Tag Archives: crime

Is crime an issue in the election?

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Underwood typewriter
My Underwood typewriter given to me by PR, my former PR boss in the 80s and 90s.

There’s an editor of a newspaper called The Deseret who follows my blog. She’s called me a few times to interview me. Her name is Jennifer Graham. She is the Ideas and Culture editor of the Deseret News.

It’s been a few years since I’ve heard from her, but she emailed me this week to ask if she could link to my blog for an article she’s working on about crime.

Here’s an excerpt from her article:

Regardless of what the numbers say, many Americans don’t feel safe, and fear — not statistics — is what they’ll take with them into the voting booth. According to Gallup, “More than three-quarters of Americans, 77%, believe there is more crime in the U.S. than a year ago, and a majority, 55%, say the same about crime in their local area.”

Significantly, the number of Americans reporting that someone in their household has been a victim of crime edged up last year. Again, per Gallup, “Overall, a combined 28% say they or someone in their household has been victimized in the past year by one of seven different crimes asked about in the survey, including vandalism, car theft, burglary, robbery, armed robbery, sexual assault and battery. The composite figure is up from 23% when the question was last asked in 2021 and from 20% — the low point in the trend — in 2020.”

Elizabeth Wickham, a blogger in Arizona, recently wrote that she knows two people who were mugged within two weeks. “If I know two people mugged in a short amount of time, this must be happening frequently,” she wrote.

https://www.deseret.com/opinion/2024/03/06/new-york-city-national-guard-subways-democrats-crime/

Graham said she thinks that it doesn’t matter what the actual statistics are, if Americans don’t feel safe, this is a problem for whatever party is in power. 

Here’s a link to an article that she wrote about parents hiring parenting coaches in 2018:

Why are parents hiring coaches — for themselves?

What are your thoughts about crime where you live?

Has it gotten worse, better or stayed the same?

Speaking of crime…

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The entrance to our old home. Our homeless man, who believed he bought our house, slept on the steps.

The back yard, which had our front door, once you walked through the gate above.

Sometimes I miss my old home. We lived there for 28 years. I had my babies there and raised them until they went off to college. I never thought I’d leave. But then COVID hit and my husband worked remotely from the Master bedroom. I worked remotely from our son’s bedroom.

Prices were going crazy high because people were fleeing the big cities of San Francisco and Los Angeles. Our town offered more space and much lower prices compared to the city life. My husband believed it was time to make our move to Arizona.

When I feel like I miss the old homestead, I read my emails. Every morning I get a “Personalized Spot Crime” report for my old neighborhood.

It’s gotten so much worse since we moved three years ago in December.

Here are a couple examples from my inbox:

In the 28 years we lived there, we had very little crime. My bicycle was stolen from the carport, which didn’t lock at the time. We had a homeless man who slept on the steps of the archway.

Oh, we had someone break into the home from the hospital mental ward a few blocks away wearing his “robe” with a bare behind. My daughter was the one who ran into him in the kitchen. She was in third grade and named him Hobo Joe. My husband threw him out of the house and called the police. They caught him trying to enter the house across the street.

But through 28 years, those were off events. Nothing like the crime I see reported on a daily basis now.

The crime I see in my new neighborhood amount to javelinas destroying golf courses.

Once, after flying home from Seattle visiting family, I had to take a Lyft home. My husband had COVID. Anyway, the Lyft driver told me he was once a deputy sheriff in my neck of the woods. He said the number one crime was speeding. I sure hope it stays that way! It makes me appreciate my new home and where I live.

I had crime on my mind after a run in with the Mexican police on our recent getaway. If you missed it, I wrote about it HERE.

Is there crime in your neighborhood? Do you feel it’s gotten worse or better through the years?

I had to turn it off

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sunrise view in Arizona
Sunrise view from my bedroom. It’s going to be a hot day! Again.

This morning I had the news on in the background and I had to turn it off. Between the shark and alligator attacks I finally lost it when a man got hit by a car and people robbed him while he was lying in the road.

I too was hit as a pedestrian. I was lying on the road inches aways from car tires rushing by my bleeding head. At least I wasn’t robbed!

The reporter kept mentioning that it was a hot summer and therefore would be a crime-filled summer. Does hot equal violence and crime?

I decided to look it up. Here’s an excerpt from the first article I found:

Tracking ambient temperature and crime rates, a Finland study used nearly two decades of data to identify a possible connection between them. Researchers found that temperature changes were responsible for 10 percent of fluctuations in the nation’s crime rates — a 1.7 percent increase in criminal activity for each degree centigrade rise in the temperature. More specifically, the study found that increased serotonin levels resulting from high temperature likely contributed to increased impulsivity and a higher risk of crimes.

https://online.vwu.edu/news/environmental-studies/weather-and-crime/

The reasons why hot weather equals an increase in crime included more opportunity. In freezing winter climates, there aren’t as many opportunities for crime. The other reason was that hot weather increases aggression.

I turned off the TV after I started to feel anxious. I don’t need all this sensationalist selling of soap in my life. I’ve got a busy week and want to have a positive outlook.

What are your thoughts about hot weather and crime? Do you think they are related? Does a heat wave make a crime wave? Do people get “hot under the collar?”