Our kid's school is currently on the annual week long 8th grade field trip to D.C. It is a cool place to visit. I imagine I would hate living there for many reasons but mostly the cost.Originally Posted by Paul Blackburn
Crime has been high in the area for decades but one difference is that in the 90's politicians smoking crack were arrested by the Feds. Hopefully our kid's don't stumbled across unowned bags of cocaine when they visit the White House.
To this day, it still cracks me up whenever I see “Marionberry” as the main stuffing for a scone or muffin in a coffeeshop. Kids these days have no idea why I find the tags so funny.
”But in the end all of these ideas just manufacture new criminals when the problem isn't a lack of criminals.” -JRB
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Last edited by SiriusBlunder; 04-25-2024 at 04:43 PM.
One of my students asked me how I ran my crack. I told him that in my world crack was something on a woman. He understood,
We just watched Bluebloods from Friday. One of the story lines was about the cop whose arrests were not booked by whoever. The cop asked if the purpose was to cook the books so that the division's stats would look better IE; less bookings = less crime. It reminded me of this thread on a much smaller scale.
This is worth a click just to see the reporter’s list of crimes that he’s personally witnessed, along with video footage from his ring camera. Amazing, really.
”But in the end all of these ideas just manufacture new criminals when the problem isn't a lack of criminals.” -JRB
My perspective on crime will always be influenced by the fact that I spent my young adult years in Chicago, coinciding with the record homicide rates of the 1970s to early 1990s. Particularly memorable years include 1981-82, when as a young photojournalist I had to cover numerous live music events often in marginal neighborhoods late at night. Walking around the near north side at 4:00 am with a pro-level camera over the shoulder tends to focus ones situational awareness. Even if I'd wanted to carry, it was risky. I owned a 1911 and a K-frame at the time, but they were stored at my parents place in the suburbs because of the then gun ban in the city.
I never had the slightest problem, despite spending way too much time in situations that today would make me cringe. That's partially because high crime was normal then, the inner cities were still someplace avoided by many in the immediate post white flight and pre gentrification days. There was nothing "better" in my personal experience to compare it to except the suburbs and they were pretty boring places for a 20-something guy. So I went about my life, and was either lucky or aware enough because there were times when friends were mugged literally on a corner I'd crossed five minutes before. There were something like 800 or 900 homicides in Chicago in those years, admittedly there were more dangerous parts of the city than the ones I frequented although none of them were as safe as post-1990s. Even in the 90s, after we'd bought a place in the same area, we stayed well away from the windows on new years eve and July 4th because the idiots half a mile away in Cabrini Green didn't understand (or care about) the concept of what goes up will come down.
These past 20 years I've lived in a much smaller place, in a county of about 135,000 people. I must smile when the local press sensationalizes local violent crime because there are anywhere from 0 to 20 homicides in a given recent year. While searching numbers just now I saw several media articles sensationalizing the allegedly dangerous local conditions. Sure, we're in the emerald triangle and there is occasional druggie on druggie violence. There were summer weekends in Chicago where I saw more violence on my block than I've seen here in 20 years, but the media must sell clicks at whatever cost. It's been a long time since I've considered them credible no matter what the political flavor.
It's actually more difficult to discern trends here because the sample size is so small that one bunch of lowlifes on a spree can skew an entire years data. There are fewer illegal grows now because the market is down, and that's helped. In general I do not consider this even a remotely dangerous place. The bigger towns have their tweakers talking to imaginary friends and fentanyl has become a problem in recent years, but the majority of the homicides seem to be in the remote parts of the county and associated with illegal grows. I spend a lot of time in the backcountry and except for tending to immediately notice irrigation lines or leaks from generators, and usually scouting a new area on Google Earth before going there, it's not especially risky on public lands.
I try to avoid stupid people and stupid places and stupid things these days, but I'm not going to live my life in fear because the media insists on sensationalizing things. Bottom line is, it's safer today than it was when I was a young man, by a lot, in most places I'm likely to want to visit... and yes, I'm still back in Chicago a couple of weeks every summer. With reasonable situational awareness and common sense decision making there's no reason to expect catastrophe around every corner.
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