"Crime Perceptions" written by Suburbancrime on estrip.org

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
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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.

Permalink: Sex_ual_assault_in_the_suburbs.html
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05/13/08 01:44 - 61ºF - ID#44327

Suburbanites bring crime into our city

Permalink: Suburbanites_bring_crime_into_our_city.html
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05/13/08 01:40 - 61ºF - ID#44326

Stealing from the church plate

Suburbanites like to steal money from churches:

Permalink: Stealing_from_the_church_plate.html
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05/05/08 11:22 - 55ºF - ID#44241

The greed of the suburbanites

will be their own downfall:

suburbancrime writes at 01:43:40 05/06/08 - Comment #34757: The point of this blog is just to explore this myth or idea that the suburbs are free from crime where as the city is somehow this teeming cesspool of filth and crime. I run up against people who think like this everyday...I work with them.

The blog came out of a discussion on the cameras going up on Elmwood to prevent "crime". Some of us felt that cameras going up in the city contributes to this idea that the city is always unsafe and has to be closely monitored.

For the reasons above, I don't necessarily care to compare statistics between Tonawanda and Buffalo. Not to mention, crime statistics in the suburbs are horribly, horribly skewed. A lot of suburbs will record a crime as happening in the county to avoid the crime as being part of the statistics for their area.

There do happen to be people who break the law in the city and the suburb. That's the point of of this blog. Opportunity to commit crime is an important component to why crimes occur and with the increasing vacancies in the suburbs, the people in the suburbs with an inclination towards crime, now have the opportunity to commit crime as well.

jon writes at 09:04:15 05/06/08 - Comment #34751: Although I understand your point, crime is committed by individuals who choose to break the law. And there happen to be people in both the suburbs and in the city. So of course crime will exist. And given more opportunity with abandoned homes and such, I would also guess crime will rise a bit.

Anyways, I thought I'd look around for some hard numbers about crime in our areas. Here is a 2006 comparison I found. Not sure how relevant this is to the topic at hand, but I found it interesting.

:::link:::

suburbancrime writes at 02:11:11 05/05/08 - Comment #34727: I liked this article because I think it speaks succinctly to crime being, in part, a product of a negligent environment that becomes conducive to criminal activity. The broken window theory at work in the suburbs.
I think we'll see more middle ring suburbans experiencing a rise in crime due to foreclosures and vacant properties.
The suburbs will experience what the urban cities experienced when the government turned its back on the cities and subsidized the move to the suburbs.

james writes at 12:35:25 05/05/08 - Comment #34721: I don't know why we have this Eisenhower era view that the suburbs are crime free. Hasn't everyone seen Twin Peaks and Blue Velvet?

Permalink: The_greed_of_the_suburbanites.html
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05/05/08 11:21 - 55ºF - ID#44240

The decline of the suburb

Permalink: The_decline_of_the_suburb.html
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05/05/08 11:03 - 55ºF - ID#44239

More drug busts in Tonawanda

Lots of the white stuff in North Tonawanda

Permalink: More_drug_busts_in_Tonawanda.html
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04/28/08 01:16 - 42ºF - ID#44169

Driving in the suburbs

Concerned about the chaos of driving in the city ??? Erie County Sheriff's deputies had a busy weekend rounding up drunk drivers in the suburbs:

Here's another read:

Best wishes for a quicky recovery for the involved individual, but do you notice how the focus on this young suburban woman is the injury and not the criminal act that caused the injury? This article would look a whole lot different if this was an urban youth!

Permalink: Driving_in_the_suburbs.html
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04/24/08 01:18 - 65ºF - ID#44125

Suburban Crime Blog

I wanted to write a thought provoking entry explaining the purpose and thought behind the suburbancrime blog, but the reason is pretty simple. Irritation.

I feel irritated when people tell me they love visiting the city, but, goodnessâ€¦. they could never LIVE in the city. Or my co-workers who are convinced that I, as a city resident, have my house and car broken into routinely and that I have danger lurking for me around every corner. These individuals smugly believe that they and their children are safe from crime in their suburbs.

We can explore that assumption here. Iâ€™ll try to focus on Buffalo, but Iâ€™ll branch out to other suburban areas too. If you have any news on crime in the suburbs to shareâ€¦please e-mail me!

Hereâ€™s a few interesting links to start with:

Boston man with intoxication levels three times the legal limit found slumped over in his vehicle:

Illegal immigrants working in Cheektowaga Mexican restaurant:

Drugs in Clarence

Union Leaders recently arrested for racketeering. The racketeering and bullying of these individuals harm the City of Buffalo and at least one of the twelve (probably more) lives in the suburbs of Buffalo. The article doesn't provide their home locations, but one of my coworkers in the suburbs is a neighbor to one of the individuals who was arrested.

imk2 writes at 09:38:19 04/24/08 - Comment #34370: many, many, many years ago i dated a guy who was in the business. you wouldn't believe how many suburbanites he had as customers and he didn't even deal the "white" drug, but rather, crack and still so many of the customers were white suburbanites driving saabs. i can only imagine what the demographic profile of a Buffalo coke dealer's clientÃ¨le looks like.

metalpeter writes at 05:40:35 04/24/08 - Comment #34359: That place was so good it really was. The odd thing is not this time but the time previous I voted for it as the Best Mexican place in the artvoice awards. I think the place has been open for a couple years but not sure.

Before I bash the burbs there have been some great movies and shows about them and there dark side: American Beauty, The Burbs, Desperate Housewives, and WEEDS come to mind quickly.

I like the idea of the blog. The burbanites to make some good points about crime. Let me clarify that by saying the ones who used to live here and then when the you know who started moving into there hood they decided to move out. But that doesn't mean there is more crime that is more of a culture thing. As an example as I'm walking down the street there is some asshole sitting on his porch and he has his car radio blaring. Now I can't even sit outside if I want to cause I don't want to hear his crappy music. I felt like reaching into the car and turning the radio down, it is not to tough to make it loud enough so only you can hear it, it is called sitting in your car!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

See people who aren't from the city don't understand that there are good and bad parts and sometimes it is block by block and not by the part of town you are in. As an example if you know anyone who lives in riverside tell them you like there house in blackrock. If they are a stable family they will Correct you cause black rock is where the ghetto and white trash people live. I used to have this debate with a friend of mine. He lived in Willimsville about maybe 5 minutes form UB. I never said he lived in Buffalo but said he lived in the city and he did and he would get very upset.

mrdeadlier writes at 02:36:47 04/24/08 - Comment #34353: I saw the link to the Mexican restaurant in Cheektowaga and figured for sure it was 5 de Mayo! Half the time I'm in there the servers barely speak English, and the other half... they don't at all. But still, the food is the best thing going since Don Pablo's waved farewell.

suburbancrime writes at 01:32:03 04/24/08 - Comment #34346: absolutely!

james writes at 01:31:10 04/24/08 - Comment #34345: If we find news stories detailing the scum of that Gomorrah which are the suburbs should we email you?

Permalink: Suburban_Crime_Blog.html
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