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Excaliber wrote:

AndyC wrote:On the one hand, it seems more dangerous out there these days, but on the other we see that crime stats are going down. Other than the possibility of someone fiddling with the stats ( a la Chicago and Great Britain), why then do many of us still feel it's more dangerous than in days gone by?

Personally, I believe the bad guys are far quicker these days to just shoot/stab someone - there might be less crime, but that which exists can easily become unreasonably violent. I don't care enough to try and figure out why - I'll leave that to the sociologists, etc - all I have to do is be aware that even small encounters can turn deadly.

The level of viciousness does seem to have gone up considerably.

The 24 hour news cycle and the "if it bleeds, it leads" mentality has a lot to do with how the level of crime feels as opposed to how it is.

If you want to see what's actually happening around a given location, here's a neat resource that gives you anywhere from a couple of days to a couple of weeks (depending on activity levels). Really small towns may not have available data feeds, but it works for most locations.