by the police and threatened and beaten and tortured until they confess, even if they are innocent. The police then release them for 24 hours and rearrest them on a different charge so the two month holding timer resets.

People there have been held for months in solitary confinement (torture past a few days, per the UN) awaiting trial only to be found innocent and released.

As a foreigner, good luck if a Japanese person calls the police on you and accuses you of something. You’re looking at 40+ days of beatings and torture as the police will of course believe natives over tourists.

well that just shows that to japanese people, even kangaroo courts are better than crime

Spent a week walking around SF and saw no crime. It felt extremely safe.

Big tech made SF unaffordable and then loves to complain about the poverty left in it's wake. I don't care if tech workers feel uncomfortable in SF.

SF was rapidly gentrified to the point of mass homelessness, now they want to legislate a way to remove the homeless people that were made impoverished. I will never care/empathize with a hackernews poster complaining about crime in the Bay Area. You moved there, you demanded luxury, you demanded space for the luxury, you pushed the existing population out.

I think it's reasonable to measure crime in terms of crimes per area, rather than crimes per capita, especially when comparing suburban to urban.

I don't see how that's reasonable. What I'm interested in is how likely crime is to happen to me, personally, not how likely any given crime will happen in some radius to me.

You really don't see how that's reasonable?

People want to feel safe. Having high crime nearby makes people feel unsafe, even if it's just drug dealers and gangs beefing with each other that likely don't care about you.

By that logic, it would be reasonable for the government to outlaw the reporting of crime, as people would "feel" safer.

That's the worst possible interpretation of what that comment said.

- If there's a shooting 100ft from me, I don't care if it gets reported or not. I'm worried about getting in the crossfire.

- On the other hand, if there's a shooting 10 miles from me, I'm safe.

So it's perfectly logical to want to live in the second situation and avoid the first. Per-capita statistics mask the effects of the first and make the second look worse.

The best thing to do is to use per-capita stats when judging your likelihood of being a victim, and per-area stats when judging your likelihood of being near a crime.

Most people want to minimize both, and you shitting on them for it is bizarre.

Minimizing both is fine. But not minimizing the one that actually measures how likely you are to be a victim of a crime is … weird.

Because as the Zendesk example that started this pointed out, an entire building (probably multiple!) of people were affected by this incident. There was 1 victim. It's going to seem insignificant on a per capita basis. There's thousands of people impacted by it, and possible dozens in the immediate vicinity who could be suffering from ongoing trauma having witnessed it.

Regardless, the whole premise that started this argument is wrong. There is higher crime per capita in large cities.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities...

I don't think you're reading those numbers correctly. The highest crime per capita is in Alberque, New Mexico, the 32nd largest city in the US, and that list is literally the crime rates of the 100 most populated cities, not the 100 cities in the US with the most crime.

Which small cities, in your opinion, are more dangerous than, say, Albuquerque? How many chances, say, a high-tech professional has to regularly find oneself in such a city because his company offices are located there and they have no choice but to go there regularly?

Crime is not random lottery. It is concentrated and specific to certain places and circumstances. Thus, pretending that it is a stochastic process that is well characterized by per capita number over the whole city, and that if more people move into a bedroom community 20 miles from you, you automatically become safer because per capita numbers decreased - is innumerate at best. If you are present where the crime is concentrated, you risk is high, regardless of how many people live 20 miles from you but still in the same administrative unit. This should be obvious but some people still insist on focusing exclusively on large-area per-capita numbers.

Ridiculous take. And not only because people obviously wouldn’t feel safer if reporting crimes was illegal.

It is reasonable. Many totalitarian governments hide crime statistics. Many badly run police forces discourage reporting certain types of crime, like theft or robbery, to not mess up their stats. Of course, at some crime level, the difference between the official picture and the reality becomes impossible to hide, but the pretense usually lasts much longer even if it's obvious how hollow it is. But yes, it is very rational for the government whose interests are detached from the interests of the citizens, to manipulate the data, and they frequently do.

There's no need to outlaw reporting crime. You simply don't do anything with reports and the problem solves itself. Shootings tend to still get reported, but there's little point to reporting less serious crime once it's established that no action is taken. To that end, crime statistics are pretty hard to use in a meaningful way.

