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Dangerous_Public_164 t1_j7vsy21 wrote

Reply to comment by Prota_Gonist in Providence shootings dropped by nearly half in 2022 by PM_ME_ASS_SALAD

crime has been on the decline worldwide for our entire lives, there is nothing surprising there. the trajectory of pretty much everywhere in america decade over decade is for places to get safer and safer. that doesn't make them safe though and the notion of safety is of course all relative, which is why I say, and you guys hate it, that providence is not a desirable place to live.

what IS surprising is you can have over double the previous year's (2019's) rate of homicides in 2020 and 2021 and folks on this forum will still get excited over reporting that in 2022 it's now back down to only slightly more homicides than in 2019.

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kbd77 t1_j7vu2it wrote

2022's homicide total (9) was smaller than any of the previous 5 years. The next-smallest was 11 in 2018. Try again.

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Prota_Gonist t1_j7w5y9d wrote

This is why panel data is important. You're looking at too short a time scale. This is a form of sampling bias, not to mention (and I do apologize for stating this so bluntly) just a poor research practice.

Furthermore, it seems that you're indulging this bias in order to falsely deduce something about this forum's users- namely, that we're all Providence Apologists who actively overlook stats and figures in order to push a false narrative about the city's safety.

That sentiment is, simply put, not reality. The people on this forum by definition identify with the city of Providence and have a vested interest in open collaborative discussion about it. No one is looking to grasp at straws or downplay real issues. That's why so many posts here involve collected data or primary news sources. If anything, this is one of the better places to find providence residents willing to take a good hard look at the issues faced by the city... and, when we have occasion, give it some hard-earned credit.

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Dangerous_Public_164 t1_j7w6jf6 wrote

>The people on this forum by definition identify with the city of Providence and have a vested interest in open collaborative discussion about it.

I've made this very point before myself and had folks on this very subreddit disagree with me in making it.

Am I the one looking at too short of a time scale though, or are you? I'm just being critical that the year-over-year numbers are the headline and folks are glomming onto them like they're meaningful in that relative vacuum. If someone wanted to post and say, 2022 homicides in providence are down X percent over the 10 year average, I'd have nothing to say. That would be a reasonable way to present this data.

My point isn't about the numbers or even the safety of PVD in general versus the subreddit's perception, it's about the gullibility of the readers that the headline could exist in the first place.

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kbd77 t1_j7w7cdu wrote

If your point is that we're dealing with such a small sample size here (24 vs. 9) that the percent decrease YoY is a worthless data point, I completely agree. But that argument also reinforces that Providence is an incredibly safe place where very few homicides occur any given year, since we're dealing with such a small set of data.

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Dangerous_Public_164 t1_j7w8a4q wrote

My point is more that the statement in the headline is designed to oversell the relative "increase in safety" for PVD residents over time, and that based on the comments here it seems to probably successfully oversell that.

American cities are not particularly safe compared with similarly sized urban areas throughout the rest of the civilized world so to hear people talk about how safe PVD is is just a little laughable. You're safer than in NYC, I get it. But let's be real here and stop pretending that American crime is in a good place, simply because it is perpetually on the decline.

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Prota_Gonist t1_j7wag0z wrote

The motto that many (including myself) have adopted is "Harm Reduction Is Valuable Even When Harm Elimination Is Preferable". I agree that the media is overstating the drop, but this is largely because other media is overstating the problem. It's a reactionary media circlejerk, and it's been that way at least as long as I've been a Providence resident. This is why it's always better to go right to the data and draw your own conclusions, especially in a small and hyperpoliticized city like this one.

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kbd77 t1_j7wgury wrote

I guess I just don't get how you're coming to that conclusion after looking at the data that disproves it. You're moving the goalposts – saying "American cities are unsafe compared to the rest of the civilized world even though they're getting safer every year" isn't the point at hand. The point is that Providence, specifically, is safer than it's ever been. Violent crime has dropped precipitously for decades. Should we not be happy about that?

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Dinosquid t1_j7wzx4b wrote

It’s safe compared to other major cities, but could be safer, but it’s not as safe as people want you to think it is, but it’s getting better, and it’s not that bad.

You actually don’t seem to have a point at all.

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