Submitted by AutoModerator t3_yvo2pl in nyc
fuckyouimin t1_ix9un3z wrote
Reply to comment by NetQuarterLatte in Weekly Crime Thread - Week of November 15, 2022 by AutoModerator
And it can also be true that politicians and the media use propaganda to control you.
And fear is the easiest and most effective, because fear is personal and it is paralyzing. People who are afraid tend to make bad and hasty decisions. (Hell, Americans voluntarily gave up ALL of our rights to privacy after 9/11. We created the NSA and accepted the fact that they are always watching. We install apps on our phones to spy on our online activity. We accepted being barricaded and penned in at all city parades and big gatherings. We accepted metal detectors and bag checks at every building and cameras on every corner. We accepted the joke that is airport TSA. And we've even helped them to spy on us by getting Alexa devices in our homes and Ring doorbells to spy on our neighbors. (Oh and let's not forget the "If you see something, say something" campaign that led to a nation of Karens feeling entitled to harass people on the street because they didn't "look like they belong there"!) And honestly, what did it actually get us?? Have these tactics made us any safer or just easier to monitor? And at what price to our freedom? And it's also not just personal safety that they use fear for. Do you remember the last 2 weeks of Bush Jr's presidency where they told us that if we didn't bail out wall street to the tune of trillions of dollars our economy would collapse and this country would die? There were no hearings or discussions or rational conversations had... They just backed up the truck and filled it with money to dole out to his buddies before leaving office. And people accepted it because they were told to be afraid of what would happen if they didn't. Same with the idea that immigrants are murderers and rapists who are taking all of your jobs, when the truth of the matter is that corporations are hiring less people in order to pay their executives more.)
There are a million examples I could use, but the premise is always the same, time and time again -- Convince people to be afraid of something and you can get them to agree to anything. There is no factual or legitimate reason for 75% of New Yorkers (NYCers?) to suddenly fear for their lives when the amount of actual increase in crime is either negligible or has gone down.
They are playing you. And I think that this country as a whole needs to wake up and recognize the manipulation that is taking place.
NetQuarterLatte t1_ix9wkfu wrote
>There is no factual or legitimate reason for 75% of New Yorkers (NYCers?) to suddenly fear for their lives
Who is claiming that 75% figure?
>when the amount of actual increase in crime is either negligible or has gone down.
Have you even seen any statistics from the past few years?
fuckyouimin t1_ixb8lou wrote
Sorry, it was the Daily News article that the other guy linked above.
And yes, I have. Murders and deaths have gone down while robberies and burglaries have gone up. But they're nowhere near the rates of past decades. (There's a link in that article to the NYPD stats page as well)
NetQuarterLatte t1_ixbdsv7 wrote
I think murders alone is not a good metric. By that metric, Riker’s would be the safest place because it has a murder rate of 0, but we all know people there don’t feel safe.
But felony assaults in 2022 are on pace to be the highest year in this century.
I also think that the way they phrased that survey, it’s not unreasonable for a lot of people to say they worry about being a victim of violence.
Like anyone who goes to a subway and tries to avoid standing close to the platform edge to avoid being shoved? I think it’s fair for them to answer yes, even though most people just internalize that as a common sense defensive posture.
Anyone who gets into a subway car with some jittery person who starts acting up? I think it’s also fair to feel concerned.
Even if there are so few of those violent individuals, the problem with high density is that it allows so few individuals to reach so many people. It’s hard to say the media is solely to blame.
fuckyouimin t1_ixbhntf wrote
I get what you're saying, but I'd be curious to see the felony assault stats if you have them. Because in a city of 8 million people, going from a 0.005% chance of being harmed to a 0.006% chance (or whatever the actual number may be)... while it's certainly something to be aware of and to look into why we are trending slightly upwards, it's still not really a legit reason for people to be sounding the alarms or fearing for their safety.
The coverage I've seen in the media, combined with the fact that multiple friends from many states away (who used to live here) have said to me that they "heard the city got really bad these days"... Yeah I don't believe that's just a coincidence. I think it's an intentional shaping of the narrative for personal or political gain
Edit: i actually went back to the NYPD link - the article was written in June but as of October, the number of felony assaults have actually gone down while murders are now higher - but still neither in any significant way.
NetQuarterLatte t1_ixbiozs wrote
I think we are going to end up with 25000 or 26000 felony assaults.
So if a person knows on average 100 people in NYC (like people they normally interact with, neighbors, coworkers, friends, classmates) I think that’s 2.5M people who knows someone who was victimized by a felony assault in a year? 30% of the population?
There’s probably a lot of overlap because the violence is not evenly distributed (like a Black person is 19x more likely to be murdered in NYC than a White person). But that’s gotta make an impact on people’s perception when a survey or election time comes.
I’m with you that people from other states who only hear about NYC in the media are just out of touch and driven by the media. But I also think it’s be a mistake to mix them with the people who have first or genuine second-hand knowledge of crimes happening.
fuckyouimin t1_ixbkazi wrote
And I see what you're saying about the odds of knowing someone who got assaulted, but still... as the number is actually less than it was last year, yet the fear has increased (by seemingly a lot), there is another factor at play here. And I've seen first-hand how the media operates, so my normal cynicism is on high alert with this one!
https://compstat.nypdonline.org/2e5c3f4b-85c1-4635-83c6-22b27fe7c75c/view/89
But everyone makes the choice for themselves how to react and how to live. I personally choose to take it all with a grain of salt - to stay aware of my surroundings, to not stand right at the platform edge lol, and to not live in fear. Because with the exception of 9/11, that has always been the NY way. :)
NetQuarterLatte t1_ixble01 wrote
In compstat there’s a weekly, 28 day and year-to-date comparison. The past few weeks actually had a decline in many crimes compared to last year. The year-to-date comparison still indicates double digit increases in many crimes.
Speaking of the media, the media is also liable in exaggerating the opposite narrative too.
Like this Bloomberg article comparing death rates, as if people who are worried about crimes perceive deaths by accidents with a rural equipment as the same as a deaths by a random subway shoving.
fadsag t1_ixbmmim wrote
> as if people who are worried about crimes perceive deaths by accidents with a rural equipment as the same as a deaths by a random subway shoving.
I guarantee you the victims of these events percieve them the same way.
fuckyouimin t1_ixbqp9q wrote
Interesting stats! Lots of different breakdowns there. And yep, they can be spun in any direction they want the narrative to go.
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