urbanSTL

I knew it wouldn't take long for some media company (and in this case I use the term loosely) to sensationalize the "most dangerous" list. Leave it to good old AOL. For whatever reason, they put this under their mortgage section. I love the overly dramatic pictures under each cities bio. No where in the story do I recall seeing any kind of disclaimer about the statistics either.





LINK

and correct me if I'm wrong, but the St. Louis picture appears to be National Guard troops going door to door during the power outage in July 06. I had no idea bad weather contributed to being dangerous.

brickandmortar wrote:and correct me if I'm wrong, but the St. Louis picture appears to be National Guard troops going door to door during the power outage in July 06. I had no idea bad weather contributed to being dangerous.

I noticed that too. I think thats a PD stock photo from the July outages last year. I guess it's intended to look like we send the Guard in to deal with the criminals..? (of course, I'm sure that if the guard were busting these guys they'd politely knock first).



The MQ report is shoddy, but AOL's "reporting" is just irresponsible.

Love the headline - "Lock Your Doors."



Screw you, AOL.

DeBaliviere wrote:Love the headline - "Lock Your Doors."



Screw you, AOL.

Luckily AOL ceased to be relevant sometime in the late 1990's.

Apparently the website is in sync with his studies' credibility -- they're both lacking.

I wonder if AOL subscribers still have the dancing baby screen savers.

Grover wrote:Luckily AOL ceased to be relevant sometime in the late 1990's.

Back when people came to the realization that AOL wasn't "The Internet."

DeBaliviere wrote:

Grover wrote:Luckily AOL ceased to be relevant sometime in the late 1990's.

Back when people came to the realization that AOL wasn't "The Internet."

well it's one of the internets

stlwriterman wrote:Yes, this study is somewhat bogus, but the idea that STL gets a bad rap in these surveys because it can't annex its suburbs is baloney, too. Yeah, the cities of Dallas, Indianapolis and Houston contain vast areas that we'd consider suburban, but plenty of other cities don't, and don't have anything near our high rankings on crime.

According to the Census, at 61.9 square miles, St. Louis is the 109th largest city in land mass out of 239 cities with populations over 100,000 people. Cities smaller than ours but of comparable or bigger population include DC, St. Petersburg, Pittsburgh, Minneapolis, Boston, San Francisco, Miami, Newark, Providence and Hartford.



http://www.census.gov/statab/ccdb/cit1010r.txt



Of those, only Newark and Washington made Quitno's top 25 last year. If political boundaries were the problem, we'd have more company on the list. Poverty and middle-class flight might have more to do with it.



FWIW, Quitno also ranks metro areas and we weren't in the top 25 last year. Detroit was indeed No. 1.

http://www.morganquitno.com/cit07pop.htm#500,000+

I believe last year our metro area was something like number 129. Not sure where it is this year.

JMedwick wrote:AOL aside, I do think the reporting has been much better. While getting ready for work this morning, I saw the short FOX 5 (NYC Fox network affiliate) discussing and reporting on the list and the anchors took at least 2 minutes at the end of the stock report to joke about how bogus the list is because it tries to compare "sprawling suburbs" with dense urban areas. So at least some in the media get it.

I only wish there had been this much scrutiny last year. It seemed as though the media piled on, no doubt aided by the release date which was one day after the Cardinals World Series victory parade. A big deal was made out of Saint Louis being in the news for more than baseball, and even the local media reported the findings as if they were the Gospel.



I'm glad to see the media actually doing their job this year and taking a more critical approach when reporting these findings, but the damage has already been done, and none of this takes away from the very real problem this city has, even if we all know it's not a dangerous place as a whole.

I believe it is time to merge the St. Louis City and St. Louis County police departments. This would solve three problems.

1) St. Louis City area would have enough resources to avoid solo street and car patrols. They could double up on patrols for officer safety.

2) The County area would probably be safer, because a large portion of serious metro area crime originates in core crime areas currently outside of St. Louis County control. Now they would be able to inject some resources and control into those areas.

3) St. Louis city and county could merge FBI statistics and average across the combined populations for reporting as a single entity. This would solve the PR problem we have with lazy statisticians who can't seem to figure out how to normalize crime rate numbers to take into account varying city boundary radii within metro areas that become the major drivers in a ranking.

I love how the media never report METRO areas, but as many know, Morgan Quinto breaks down 344 Metro areas, a far better way to measure cities such as Baltimore and St. Louis. I like how we don't break the top 25 most dangerous metro areas list! Detroit is STILL number one, and we're safer than Charlotte, that "hot new city"... muah ah ah ah



Most Dangerous 25:



1









Detroit-Livonia-Dearborn, MI M.D.



2



Memphis, TN-MS-AR



3









Pine Bluff, AR



4









Las Vegas-Paradise, NV



5









Florence, SC



6









Myrtle Beach, SC



7









Flint, MI



8









Stockton, CA



9









Jackson, TN



10









Shreveport-Bossier City, LA



11









Miami-Dade County, FL M.D.



12









Charlotte-Gastonia, NC-SC



13









Hot Springs, AR



14









Saginaw, MI



15









Albuquerque, NM



16









Little Rock, AR



17









Yakima, WA



18









Tucson, AZ



19









Oakland-Fremont, CA M.D.



20









Macon, GA



21









Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale, AZ



22









Houston, TX



23









Modesto, CA



24









Sumter, SC



25







Alexandria, LA

The 3 in AR are within 60 miles of each other!

i hope that everyone on this thread spreads the fact that Charlotte's metro area is more dangerous than St. Louis'.

Does anyone know what happened Friday night by the Packard Lofts. There was alot of police activity, going by the Tudor building and up and down the alley by the Packard Lofts and Locust Lofts. There was even a helicopter flying around for a bit. I didnt see anything on the news about it but figured someone on here might have some idea as to what happened.

Shots fired. 4 rounds. I actually thought someone was rapping on my door. Thats how loud it was in my place at Westgate. Crazy.

No idea who or why. It couldn't have been more than 30 seconds or a minute before the cops were swarming all over the place.

Er, yeah, sorry about that - hope I didn't wake you. I thought I saw someone littering...

Anyone hear the commotion going on last night? Lots of gunshots, lots of police. I saw a police presence at Ten14 and lots of people milling around outside, so I assume a conflict of some sort happened and the guns came out. Couldn't find anything about it online yet.

I read that a similar crowd that hung out at Lucky's on Sunday nights several months back has relocated to Ten14. This programming at Ten14 is fomenting bad behavior that endangers our friends and family. We should not stand for this. Ten14 needs to be held accountable.

It was definitely a similar crowd. They were all over the streets and in the streets - which, I really don't have a problem with. Just act respectful of the area and you're fine. I love seeing lots of pedestrian traffic. They were being loud, obnoxious, and then the gunshots started.



If this continues every Sunday night, something has to be done. I'm all for diversity and don't care about a predominantly African-American crowd. It's when the guns come out that I get worried.