06/19/08 10:20 - 57ºF - ID#44716

Crime Perceptions

Here's a little article on crime perception regarding city crime.

Some interesting points include:

Despite a local tv news station under reporting city crime; over reporting suburb crime; and under reporting the race of offenders in the city and suburbs; suburbanites still conclude that the city is to be feared and African Americans in the city are to be feared.

A possible explanation is that the news channel heavily emphasizes that it is a CITY (Baltimore) news channel so therefore any crime reported via that channel is presumed to be in the city.

Those suburbanites who watch the news regularly are more likely to fear crime in the city and to decrease the amount of time they spend in the city - shopping, dining, seeings shows - to the detriment of the city economy.

Relevant to:
I wonder if suburban visitors in the Elmwood Village area has decreased due to the installation of the security cameras. It would be easy for someone in the suburbs who follows the news to conclude that crime must be out of control in this area of town if it now requires 24-7 monitoring. Any thoughts on how the 24-7 cameras might be negatively impacting the city's economy?

carolinian writes at 02:21:00 06/19/08 - Comment #36246: :::link:::

Anytime you tie revenue enhancement to law enforcement, bad stuff happens. Always.

janelle writes at 01:49:18 06/19/08 - Comment #36243: Here we go:

:::link:::

janelle writes at 01:47:24 06/19/08 - Comment #36242: I think the city already is planning on installing cameras at lights to catch people running reds. I swear I saw an article on Buffalo News about it.

The funny thing is that when cameras at lights came to Philadelphia, people were upset and argued that surveillance cameras would come next.

But here in Buffalo surveillance cameras came first and now cameras to catch red light runners. I love Buffalo, but we're so goofy about how we do things!

jason writes at 01:00:28 06/19/08 - Comment #36241: I saw an interesting story on Channel 7 late one night this week which addressed how these cameras could be used to catch people running red lights, so they can be properly fined. $3.5M could be raised from this, and does anyone believe the government won't go this route someday? All they talk about is increasing government revenue.

drew writes at 12:43:03 06/19/08 - Comment #36240: I think the cameras will have the opposite of the intended effect.

Busy streets don't need cameras.

carolinian writes at 12:12:49 06/19/08 - Comment #36238: I think any downward trend in visitation of Elmwood Village has to do more with the artsy and hip stores that define Elmwood Village being priced out of the area by inflated rents caused by higher property taxes caused by rich white suburbanites moving to Elmwood Village caused by Elmwood Village being too hip for its own damn good. I think that the cameras are really a symptom of the problem, not the problem itself.

All the stores I like on Elmwood seem to be moving to Hertel these days.

Permalink: Crime_Perceptions.html
Words: 209

06/18/08 04:24 - 63ºF - ID#44703

Sex(ual assault) in the suburbs

Sexual predators at work in the north towns suburbs of Buffalo:

I was surprised by the article regarding the convicted offender who struck again. Not because he struck again, but because historically, an offender from the suburb serves time in prison and is then released to the city into a halfway shelter or some treatment program that suburbs refuse to allow to exist in their towns. So the city ends up with more than its fair share of convicted sex offenders and sex offenders have the highest recidivism rates of all.

The suburbs should be forced to keep their sex offenders and provide treatment for them instead of dumping them in the city.

But now the cities are fighting back and enacting laws making it stricter for sex offenders to live in the city, so they're now going underground in the suburbs. Interesting.