Friday, February 7, 2014

Friday Night Happy Hour Conversation: The 25 Most Dangerous Cities On Earth

Don't read the linked article yet.  Keep reading here a bit longer.

Order a drink first and think about this for a few minutes.  You can probably rattle off the names of a few of the places if you've been reading the news for the past decade or longer.  That's the easy part.

Now ask yourself:  Should any American cities be on the list of the 25 Most Dangerous Cities on Earth?  Yes or no.  If your answer is yes, which cities?

If you think one or more cities in America deserve to be on the list, name those cities in the comments section.  If not, then list that answer.

Done with your comment?  Now go back up top and click on the link.

Of if this is not grabbing your attention, tell us about your week.  The bar is open.

33 comments:

Shouting Thomas said...

Detroit
St. Louis
Chicago
New Orleans

I'm babysitting my granddaughter while my daughter attends a wake for a high school classmate who was murdered a couple of days ago.

Black guy in the DEP murdered a white guy because he got a promotion the black guy wanted.

White guy leaves behind an infant and a toddler who will never know their father.

I'm gonna have a drink.

Shouting Thomas said...

3 out of 4 ain't bad!

Revenant said...

Can't answer the question without knowing what "city" means.

If it means something like "city with over 5 million people" then almost certainly. If it means "city of any size" then hell no -- not even close.

I'll guess: Memphis, Washington, and New Orleans, based on the assumption that they're defining "city" in a way that lets them put US cities on the list.

Revenant said...

I wasn't cynical enough. The article gives no data to back up its rankings and appears to have ordered them randomly.

Evi L. Bloggerlady said...

I guessed St. Louis and Detroit. I would have added Newark but I know it has been getting better.

New Orleans does have its crime, but higher than Port Morsbey? No.

The thing with crime in the US is it is reported much higher than third world cities. Same for London. So I would probably drop all those cities out of this list.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

Detroit
St Louis
Chicago
Oakland

Maybe Miami.

Revenant said...

New Orleans does have its crime, but higher than Port Morsbey? No.

Yeah, New Orleans clocks in at #11 for supposedly having a high murder rate. There are at least twenty cities with worse murder rates, and that's if you *don't* count sectarian violence, civil war, or government-sanctioned killings as murders.

Given that they looked at cities as small as a few hundred thousand people, no American city has any business on the list. No European city either, really -- you could fill a top-25 lists just in Africa or Central/South America, easily.

john said...

Its just another bullshit list created by someone who makes bullshit lists to get traffic to his bullshit list website.

Which we are obliging him with, which will allow his bullshit site to be ranked higher on some other site's bullshit list.

It's a winning business plan.

ricpic said...

Detroit
Bal'more
Philly
Camden, NJ
Oakland

Trooper York said...

I don't know if Boston had a lot of crime but it is by far the suckiest. Just sayn'

President-Mom-Jeans said...

London is enormous, and depending on where they draw the city limits could potentially belong on this list. There are parts of the suburbs of London that have incredibly high crime rates, and I would not feel safe in.

I think this list is interesting for discussion, but with such little information given about how it was compiled (population to be considered a city, what areas are considered to be part of the city, etc) I wouldn't give these rankings too much credence.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Boston is the best sports city in the nation.

rcocean said...

Ever been to Fresno? That town will kill you with boredom quicker than any mugger.

rcocean said...

Oakland is safe, if you keep out of certain places at certain times.

rcocean said...

Port-au-Prince is more dangerous than 1th.

Icepick said...

I went straight to the article. My thinking was that of COURSE several US cities were on the list, but I didn't know which ones would be on the list NOW, other than Detroit. There was a time not that long ago when Baltimore was the worst city in the USA. But the ones on the list make sense. I forgot about the one in the Mid-West.

I'm surprised that Bangui, Central African Republic wasn't on the list. It's been quite nasty there lately, as I understand it.

But I had to laugh about Grozny, Chechnya. Described as "The Most Destroyed City on Earth" in 2003, LOL. I'd have thought the flamboyant Kadyrov who runs the place now would have monopolized (and lessened) the violence by now.

edutcher said...

The answer is, "Yes, any city run by Democrats".

Synova said...

I will say that I thought "Juarez".

But I still know people who say things like "Yeah, we're going to Juarez this weekend..."

ndspinelli said...