Crime per area makes it more likely you are an accidental victim of a crime. You know, if the drug dealer missed.

Also, much of crime is not just random. So there is some logic in placing more value into not witnessing crime (especially one where someone is shot) while theoretically in a vacuum having a higher chance of being a target of a crime.

Accidental victims are already included in the "per capita". If a drug dealer accidentally shoots someone, that is a crime and goes into the crime statistics.

So statistically, by definition, crime per capita is all that matters. If there is lower crime per capita in a dense city, that's already accounting for accidents like stray bullets too.

If you don't want to be a victim of crime, then you want to live where crime is lowest per-capita. Period.

Not where it is lowest per square mile.

"There's only 1 crime per square mile!"

"...but there's only 1 person per square mile too."

I feel like this whole "per capita doesn't matter!" parade is a recent invention of some specific corner of the internet that feels frustrated the data keeps disagreeing with what they think reality is.

The correct claim is not that per capita does not matter but that it alone does not provide you with adequate picture. Imagine a street where 100 people live, and there's a shoot-out there every day. Now imagine a mayor made an order, and another 100 people are forced to move and live on the same street now, and there's still a shoot-out there every day. Can you honestly say the quality of life on that street improved 2x, even though you still have the daily shootings as before, but it's now twice as crowded? I think something is missing in this picture if you make such a conclusion. Of course, per capita numbers show some part of the picture, but you need to see the other parts too.

What you could say, assuming the number of shooting victims per day remained constant, was that people on that street were now 50% less-likely to be killed in a shooting. If you moved enough people onto that street, again assuming a no change in the number of victims, the likely-hood of any individual being shot could be forced into a statistically insignificant number.

The reverse of your hypothetical is basically how high-crime areas come into being. If you have an area where 1 person every day is killed, and half the people leave, you would absolutely say the quality of life in that area declined. Everyone is twice as likely to die.

While per capita is an imperfect number, it's a crazy-good proxy for the thing we worry about – "how likely is crime in this area to affect me?"

> was that people on that street were now 50% less-likely to be killed in a shooting.

If shootings were randomly distributed by a mechanical process with uniform distribution among everybody who has the address registered on this street, it would be true. But that's not how shootings work. You confuse a simplifying assumption - that is made for the purposes of modeling, because it's impossible to model the life of every person - with actual reality of what is happening. What is happening is if there's a shootout every day on the street, and you live on that street, and you are a sane person, you would be afraid to go on that street, because the next person shot could be you. And that's the rational behavior, while "I don't care for the shots I hear, these numbers on screen say it's ok" is wildly irrational.

> If you have an area where 1 person every day is killed, and half the people leave, you would absolutely say the quality of life in that area declined. Everyone is twice as likely to die.

Again, no, because shootings aren't a random lottery allocated uniformly by independent metric, like an address. It's connected to your behavior, so if you go to the street where shootings happen, you risk being shot. And how many people are registered on the same street has very little to do with that.

> it's a crazy-good proxy for the thing we worry about – "how likely is crime in this area to affect me?"

And again, it would be, if we were dealing with uniform random distribution. That's not what actually happens - if 100 people live in a safe neighborhood and I have to walk the street where druggies hash out their quarrels - the averages are not going to help me. Remember, Bill Gates walks into a bar... how richer have you just become by sitting in that bar?

Show me where I said it doesn't matter.

What doesn't go into statistics is

1) the negative externalities of being near crime. Suppose you live in a densely populated enough area that you can expect a person to be murdered within 1km of you every year. There's another area, with an identical crime rate but a much more sparsely populated population such that you'd expect a person to be murdered within 10km of you every year. Most people would much prefer the latter.

2) How people adjust their behavior (to avoid the externalities and risk of being an accidental victim). There are places in SF I simply won't step foot in or even drive through after 10pm or so. That's a cost being absorbed by people; if they didn't do so, there would be more additional accidental murders.

> Crime per area makes it more likely you are an accidental victim of a crime

Strange take. The opposite is true. Crime per area has nothing to say about how likely you are to be the victim of a crime, while crime per capita literally does say how likely you are to be a victim of a crime.

No it does not literally say that. It would if the crime were be allocated by a random uniform lottery to every person living in the city. That's not how the crime works.

No, crimes per capita express how likely you are to be that accidental victim.

