So am I... I read this entire thread and his attitude is becoming unacceptable... Statistics will never be 100% accurate, and to base any opinion on them is just plain idiotic...
I never claimed them to be 100% accurate, just quite enough to be perfectly valid.
I took several classes on criminal justice, as well as having several close friends who are in the upper hierarchy of law enforcement, and even they balk at some of the crime stats that come out....
And what parts did they balk at? As was pointed out by my instructor, some officers dont like to see the results because they mistakenly believe its a reflection on them. Plus municipalities dont like to advertise the the bad things, so the DOJ/FBI use multiple surveys and sources to derieve their data. Remember this is a crime index, that weighs the value of different types of crimes. Serious crimes get more weight and lesser crimes, less weight. It is also a snapshot in time, and the rankings are dynamic. The correct way to look at this chart is to see where your city generally stands. I am not in the least upset my city has been ranked a few points lower than one just down the freeway. I am glad though that the two sh**ithole cities near me are ranked in the middle and not at the bottom.
AS for the safest cities, mine isnt listed and I cant tell u the last time there was a violent crime here in Ocean Springs Mississippi... People leave their cars and homes unlocked here, there is never ANY congestion, and there is ZERO gang activity....
Many cities were left off because of their size. And if its as safe as you say, great. We can put you in the safe cities catagory. I wont argue with you about whether your city is safer than mine because it doesnt matter. Its safe! If you want to argue whether NO is worse than Houston, go ahead. At a certein point of the crime index, it doesnt matter who is worse.
Stats are just that, stats, which are used to make intelligent, informative guesses.... Nothing more... They are not the Holy Grail of information....
Many people here reject the evidence because it doesnt fit their opinions. They argue from opinions that cant be quantified. If anyone has contrarary evidence, show it.
If ALL crimes are not reported, there is no way that the statistical evidence is accurate.... Safety is in the eye of the beholder, not the FBI or Dept of Justice... If u dont report every single carjacking, how can u say that the crime statistics are accurate... Or every rape... Or every robbery....
Those surveys take into account the frequency of unreported crime. At the most severe level, its hard to not report the crime (unless youre a criminal getting done in by another crimal). At the least violent level, property crimes, it is underreported. But if you look at the raw data, suppose 10% of property crimes like stolen car radio's are unreported, that doesnt move the crime index around that much.
U think that every single drive by shooting in LA is reported to the police??? Wake the fu*k up for christs sake and smell the java...
Nearly every single shooting in LA gets reported by someone. And if theres a fatality or injury, eventually law enforcement hears about it. And as the raw data shows, there are so many similar type of crimes being commited in the same type of cities that they tend to normalize each other out. Now in the safer cities, nearly all violent crime does get reported. And for unreported property crime, its getting harder to not avoid reporting it as insurance agencies want a police report.
End result is the safe cities tend to have quite accurate crime index's while the least safe cities are such s***holes, it really doesnt matter if the stats for them are less accurate.