Is crime a problem in your neighborhood?

No. The town I live in, north of Boston, has very little crime.

That said, two cities over is some of the worst crime around. My wife worked there years ago, as a social worker. Her main job was rescuing babies from crack housed.

And, of course, our nearby major city, Boston, has plenty of crime – as most large cities do.

Crime is low where I live, but not non-existent. Overall, I feel safe, but I never feel completely safe anywhere. I always lock my doors, I don’t sit in my car in a parking lot, I worry a little when I perform during the Chanukah event in the town squares where I live, all general things I do and think about everywhere regarding safety.

Where I live there are unlocked shacks at every rec center with tennis rackets to borrow, or softball bats, balls, pickle ball paddles, all there for the taking and on the honor system, and as far as I can tell they rarely get stolen. There is some construction theft from homes not sold yet. That happens everywhere I have ever bought new homes. They steal hot water heaters, shower heads, all sorts of stuff.

The most unsafe I felt was when I lived near Memphis, TN.

I feel safe enough to walk down the sidewalk in the daytime, but we do keep our doors and windows locked all the time (just because). Whenever we drive anywhere we always have the car doors locked too.

Not as much as others, anyway. Lenient gun laws here equal safer neighborhoods.

My neighborhood feels very safe but there is crime in the nearby small city.

My neighborhood is very safe and I feel very safe here at any hour of the day or night. It’s horse and lake country. The worst problem may be speeding, on the main road.

@RayaHope Car doors lock automatically now, once you hit about 10 mph or after a few seconds of driving.

Generally I feel safe, 5 years ago there was a rash of car break-ins, between 11 PM and 5 AM. Thieves stole five laptops, over $4000 in cash, several credit cards and 3 guns including a semi-automatic all from UNLOCKED cars (also lots of legal and illegal drugs) . . . .

STOOOOOPID people, one person’s comment was but it was in my driveway.

Always lock your car doors. If your key fob automatically unlocks the passenger side when you unlock the driver side, change it if you can to only unlock the driver’s side. The daughter of a woman who worked for me was raped by a guy who jumped into her car when she stopped to turn onto the main street from a store parking lot.

The friend of a girl who worked for me was raped by a guy who climbed up to her second floor apartment, her sliding glass door was open while she was sleeping.

These two things happened in Boca Raton, FL and Delray Beach, FL, respectively, both very nice middle class areas that are perceived as very safe.

My husband’s car was stolen in Boca Raton from the JCC parking lot, his sister’s car was stolen from in front of her house. When I worked at Bloomingdale’s a customer bought $1,200 of clothing from me, put it in the trunk of his car and went to lunch. Came back and it had been broken into and stolen.

Over the last 3 months, we have had mailbox thefts. This began when the government sent out the preloaded credit cards.
It has suddenly tapered off. The bad guys either moved, got arrested, or decided it wasn’t worth it.

Maybe it’s a regional thing, but I’ve never, not once, left my house or car unlocked.

There is some crime here but the area is generally very quiet and feels safe. I lock my door at night when I remember.

It’s a bit on-again-off-again. It was very safe for a long time. Then some adult children moved back in with their parents (adult children that had drug problems) and suddenly there are a rash of thefts and/or vandalism. The adult children move on and it gets safe again.

No. We live on a one mile long, dead-end road with about 20 homes. Everyone knows everyone. Do you know where our house key is? Neither do we. We do have to worry about vandalism by raccoons, oppossum, and deer.

According to FBI annual statistics, for several years this community had the lowest crime rate in the US for communities above 50,000 people.

This place is great – except for the snow….

It’s safe where I live for now but, what used to be a nice part of town has been more or less invaded by homeless. The city kicked them out of their large camps and they moved out to the suburbs and use the woods around greenways and parks as camp now. I also think COVID forced them out of the city as well when activity there came to a screeching halt. The camps in the city were well controlled by authorities but now it’s chaos. We used to really enjoy being so close to trails and stuff. I have been hinting to my wife that we need to consider leaving while we can still sell our house before things get worse. Hopefully they won’t though. It’s not just mental health, drug addiction or legal troubles with this now. There are a lot of working poor and displaced people from the tight, expensive housing market and shitty economy.

There are very few (if any) homeless in this area. The weather is so inhospitable it’s not survivable in the winter. In another Q, I recently checked our area’s ’“walking score.” unsurprisingly, it came out to Zero. The only people you see walking are those folks interested in exercising. Also public transportation is virtually non-existent so the only way to get here is by car, and we wave to each other when we pass.
Strangers really stand out.

Somewhat. Property crime is the most common, or at least tied with domestic violence and attempt to distribute. Every now and again there is a rash of car and house breakins, and dogs go missing a fair lot. I think you have to have some balls on you to break into a house in rural America, because you have no idea what the owner is packing or what they’re tweaking on at the moment. Break ins are mostly limited to obviously unoccupied houses.

Probably the biggest problem crime in the area is DWI. People die from that shit all the time. I personally have known more people killed by drunk drivers than victims of any other crime.

@Smashley I wouldn’t have thought to include DWI, because there is no intention to harm, but it probably should be counted. Tragic.

Safe as a rule yes. But this is Texas and people can carry openly now and everyone has guns. Breaking in to a house is suicidal.

It’s all relative. It varies so much depending on where you live and where in the town you live.
Where my house in New Hampshire is has a lot of seasonal beach traffic. I always lock house and car.
My house in western Mass in on a mountain ridge on dead end dirt road with only one house above me. I leave my keys in the car. Yet the house does get locked.
I still pay close attention to activity around me no matter where I am.

@Forever_Free A home in the mountains AND the beach! I’m moving in! :D

@RayaHope Plenty of room in each. The Airbnb’s can find another place.

I don’t lock my house when I’m out. I lock it when I’m home for the night. I lock the car just because if there’s a robbery, I’ll sound really stupid if I say I didn’t lock the car. There are car robberies the next town over, sometimes, where they go through unlocked cars at night, and so everone in my immediate area is cautioned to lock the cars.

@jca2 I’m with you. I rarely lock my house during the day if I’m going out for a few hours but do at night. Ditto with car, it’s easy enough to lock it.

I lock my screen door (storm door) when I have my front door open.

If you don’t lock your door when you’re out then you could come home to someone hiding in your closet.

I still can’t believe so many people leave their cars unlocked at a gas station. Even if they have kids inside the car and so many times they get stolen right there.

@JLeslie My clothes don’t even fit in my closet. There’s definitely no room for a person in there.

Lol.

I have vary little crime here. Sweet town but I also think people don’t want to rob people with guns.

Not a lot of violent crime.
But a lot of property theft.

Haven’t actually checked the stats. Just my perception.

There seems to be package theft and catalytic converter theft in my neighborhood every week.

@RocketGuy Same.

A raccoon cleaned out one of my bird feeders, again. He left lots of tiny hand prints in the snow.

Not until I moved in! haha, kidding please don’t kill me! Nope not really, it’s pretty safe here. At least my home hasn’t been broken into yet like when I first moved into another place years ago. First day after signing papers, kids kicked in the back door and ran off with some ding-dongs and video games. Freaking cretins!