Iznogud said:
Lets have a closer look at your "empirical data", shall we?
1. People do not normally report crime here. It's perceived as a complete waste of time and a potential additional risk. Ask them.
2. Police Precincts are mandated to produce predetermined quotas of this and that. Exceded those quotas the data gets lost, misfiled or transformed in useless garble.
Little or no proactive measures are part of the police activities, follow up is hardly ever heard of, unless we're talking high profile delinquency. Talk privately to a cop.
3. Higher ups and politicos don't have solutions, so they know better than to get close to the problems.
Those with the art of making statitics speak for them will launch into incredible disertations full of smelly BS and finger pointing but it would really be a first if someone offered a decent and honest diagnose of the fundamental problems and then acted on those in order to provide real world solutions.
Most of the politicos love to tell us that guns kill people instead of people kill people. That'll show you how clear a picture they have and how well versed in social interaction and engineering they are. Mensa material, most of them.
4. So unless really, really stupid criminals start keeping public scores of their activities without cheating I wonder where will you get your "empirical data"?
Iznogud,
I am not going to rehash the same thing over and over again:
1) You have no valid, empirical basis from which to prove a negative - that people do not report crime. I don't care if you personally know 20 people that have not. The next 200 people I meet might know that people do report crime. It is a fruitless and baseless discussion to "prove a negative". You certainly have no empirical data to suggest that crimes are more underreported in BA than in any other major city in the world - say Sao Paulo or Detroit. It is just not a discussion worth having. Sorry.
2)This allegation is even more absurd. Now you pretend to know that local BA police "lose" reports and data. If you were a presiding police official, in a supervisory rank, I would find this allegation of "minor interest". For example, just because one guy runs a squad room one way, doesn't mean the next one does the same. This is an even more pathetic and useless discussion.
3) I agree with the premise...but it adds nothing to the dialog, in general or as I have presented it. Valid points...but someone's "political posture" on crime has zero to do with actual crime stats. My posture can be "I see no crime, I see no crime, I see no crime" and it still will not absolve BA, New York, or London of crime.
4) Empirical data is retrieved by a variety of organizations, on a global basis, and reported. Some places to get data are Interpol, FBI, varied university reports and, more mundane sites, which merely cull data from the aforementioned, such as NationMasters. Did you really think I was just going to say, "Duh, ummmm...I dunno." Seriously, folks...get educated. I know crime is bad in BA, no matter how many of you try to spin my position as different. I know it has been getting increasingly bad over the last 10 years and, especially, the last 5 years. However, moving from BA to Detroit to "escape crime"...bad idea. All I have ever said in this thread...and will keep saying it until the ridiculous nonsense stops, is that BA, per capita, is not even remotely close to being the most crime ridden city in the world. A "bazillion" USA cities beat it...most major Colombian cities beat it...many Mexican cities beat it...Tegucigalpa in Honduras beats it...and the "beat" goes on. You had some pithy questions for me...here is one for you, "How do you ever expect there to be a reasonable solution to the crime problem in BA, if folks won't even look at the reality of the available crime data?"