According to who? Do you have a source?

Top violent crime rate per capita US cities [1]:

1. St. Louis 2. Detroit 3. Baltimore 4. Memphis 5. Kansas City

If we include all crime and not just violent crime, it’s still all large cities at the top. Not sure where you’re getting your info.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities...

That list is of the 100 most populous cities in US, so by definition it does not include mid/small cities, towns, and villages.

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

Per capita, smaller cities are outstanding in their crime.

Even Baltimore is down in 51st place.

This list is incomplete to boot. Large cities often called "war zone" by culture war fighters are largely safer than being in a small town.

St. Louis is sketchy AF but it's hardly a large city, relative to actual large cities.

Not "everywhere", as an European that grew up in a big city (Paris) that's unthinkable.

That's a really surprising example. Paris has nearly identical crime level to San Francisco.

From personal experience, I did not feel particularly safe in Paris when visiting (compared to e.g. Berlin).

Moreover, Paris has several neighborhoods and suburbs that are very unsafe and most people avoid going there. One could say Tenderloin in SF has a similar reputation, but it's very small and easy to avoid.

I think OP was referring to shootings. In France, as in most of Europe, it's not trivial to get access to guns. So the risk of getting shot in Paris is small, but of course you still might get stabbed.

I was talking only about shootings. But if we are comparing anecdotes regarding your example I happened to also live in one of these unsafe suburbs, and visiting LA, SF or Chicago and getting in the wrong neighborhood seemed order of magnitude less safe. Gangs are not armed, you don’t hear gunshots at night or people screaming in the city center, and you don’t encounter aggressive drug addicts. All of this never happened to me in decades in Paris but did in one trip to the these US cities.

You really need to normalize crime rates by population (including commuters) and avoid focusing on anecdotes

No, my point was that you would also want to factor in injury rates from commuting, which tend to dwarf crime rates.

Just another anecdote but I concur with you--10 years of commuting experience in the Bay Area tells me that the most likely bodily harm I will experience is behind the wheel on the freeway, not from homeless / mentally-ill people wandering the streets. I have been involved in two car accidents on 580 (not at fault) but zero bodily harm on BART.

Why would an individual living and working around some area care about the crime per population?

I would personally care way more about the crime density like per mile or something because that is what would actually be affecting me. Like how many crimes would happen in close proximity to me that could put me in potential danger.

I couldn't care less about the crime per population.

This doesnt make sense. You care about "per population" because you are 1 out of the population. You don't care about per square mile because you are not measured in square miles, you are measured in people (1).

Why should crime proximity to my location be completely ignored?

If the crime is higher per person, but the crimes are several miles away then why would that be a problem for me?

Compared to lower crimes per person, but the crimes are happening on my street.

If the crimes are happening closer to me I'm more likely to be affected by it in some way.

This is backwards.

Higher rate per person means it is literally more likely to happen to you.

High rate per area but low rate per person means I guess that you're more likely to be a witness. Low rate per area but high rate per person means you're likely to be a victim.

I am not only concerned about being a victim though. I don't want to be anywhere near it. I think I should be allowed to have that kind of a desire and preference.

I also think that whether or not you end up being a victim has a lot more to do than simply crimes per person.

I don't think whether you end up a victim is evenly distributed to every single person.

I think that the way you live and act and guard against things can affect your personal chances differently and that physical proximity can end up playing a role.

This is not typical in the US. I have never heard or seen a gun shot fired while someone committed a crime.

I have lived 39 years here in New Zealand and have never witnessed or been near a shooting. I'm not saying shootings have never happened in New Zealand, but the idea that these things "happen everywhere" is asinine.

It's just a very American-centric sentiment, because here in the states, that's true.

San Francisco has nearly 8 times higher population density than Auckland.

Add to that other factors like the size of the CA economy (wealth attracts crime), a lax criminal system, attractive social services (compared to the rest of the US), etc etc. It's an apples to oranges comparison.

We both know it’s none of those things, it’s access to guns

Non-gun crime is a bigger concern in SF than gun-related violence.

This comment thread is about gun violence

I've lived in the Bay Area for 60 years, and never witnessed or been near a shooting. They do happen more often here, but violence is far lower than you would think from the media and online anecdotes.

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