Wednesday, May 01, 2013

Danger Zone!

The Twenty-Five Most Dangerous Neighborhoods In America!

I drive through one of them to get to the almost-a-dentist.

It's actually a little poignant, because the neighborhood in question is full of great, big decaying Victorian houses, a third of which are abandoned and falling in and a small number of which are frozen in the process of being fixed up, the urban pioneers of gentrification having been cut off and surrounded in Injun Country when the housing market Conestoga threw an economic wheel.
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22 comments:

courerdubois said...

Hoorraayyyy for Detroit, we're numbers 1,2,and 3!! Hah! Bet you can't say that about town!

10:03 AM, May 01, 2013
Aaron said...

courerdubois: And for Michigan as a whole it's doubly awesome: 6 of 25 spots are ours - 4 in Detroit, 1 in Flint and 1 in Sagniaw.

We're one true blue state with an impressive 24% of the entire United States' most dangerous neighborhoods.

wv: escapes ighmony - even my word verification wants to get out of Michigan but lacks the h in (h)igh money to do so.....

10:14 AM, May 01, 2013
courerdubois said...

I remember going to Saginaw once, oh in the early 90's probably. My dad and I were looking for an army navy surplus store downtown. We got there in the middle of the day on a Saturday and there was no-one around. It was absolutely Twilight Zone-Rod's gonna pop out from around the corner spooky.

The store was closed, like everything else.

10:29 AM, May 01, 2013
Cybrludite said...

New Orleans didn't make any of the slots? We demand a recount!

10:49 AM, May 01, 2013
mikee said...

The wife & I moved into a decayed neighborhood back in 1990 in Baltimore, and unknowingly started a gentrification revival on our block when we restored an abandoned 12' x 24' flower bed on the grassy area across from our row houses.

My wife had started growing flowers in the backyard of our rowhouse, and was wildly successful because the previous owners had rabbit hutches there for about a decade, and merely thinking about plants from the back door made things grow there.

When the 8' tall delphiniums and the 4' tall purple cone flowers in the back yard filled the available 160 square feet, she insisted we plant the greenspace flower bed, which consisted of the 50 year old remains of a wood border and weedy grass that the city mowed once or twice a summer.

I bribed the city mulch center manager with a 6 pack of cold Cokes to get all the mulch we wanted for fill (about 18 filled 42 gallon trash bins, transported in the trunk of my Honda Civic one at a time) and used rail ties, nailed to the ground with rebar, to make the border.

We had neighbors ask us what we thought we were doing, messing with city property like that, and other neighbors who didn't want us making an attractive nuisance near them (really!) and old ladies from down the street who showed us pictures of the flower bed in the 1950s.

The flowers, grown in pure composted leaf humus, were spectacular. We had people driving by to take pictures, kids stealing a bloom or two for their girlfriends, and a copycat who did the same thing at the far end of the block.

Within two years we had a neighborhood instead of a slum. All because my wife liked flowers.

10:57 AM, May 01, 2013
mikee said...

And the reason Baltimore is not on that list is that the gang warfare that made the fair city the US Murder Capitol about 15 years ago was finally won by one gang, who now runs the drugs in the city.

Not the ideal solution to criminal violence, but it keeps Baltimore out of news articles like this.

God, I am glad I moved to Texas.

11:03 AM, May 01, 2013
Anonymous said...

Seems they could've saved a few slides and just listed Chicago and Detroit. Then there would've been space for Minneapolis/Murderapolis.

Well done blue. Well done.

11:43 AM, May 01, 2013
Fuzzy Curmudgeon said...

Hey, I drive through those Indy neighborhoods a couple-three times a week. Usually after dark.

Garden spots, I tell you.

That's why I generally have a 9mm to hand when I'm a-drivin' through.

In all fairness, I've been in a lot worse neighborhoods in Chicago, Baltimore, and Washington, DC that I don't see listed. And I've been in worse neighborhoods in Indy, too.

12:04 PM, May 01, 2013
David said...

Only 2 in Memphis. They touch, though, which makes sense to me. Spent a three days in one of 'em a few weeks back, playing victim (and occasional shooter) for an Active Shooter scenario for the benefit of local LE and FD people. Certainly looked like one of the worst neighborhoods in America. I can see why an abandoned warehouse was available for our use.

12:12 PM, May 01, 2013
NotClauswitz said...

I'm actually surprised none are in California.

12:12 PM, May 01, 2013
Woodman said...

NotClauswitz,

FBI data is submitted by the states if I recall correctly. It wasn't murder, being out after 6 PM on that street was suicide.

Anywhere using compstats is going to have wonky numbers too.

And the reason I would guess high rise tenements don't show up would be related to a problem reporting crime more than crime not actually happening. There is a reason cities are tearing those down, and a reason violent crime in Chicago spread out when everyone got housing vouchers.



12:53 PM, May 01, 2013
Woodman said...

Flip side is true as well, though I'm sure not as big of a deal.

In halfway neighborhoods something that would get ignored in a bad neighborhood gets covered in detail.

My daughter's school is always among the worst in the state for police calls. Turns out they call the police when there are more than three punches thrown in an incident.

12:55 PM, May 01, 2013
Frank W. James said...

I just can't believe that South Central LA or Oakland didn't make the 'Honorable Mention' list.

And considering that only 5 (with Houston being 2 of the 5) of the cities cited are West of the Mississippi River, I think the fix was in when this list was made.

In short, I think it's bullshit...

All The Best,
Frank W. James

1:31 PM, May 01, 2013
Woodman said...

I also have to wonder if an incident equals an incident regardless of the severity.

I think I'd much rather live in a neighborhood with dozens of purse snatchers and pickpockets a year than ten murders and five rapes.

1:38 PM, May 01, 2013
Robert said...

Those results for Spartnaburg and Greenville SC rather surprised me. I suspect something is wrong in the data.

2:16 PM, May 01, 2013
Sigivald said...

Off topic rant: Screw MSN and their attempt to turn what should have been one page into 28 pageviews.

2:58 PM, May 01, 2013
Stuart the Viking said...

I did note that their reasoning for one Chicago neighborhood being on the list was that guns were so cheap and easily obtained...

Derp...

"Gun Control" is a broken idea that doesn't work no matter how hard you pretend that it will. Some people will never understand this.

s

3:57 PM, May 01, 2013
Goober said...

But guns are illegal in Chicago! Don't these criminals that commit violent crime know that?

I think we need an education program to make sure that criminals know that guns are illegal so they stop using them when they commit crimes!

7:00 PM, May 01, 2013
Robert McDonald said...

I'm kind of surprised none of the neighborhoods in and around Birmingham, AL were mentioned.

8:48 PM, May 01, 2013
Anonymous said...

I am kind of surprised that no neighborhoods in California were mentioned.

Heck they made two movies (Friday, and Next Friday) from South Central Los Angeles. Not to mention the good movies like "Boyz in the Hood"

9:17 PM, May 01, 2013
Drang said...

Wait a minute. Saginaw made the list?
Granted, my incredulity is from the perspective of a native Detroiter who left in 11980 and never looked back, but, still...

9:59 PM, May 01, 2013
markm said...

@Aaron: Notice that they're all in one corner of the state. (Although some spots in Grand Rapids and Muskegon Heights might come close to making the list.) And that if that southeast less-than-a-quarter of Michigan was it's own (very blue) state, MI would be a red state, maybe even as red as Texas.

7:44 AM, May 12, 2013

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