Hi guys
Yesterday my lil brother wrote me an email (from Uruguay) and told me he escaped a mugging…
and his mail brought all my memories of living in Montevideo…I had almost forgot since here in Venice life is so peaceful.
In Montevideo you just can’t walk around the city without watching your back,it’s that bad!
I’m not talking about a particular area,the whole city is dangerous.
Street mugging and petty crime is very frequent.
The most frequent technique they use to mug you is approaching “friendly” asking for change,a sigarette…and then boom! they punch your head off.
It’s kind of “confusing” even for the locals because sometimes you can’t tell if you’re about to be attacked or they’re just begging for money.
This “randomness” causes you to be paranoid…because you never feel safe.
Another thing is : you don’t need to look “rich” to be attacked, they might want to steal your cheap watch! or even your shoes! it’s the 3rd world after all…
Manhattan is quite safe, but you still need to be wary at night if you’re walking alone on dark streets.
My hometown is very safe too.
In the U.S. every city has neighborhoods where you really shouldn’t go at night.
The cities that you have to watch out for are the ones where crime patterns are seemingly random. I lived in Charlotte, NC for a couple of years back in the early 90s. While the violent crime rate was pretty low, they weren’t confined to any locales. In fact, there was one in just about every neighborhood, including the wealthiest.
To me, that’s scarier than cities with higher crime rates but that are more or less constrained to certain “unsafe” zones.
My wife and I grew up opposite. I grew up in a town called Moorpark. Very safe…nothing really happens there. My wife grew up in Compton, so you can imagine the difference.
What the hell is this guy talking about? Check out this fromt the wiki page…
“Crime & Public Safety
In 2005 there were 188 homicides in Uruguay, 9486 assaults and 1167 sexual crimes. [24]. However, Uruguay remains the country with the lowest crime rate in Latin America and one of the safest in the world, being its capital city, Montevideo, among the 30 safest cities in the world.”
[quote]Horazio wrote:
In Montevideo you just can’t walk around the city without watching your back,it’s that bad!
I’m not talking about a particular area,the whole city is dangerous.
[/quote]
i grew up in houston. my uncle was mugged in the eighties and i was held up at gun point while working retail at a redwing shoe store. things were pretty uneventful other than that. i hear the katrina evacuees have since stirred things up though with new gangs looking for territory and what not.
crime was always reported in the news, but that is too be expected, even in small towns. per capita i doubt there is a huge difference. unless you are counting the
200- population shit spots some times called towns.
I recall reading in “Fire and Ice” by Michael Adams that contrary to the rest of the developed world, in Canada our cities have less crime than smaller towns.
Why?
You try figure it out. I don’t have a bloody clue.
I just finished reading “Freakonomics: A rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything”, where the author/economist Steven Levitt goes into the numbers behind violent crime statistics. In the U.S. in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s violent crime was out of control and growing. The crimes rates suddenly started dropping around 1992-1993 and have continued to drop where they are now much lower than 15-20 years ago. He debunks the standard reasons of a booming economy, new policing strategies, tougher gun laws, more cops, etc. His conclusion was that none of those made a serious change in the crime patterns. He concluded from the data that the number one reason for the decline in violent crime was the legalizing of abortion in the Roe vs. Wade case. (Before anyone goes off about abortion, he’s not advocating abortion or taking either side of the abortion issue, he is simply saying that lower violent crime was a result of the decision). It’s too long to explain why, you’d have to read it. Very interesting.
He also discussed the statistical history of homicide rates. In most civilized countries, the homicide rate now (year 2000) is about 1% of that in the same country in the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries. No surprise there.
Here in Chicago, anything can happen anywhere, but for the most part if you stay out of certain areas you’ll be fine. It’s very different than 15-20 years ago, much like NYC.
[quote]ElbowStrike wrote:
I recall reading in “Fire and Ice” by Michael Adams that contrary to the rest of the developed world, in Canada our cities have less crime than smaller towns.
Why?
You try figure it out. I don’t have a bloody clue.
[quote]Nothingface wrote:
I just finished reading “Freakonomics: A rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything”, where the author/economist Steven Levitt goes into the numbers behind violent crime statistics. In the U.S. in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s violent crime was out of control and growing. The crimes rates suddenly started dropping around 1992-1993 and have continued to drop where they are now much lower than 15-20 years ago.
He debunks the standard reasons of a booming economy, new policing strategies, tougher gun laws, more cops, etc. His conclusion was that none of those made a serious change in the crime patterns. He concluded from the data that the number one reason for the decline in violent crime was the legalizing of abortion in the Roe vs. Wade case.
(Before anyone goes off about abortion, he’s not advocating abortion or taking either side of the abortion issue, he is simply saying that lower violent crime was a result of the decision). It’s too long to explain why, you’d have to read it. Very interesting.
He also discussed the statistical history of homicide rates. In most civilized countries, the homicide rate now (year 2000) is about 1% of that in the same country in the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries. No surprise there.
Here in Chicago, anything can happen anywhere, but for the most part if you stay out of certain areas you’ll be fine. It’s very different than 15-20 years ago, much like NYC.[/quote]
I finished the book just a couple weeks ago. I agree it is very good. I also think it plucks the feather from Rudy Giuliani?s cap about being the reason N.Y.C.?s crime rate dropped
[quote]Horazio wrote:
Mister T. wrote:
Greekboy80 wrote:
What the hell is this guy talking about? Check out this fromt the wiki page…
…
Well,then don’t trust Wikipedia.
Just read the classified ads from any local newspaper : the most growing job section is SECURITY ! Do the maths…
[/quote]
I agree, I am from El Salvador,but i have traveled to lots of cities in Latin America, believe me its never this safe in a large latin american city. This wikepedia entry was probably written by the tourism ministry, jajaja
