I was walking through the airport the other day and a headline in USA Today caught my eye. It said "Violent crime up 2nd year in a row FBI: Murder, robbery up after decades fall"
Until a couple of months ago I, like many people, thought crime was declining. After seeing the headline I knew that I was wrong. That was when I decided to read the PERF (Police Executive Research Forum) Report. The report gave a bunch of statistics about different cities and their crime rate. I had forgotten all about the report until I was in the airport. And, was thinking about the crime rate increase.
The FBI report showed murders rose by nearly 2% and robbery increased by 7%. I won't list all the statistics, that would be boring but one city was surprising and is worth mentioning:
Orlando: Murder: +123% -Robbery: +27%. These are not just small they are HUGE increases. Violence has re-emerged as a main issue in many large cities like Orlando. Police credited the previous decline in violent crime to a number of factors, the most notable; the breakup of crack cocaine drug markets and a greater police presence in distraught communities. This most recent increase has been less uniform than the one in the 1990s and many cities have managed to keep violent crime at bay.
So basically what does all this mean to you? No matter what the perception of your community is, it doesn't matter how safe you think it is,don't become complacent thinking 'It won't happen to me'. You have to be vigilant, be aware of your surroundings and the potential to become a victim.
There are 2 other statistics that I thought are worth mentioning;
First, the overall rate of violent crime for 2006 was 473.5 per 100,000 people.
And second, the chance of winning the grand prize in the Mega Millions is 1 in 175,711,536. If you buy lottery tickets you better learn to protect yourself because the chances of being a victim of a violent crime are 831,995 times greater then winning the lottery.
So my advice to you is don't have to go through life paranoid, just be prepared. Know that you can protect yourself and learn the proper ways to do that. Like I said before it doesn't matter how nice of area you live or how safe you think you may be. You have to be aware of your surroundings so you don't become a statistic.
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