A three year old was just shot in my neighborhood a few days ago.
It's horrifying and so sad. I really don't know what to say or do about it.
I never know if people who say "Hoo boy, you ready to leave Chicago yet? Watch out! All the murders!" are joking. I mean, you don't actually think the neighborhoods other than poor minority residential neighborhoods are unsafe, do you? It is completely and utterly segregated.
I come from a violent-like-Chicago city, so should have insight, but don't really. When you are exposed to the violence you get vigilant and jumpy and it's a shitty way to live. The fact of violence gets to be just the way things are though. Schoolkids getting killed happens weekly and everyone essentially is 'meh'.
Mossy, have you noticed changes in your internal vigilance etc. living in Roc Island or would you even know?
Totally. I forget to lock my apartment door regularly, read on my phone in public, use public transport (more because functionality than safety, but it's a factor), go walking at night, leave my phone on my desk unattended.
I remember a friend of mine explaining what life was like in a low-crime city (Narnia): if you're in a pub, the way you make it clear that your seat is taken when you're up at the bar or in the toilet is you leave your mobile phone lying on it.
On occasion I've left a bag of shopping on a street bench to keep my hands free while in another shop. Surreal but awesome. Another time I forgot my umbrella in the rack outside a shop. Realized when I was a block away, didn't bother going back, just picked it up the next day on my regular commute.
I have no fear for my safety in public, but I wouldn't dream of leaving my phone at the bar (unless I was sitting with people I knew) or apartment unlocked. Those are different issues.
If you don't take your phone with you to the bathroom, your phone can't count the steps you've taken.
10: I have a not-cob house, but still I think the same idea applies.
My landlord needed workmen to have access to my apartment the other day and I didn't even hide the laptop. That felt weird, but it just seemed silly to be concerned.
Like Moby, I would never leave my phone completely unattended at a bar, but more or less none of the other property security items apply. That is, our basement door is permanently unlocked so I can get bikes out without going through the basement (we do lock it if we actually leave town, and in winter just to shut it a bit tighter); in summer, I park with the windows down for days (as long as it's not raining, obv); I do 8.1 regularly. I do get faintly anxious about parking with the windows down and a bottle of alcohol readily apparent within.
We've mostly left the apartment door unlocked for the last sixteen years, and no one's ever come in who shouldn't have. On the other hand, it's felt weird for that long to me, and I am enjoying returning to having a locked front door like a normal person who isn't crazy.
In more than a dozen years in Pittsburgh, the only crimes I've experienced are a random (I hope) egging and somebody stealing an Amazon packages from out doorstep. That was ripped open and dumped a half block away. That's one out of what much be literally hundreds of packages over that time.
16: Casual thieves are always on the prowl for SAS programming books. Second only to tablets and bicycles, or so I hear.
(In the summers, the front door has often been standing open when we were home for better ventilation. Also, not something that seemed to be a meaningful important safety hazard, so I didn't argue about it. Also, something I will be very glad to stop doing. Have I mentioned that a perk of having one's spouse move out is that one has suddenly won all the nagging household arguments?)
I think the only crime I've had happen to me is that a few years back I had my rear windshield broken--just for fun or an accident, they didn't try to take anything. Would never leave a shopping bag on a public bench, though. I'm paranoid about not locking my doors but we live on a street with a lot of pedestrian traffic. I feel completely safe walking at night (woo male privilege), even after a few drinks.
That's when the egg throwers come out.
Sometimes when I walk in my neighborhood at night or even just from my car into the house, I think it's crazy that I voluntarily lived someplace where I had to factor in safety anytime I was outside after dark.
I actually felt relatively safe in D.C. -- despite experiencing the urban theft trifecta of car being broken into, bag snatched, and house robbed -- and walked home at all hours. I was watchful, though, doing that constant scanning one does, and choosy about my routes -- stuck to well-lighted streets, etc. I was also aware that being 6' was a real advantage.
OP:
Chicago being "violent" means different things to people. Usually the people who talk about it in the media are using it to make some point about how horrible blacks/Democrats/guns/neo-liberals are.
