[Vision2020] Cities Where Americans Don’t Feel Safe

[Kenneth Marcy]

Wall Street 24/7 published:

*http://tinyurl.com/mxcxyxv *

Cities Where Americans Don’t Feel Safe

Here is number two, because it is closer to home, from a list of ten:

*2. Yakima, Wash.*
*> Pct. feel safe at night:* 51.3%
*> Pct. without money for shelter:* 12.5% (tied for 34th highest)
*> Violent crime rate:* 349.4 per 100,000 (172nd highest)
*> Poverty rate:* 23.1% (29th highest)
*> Population:* 249,564 (178th lowest)

While Yakima residents often felt unsafe walking home alone at night, 
the area’s violent crime rate was actually lower than the national rate. 
Property crime, however, remains a problem. Despite Yakima County’s 
Crimestoppers grassroots organization, which encourages citizens to 
report crimes, the area had 1,217.7 burglaries per 100,000 people in 
2012, and 673.2 car thefts per 100,000 people, both among the highest 
rates in the country. Like most metro areas in which residents do not 
feel safe walking alone at night, Yakima is struggling economically. 
Nearly one-quarter of the area’s residents had to rely on food stamps 
for at least part of 2012, and 23.1% of residents lived in poverty in 
2012 — both among the worst rates in the country.


Here is an excerpt from the middle of the article:

Seven of the 10 metro areas in which residents felt the least safe had 
violent crime rates above the nationwide rate of 386.9 incidents per 
100,000 people in 2012. In the Memphis, Tenn., area, there were 1,056.8 
violent crimes per 100,000 people, the most of any metro area in the 
country. Stockton, Calif., also had one of the highest violent crime 
rates in the nation, with 889.3 incidents per 100,000 residents.

But not all metro areas where residents felt unsafe had high violent 
crime rates. In two metro areas, McAllen and Yakima, Wash., there were 
just 319 and 349 violent incidents, respectively, for every 100,000 
residents in 2012. In both cases, this was below the national rate.

*Click here to see the cities where Americans don’t feel safe 
<http://247wallst.com/special-report/2014/04/18/cities-where-americans-dont-feel-safe/2>*

24/7 Wall St. discussed the issue with John Roman, senior fellow at the 
Urban Institute, a nonpartisan think-tank based in Washington, D.C. “A 
fact of modern life [is] that people are bombarded with negative stories 
about crime,” Roman said. People “develop the perception that where they 
live, or wherever they like to go, isn’t safe.”

While concerns about safety may be somewhat misplaced in some areas, in 
others, such “perceptions of feeling unsafe are right on,” Roman 
added. In those areas, residents may feel unsafe because crime is 
underreported. In immigrant communities, because “people who are 
victimized are afraid to come forward and report it, there’s a hidden 
number of crime,” Roman explained.

However, in bigger cities, like Washington, D.C., New York and Dallas, 
“immigrant populations are thriving because they can do business with 
the local governments in Spanish. Those cities that are attracting a lot 
of first and second generation immigrants have really much lower crime 
rates than you’d expect,” said Roman.

Here is the URL for the first page: *http://tinyurl.com/mxcxyxv
*


Ken

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