Synova, Juarez was, not long ago, a nice city to visit. I had a cousin who was @ the Army Base in El Paso back in the 60's/70's. He loved going to Juarez. The Army now forbids soldiers going there. Used to be you would maybe get the clap. Now, you get clipped.

MamaM said...

For Mid-west guesses, I'll go with Memphis, St Louis, and Detroit.

******two out of three! Though I would have put Memphis before St. Louis.

deborah said...

No, I don't think any of our cities should be in the top 25. With places like Baghdad, Damascus, Istanbul, all the skeezy cities in eastern Europe, Bogota, the hot spots in the Africa, etc.

deborah said...

I don't buy this crap list.

AllenS said...

If you're a Stradivarius violin, then the most dangerous city would be Milwaukee.

MILWAUKEE — Prosecutors say it was the suspect's "dream theft": to simply snatch an expensive Stradivarius violin from an unsuspecting musician.

Never mind that Salah Salahadyn, 41, had already tried and failed at art theft. The Milwaukee man pleaded guilty in 2000 to trying to resell a $25,000 statue to the art gallery owner from whom it had been stolen in 1995, and his ex-girlfriend told investigators that while he hadn't stolen it himself he did plot the theft.


He had an accomplice:

Salahadyn and a second man, Universal Knowledge Allah, 36, appeared in Milwaukee County court Friday on charges of being a party to robbery. Allah is also charged with possessing marijuana.

You can't make this stuff up.

Aridog said...

Ah, nice to see my town, Detroit, made the list...we can't have our reputation diluted ya' know. We were called "Murder City" back in the late 60's and it seems our danger mystique continues.

Now I've lived, served, or worked in a few places around the world, and I'll go with what Evi says (and Deborah, too)...some places can be tough (like rcocean said) but we got nuttin' compared to real shit holes. The core of Detroit is precisely where my daughter lives ... at Grand River & Woodward Ave if you know the town. Detroit is mostly trouble for visitors (tourists and suburbanites) who wander about too much.

Finally...in all my travels, what edutcher said seems true...anyplace with a Democratic city government (or Socialist/Communist) in the past 50 years is generally a lawless shithole.

To bad New York is about to re-learn that it seems, unless de Blasio goes all "Putin," then it will just be sucky.

Frankly, though I've made too many trips to NYC than I can count over the years, for business and pleasure, I can't pretend I "know the city" (I am naive, really, vis a vis NYC)...I've always just "idealized" it (best food and theater on earth!), especially its apparent ability to have ethnic diversity as a natural part of the fabric.

Aridog said...

MY remark ..."best food and theater on earth"... should have been:

"...Best Food, Art, and Theater on earth, with shopping included for those who 'shop' hard...like my daughter..."

AllenS said...

Aridog, my parents lived at 19303 Danbury St, Detroit when I was born. If you Google the address, Google will give you a map and a picture of the house.

Click on the picture of the house, then with your mouse you can actually "drive" around Detroit. You can even turn corners on any street. Swing the camera to the left, right, and if you want to the rear, and basically "drive" back to where you came from. You don't have to go very far, and there are hardly any houses left. Then some nicer areas, and then nothing. It looks in some places that you are in the country.

It's very depressing. Other addresses where they lived, there is no house left.

AllenS said...

Go to the left and turn the corner on Penrose. You'll see what I mean right away.

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Icepick said...

Universal Knowledge Allah

He's no Taco B. M. Monster. Hell, he's no Courvoisier Winetavius Richardson for that matter.

Icepick said...

Don't be so sure American cities wouldn't make the list. I remember back in the 1980s there were a couple of years when the murder rate in NYC was higher than the murder rate in Beirut, Lebanon, which was in the middle of a nasty spate of car bombings during their civil war.

deborah said...

Ice, I think the difference between Beirut and NYC in the Eighties was that if you were minding your own business and being reasonably mindful of staying out of hot spots you wouldn't be subject to car bombs or house raids. That is, it's not just the murder rate, but the ambient danger.

Revenant said...

Don't be so sure American cities wouldn't make the list. I remember back in the 1980s there were a couple of years when the murder rate in NYC was higher than the murder rate in Beirut

The US murder rate has dropped 54% since its peak in the 1980s.

Mitch H. said...

The list is arbitrary bullshit, but while googling something, I came across this article about the decline in Sao Paulo's violent crime rates since they ended leaded gasoline usage in that Brazilian state. They go on to note that Caracas, where leaded gasoline is still very much in use, is currently one of the most dangerous capitals in the world.