Really? I'm surprised that that's what it would mean. Nothing about systemic racism or poverty? What media is this?
Hereabouts in Balto, we have a similar "Baltimore is violent" discussion, of course. While there are those (in the suburbs, the farther exurbs really) who declare that 'Baltimore is a sewer' -- which, fuck them for that sentiment -- for those closer to home, there really is acknowledgment that it's a systemic, institutional problem.
22: I don't know how much of this has been based on pereception/what other people have told me about crime stats vs. reality, but feeling safe while walking alone at night is probably the biggest difference between the US and Europe* that I've experienced. I really love that feeling. OTOH, I am also much, much more watchful of my belongings and the risk of having my pockets picked while in Europe, and that's not particularly fun, but on balance the experience is still much better.
* So far, most of East and Central Europe, a little bit of Western Europe, and Sweden. The only time I can recall not feeling this way was in Ukraine.
24: There was a string of house robberies in my neighborhood about 4 years ago that was very disturbing to my wife, since I was working out of town at the time. A neighbor called the police when they spotted someone entering our backyard while we were away for the day and they caught him a half a block later. He'd cut the screens out of the window, setting the house up for someone to follow, but getting nabbed thwarted it.
Despite that success, we've lost bikes off the back (not visible from the street) porch twice over the last 5 or 6 years.
Fortunately, violence doesn't really enter into my daily calculations; everywhere within walking/bicycling distance is in the same "fine, unless unlucky" bucket.
Our store, in a "much better" area of town, had an annoying string of 3 burglaries in ~4 months, then a few years of peace. This spring they broke in again, but got nothing. Replacing the glass is still pricey, even when they fail to make off with anything.
So really? Really this thread which was about the tragedy of urban violence, including death of the young and the crisis that signals, turns into a discussion of how annoying it is to white people?
Um.
Right. Sorry, I'm obviously very grumpy. Nothing further.
23: Fuck them, she said, acknowledging the basic truth of the sentiment in the same sentence.
There's also the issue of chronic backups turning a lot of homes in Baltimore into literal open sewers.
24.2 Also, IME Italy, Spain and Portugal. France, maybe not so much.
As Cryptic ned says, the conversation about violence in Chicago is pretty unbalanced by lack of context:
(1) The "unusual" levels of violence in the city are largely restricted to the sort of neighborhoods that don't typically get a lot of media attention. I've lived in three distinct parts of the city and never felt I was in an "unsafe" neighborhood (though, when I lived in Hyde Park, there was a definite boundary past which we felt uncomfortable).
(2) When the city is taken as a whole, it's more violent than New York and LA, but not exceptionally violent in the scheme of large American cities. Less homicide per capita than (per Wikipedia stats for 2014, cities bigger than 250k): St. Louis, Detroit, New Orleans, Baltimore, Newark, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Memphis, Atlanta, Cincinnati, Oakland, Miami, Kansas City, Stockton, Cleveland, Philly, DC, and Indianapolis. Chicago's actually about as deadly as Milwaukee.
But when I harp on that point I feel like an asshole because it obscures the reality of the experience Gregory Michie describes.
We've had numerous better discussions of this topic within the past year -- maybe as many as ten? -- but I am also very grumpy and don't feel like trawling for archival links.
The fact of violence gets to be just the way things are though. Schoolkids getting killed happens weekly and everyone essentially is 'meh'.
Must... not... engage...
I would never leave my phone unattended in public in Narnia. The more common way to reserve a table is by using packets of kleenex (or "tissue paper", as Narnians would call it). There's a reason why such a cheap item is used.
The shooting death of one of the girls' relatives last fall remains unsolved. I was talking to the victim's mother about how she's not eligible for any victim compensation funds because of his criminal history, though signs point to the friend he was with at the time being the target and he may not have been doing anything wrong at the time, but she's petitioning to get some reimbursement for the two days of work she missed to take the several bus transfers it takes to get to the morgue and then only a month or so ago to retrieve his belongings. Little things like that times however many times this goes on are what sticks with me. It doesn't surprise me at all that people don't want to talk about it. I don't really want to talk about it.
