flatfeet

I often hear people worried about crime in NYC when planning their visits, so here you go. I'm sure it may still feel "less safe" if you are coming from a small city, but NYC remains the safest of large cities.

Ranking of US 10 largest cities based on safety:
1. NYC
2. San Jose
3. LA
4. San Diego
5. Chicago
6. Philadelphia
7. Houston
8. San Antonio
9. Phoenix
10.Dallas

See links:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14910822/
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=2466498
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,214422,00.html

ellenem

And New York was found to be the world's most polite city by a Reader's Digest test. Here's the link to the standing, but checkout the entire article.

http://www.rd.com/content/openConten...99&pageIndex=2

michelleNYC

Woohoo!

nytraveler

And one other point - many times visitors ask if this or that hotel or restaurant is in a "safe" area. All of the tourist areas of New York are safe - about as safe as anything can be except staying home.

The bulk of the crime that there is - is in less desireable neighborhoods - not in major tourist areas.

There have been a couple of high profile crimes related to clubbing recently - but the answer is simple: don't wander down dark alleys - or anywhere else - alone at 3 am if you've had several too many. Under those circumstances nowhere in the world is safe.

(And I don't mean to be hardhearted - or lack sympathy for families who have lost someone - but everyone is responsible for protecting his/herself by not acting in a flagrantly risky manner.)

J_Correa

My city is 2nd and there have been some articles in the newspaper about that - why we are considered less-safe than NYC. I say - who cares who is 1st or 2nd? Crime it low, be happy.

travelbear

nytraveler,

I always say to people that say "don't wander down dark alleys" when referencing NYC: good luck. There are about 4 alleys total in Manhattan below 96th Street. And one of those has a fabulous restaurant at the end of it!

NYC is wonderful. There is no reason to feel unsafe here. Come enjoy the sights and when you come back post a trip report.

Shadow

22 days until NYC for me!!! Woohoo!!!
Cannot wait!! So excited!! First time!I live in the middle of the Mojave Desert...biggest store:Wal Mart! You KNOW I'm looking forward to NYC!!!
I'm not the least afraid!! Bring it on!!
Shadow

lynnejoel1015

Bravo for LA and NYC! Chief Bill Bratton is doing a terrific job, and LA would be topping out the list if only the LA City Council would HIRE MORE OFFICERS!

Lynne

aceplace

According to the FBI website, the crime numbers are so crudely gathered that it is meaningless to try to compare one city to another. It's a classic case of comparing apples (NYC's reporting methods) to oranges (LA's reporting methods).

The only real value to a city's crime number is to compare it to itself... is crime in a particular city getting better or worse from one year to the next.

Gekko

And the FBI data includes all 5 of New York's boroughs (Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, Staten Island & Manhattan).

Manhattan itself, where nearly all visitors spend 100% of their non-airport time, has much less crime than 3 of the other 4 boroughs.

GoTravel

Thanks flatfeet. Most of us have been saying this for some time now.

aceplace

One other problem with trying to calculate a crime rate for Manhattan and compare it to Washington DC ... you don't know how many people, i.e. potential victims, are physically present in the city at any particular time.

The same problem applies to Washington DC. About 450,000 people actually live in the District, but DC may have a daytime population of 1 million, from residents, commuters, tourists. So do you divide the number of reported muggings by 450,000 or by 1 million in order to calculate a rate? If you adjust for additional commuters and tourists, this would cut its crime rate in half.

In the case of New York City, adding a couple of million commuters and tourists in Manhattan would not double NYC's daytime population of 8 to 9 million. So its rate is less likely to change by adjusting for nonresidents. It will definitely not be cut in half. In that case, is New York still safer than Washington? Maybe, maybe not.

nytraveler

aceplace -

Yes - the addition of commuters would definitely double Manhattan's population. The outer boroughs are far more populous than Manhattan - by far the bulk of the population live in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx - which are huge in geographic area in comparison to Manhattan. live outside Manhattan. So - the population more than doubles during the day.

And yes - NYC is MUCH safer than DC.

aceplace

Actually, if Manhattan were treated as a seperate unit, its crime rate would be even more illusory. Its daytime population could easily be triple the number of official Manhattan residents, and its nighttime population could be double the number of residents. The more people you have in an area, the less is the probability that one of them could be a victim.

So, basing a crime rate on the number of residents creates a false conclusion. Is a wrong answer better than nothing? I tried to convince my professors in college to give me partial credit for a wrong answer, on the theory that it was closer to the truth than no answer al all, but they didn't buy that theory.

As has been pointed out before, a crime rate is a mathematical abstraction, not a description of the real world. Every city will have safe neighborhoods, and also dangerous ones. Crime is never uniformly spread out over the entire city. Since tourists usually stay out of crime-infested ghettos, the New York City crime rate is not only inaccurate, but insignificant.

aceplace

NYTraveler, I posted my second post before I saw yours, and you are correct to distinguish between Manhattan in particular and NYC in general.

How do you know if NYC is safer than DC? You don't have an accurate figure for DC.

Actually, you don't have an accurate number for crimes committed in either place, according to the FBI's disclaimer. The process of measuring crimes in cities are different and inconsistent with one another.

Sure, I feel pretty safe in Times Square on a Saturday night. And I feel pretty safe in DC's Dupont Circle neighborhood on a Saturday night. But I don't have a way to statistically calculate a difference in safety. Am I safer in Times Square or Dupont Circle? I don't know, and it doesn't really matter. They're both safe enough.