#1 was me, which makes it Chicago-relevant. Our neighborhood is shielded from the worst of the violence, but it spills in on the borders. The adjacent neighborhoods are some of the most crime-ridden in Chicago, and it's really hard on the residents there. According to my neighbors, a lot of the low-income black people in my neighborhood moved here to escape that pervasive threat of violence. I had my wallet stolen from the local bar, which was mostly me being careless (purse unzipped dangling off the back), so now I keep an eye on my belongings much more carefully. About 60% of my friends have been mugged at some point, but I think that number is going down.
24
In Ukraine you did you not worry about pick pocketing or did you not feel safe walking at night?
China is also like Narnia--you can leave your valuables sitting out and no one steals anything. People leave cell phones and purses lying around in restaurants and coffee shops and in unlocked cars, and no one seems to take anything. Ironically, despite minimal threat of pick pocketing, my friends were always heavily policing my own belongings and telling me to be more careful with things.
About 60% of my friends have been mugged at some point, but I think that number is going down.
Are you getting new friends that haven't been mugged or are the mugged ones dying?
feeling safe while walking alone at night is probably the biggest difference between the US and Europe* that I've experienced.
It's odd to say this, because I'm familiar with almost every corner of Philadelphia and feel pretty darn comfortable in most of them, but on the first day walking around Netherlands I felt as though I had exhaled a breath I didn't even realize I was holding.
It was so strange to walk around everywhere for two weeks,* take all forms of transit, and literally never have the slightest fear that somebody was going to get ragey and pull a gun. Even though I have a very realistic sense of my own [small] risk in Philadelphia!
But even knowing that, at home, when people escalate from 0-60 in two minutes on the subway I start immediately weighing exit options and risk of further escalation. I just tend to assume that a notable fraction of the population is armed at any given time.
*I was also in France, Belgium, and England, though mostly in smaller cities.
In SF have very very little fear of any physical risk even in for ex tenderloin when walking mock trial students home after scrimmage at fed courthouse, just based on personal characteristics. Was in contrast rather alarmed by rageful drivers in state park outside Tucson as assumed they were armed.
In Paris and London brace myself for a noticeably higher incidence of propositioning by minor league DSKs than in NY Chi LA or SF.
feeling safe while walking alone at night is probably the biggest difference between the US and Europe* that I've experienced.
It's odd to say this, because I'm familiar with almost every corner of Philadelphia and feel pretty darn comfortable in most of them, but on the first day walking around Netherlands I felt as though I had exhaled a breath I didn't even realize I was holding.
It was so strange to walk around everywhere for two weeks,* take all forms of transit, and literally never have the slightest fear that somebody was going to get ragey and pull a gun. Even though I have a very realistic sense of my own [small] risk in Philadelphia!
But even knowing that, at home, when people escalate from 0-60 in two minutes on the subway I start immediately weighing exit options and risk of further escalation. I just tend to assume that a notable fraction of the population is armed at any given time.
*I was also in France, Belgium, and England, though mostly in smaller cities.
Lots of people in Pittsburgh are convinced that going to Philadelphia is death. But I just got back safely and this time I even took a child with me. The only real danger we were ever in was on the Skullkill (can't spell the real way, like mine way better) Expressway and when the ranger wanted to boot us because somebody kept asking how Alexander Hamilton fit into every bit of history.
It is sometimes sardonically referred to as the Surekill Crawlway. I never use it.
Every other way looked much longer (to the Turnpike) and we probably averaged 30 mph through there. It's just that you standard deviation of the rate of travel was very high.
Fewer people are getting mugged. Though I just got a warning about an armed mugging at 4:15 pm basically on campus
Well, they can't call Batman yet because it isn't dark enough for the Bat Signal to show. Just do your best.
36: I didn't feel safe walking alone at night--comparable to how I feel in the US. In other Euopean countries, I have that "letting out a breath" feeling Witt described. I just don't have that low-level but constant awareness of potential threats and the risk of being assaulted that I feel otherwise.