"Americans are being conditioned to think of crime as an urban issue. Ask why."

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Chris Geidner
‪@chrisgeidner.bsky.social‬

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This … is not new. And the mainstream media in those cities has often been a key part of that “conditioning.”

‪Jarrett Walker‬
‪@humantransit.bsky.social‬
· 8h
Americans are being conditioned to think of crime as an urban issue. Ask why.

Alabama's murder rate is far higher than New York City's.

Urban crime is not worse than rural crime. It's just more visible. In cities everything is more visible.

So be careful what you blame city leaders for.
August 13, 2025 at 11:50 PM

This … is not new. And the mainstream media in those cities has often been a key part of that “conditioning.”

— Chris Geidner (@chrisgeidner.bsky.social) 2025-08-14T03:50:56.518Z

Jarrett Walker
‪@humantransit.bsky.social‬

Follow
Americans are being conditioned to think of crime as an urban issue. Ask why.

Alabama's murder rate is far higher than New York City's.

Urban crime is not worse than rural crime. It's just more visible. In cities everything is more visible.

So be careful what you blame city leaders for.
August 13, 2025 at 9:03 PM[/excerpt

Americans are being conditioned to think of crime as an urban issue. Ask why.

Alabama's murder rate is far higher than New York City's.

Urban crime is not worse than rural crime. It's just more visible. In cities everything is more visible.

So be careful what you blame city leaders for.

— Jarrett Walker (@humantransit.bsky.social) 2025-08-14T01:03:50.126Z

[Skittles]

1. it's not just the crime rate

"small town values", for example, seem to imply that acts of kindness NEVER occur in the city - well, I have lived in metroplexes and I see many acts of kindness

[Walleye]

13. Me too, I lived in NYC for years and people are very helpful and friendly.

Everything these assholes do is based on belief of some crackpot, conspiracy theory or prejudice against big cities. They’ve never lived in a big city, so they think all kinds of terrible things.

[Skittles]

29. you nail it

they've never LIVED in a big city so they don't know - it's like those Americans who have never ventured outside the country, they don't have that different perspective

[JustAnotherGen]

21. The Culture

This is the 'Culture' of the magapub. Remember that 'try that in a small town' b.s. a few years ago?

[Cosmocat]

3. And the small town values is mostly BS

There certainly are some very nice small towns, but most of them are either straight up not nice or have an image of it, but are grimy and uncaring underneath it.

Mostly people in small towns shit talk one another and just worry about themselves while those w mental health, substance abuse issues or whatever other tendencies they have live in squalor.

[biophile]

11. That has been my lived experience as well

Grew up in a supposedly Christian community of small farmers and poor rural folk. They were pretty helpful - to their own. But God forbid you weren’t in their church or worse, “unchurched”. Their Christianity didn’t extend as far as Christ requested.
I moved to a city and found people there much more accepting. More diversity means more tolerance of differences. I love the countryside but not necessarily country folk.

[Aristus]

17. I grew up in the South, which is often characterized as more polite than other parts of the country.

Sometimes, that courtesy is genuine and unfeigned. A lot of the time, though, the syrupy smiles and fawning manners are just a mask for all kinds of unkind thoughts and motives. I would rather have someone be genuinely rude to me that insincerely polite.

[hatrack]

27. A friend works in a major court system - I'll say it covers a lot of rural territory and leave it at that.

What are the kinds of crimes that, almost without variation, cross their desk and in most cases come from Virtuous Small Towns Filled With God-Fearing Bible-Believing White Rural Christians Who Care About Their Neighbors?

1. Child pornography and other sex crimes (mostly incest and child rape)
2. Meth
3. Convicted felons with guns

Thousands of cases, every year, flooding in from the Virtuous Small Towns.

[Skittles]

30. exactly

I have lived city and rural and what I notice about rural is that "we all know each other" shit is often we gossip about each other and eat our own.

[Heidi]

4. "Urban" is often a code word for Black people, people of color or low-income people.

[Kid Berwyn]

14. "Illegal Voters"

GOPMAGANAZIs need to demonize "The Other" in order to continue their low existence.

Like in war, in politics there are no coincidences. The racism is intentional.

[Heidi]

15. I've long believed Trump's appeal to his MAGA followers

is that he validates their worst instincts.

[JustAnotherGen]

22. Boom!

[Callie1979]

5. The biggest difference is the category; more RANDOM crimes in big cities.

Murder rates are very subjective. Are there a lot of carjackings (per 100k) in smaller towns? Muggings?
Take my county; this year, the county has had 8 murders which works out to a terrible murder rate for the city involved. But ALL those murders have been domestics; 2 of them were multiple murders. So our murder rate for '25 will be HORRIBLE.
The nearest large city with a downtown that we frequent also has a bad murder rate. But again most are familial/acquaintance murders & most of the rest are late at night. But people will say "Oh we dont go downtown, its DANGEROUS!!" No, it really isnt. Unless you're out 2 hours after everything is CLOSED
Then you have to consider the crime stats of types of crimes & the offenders. You might not like them but they are what they are.

[Johnny2X2X]

12. Random murders are extremely rare

In the city, the shootings are almost always people beefing with someone they know for one reason or another. Or they are domestic. And gang related drive bys are not random.

But the thing is, the crime rate in this country is incredibly low right now, perhaps the lowest it's been since the 1950s. Coverage of crime is different, and of course social media is a big driver of paranoia about crime.

[TnDem]

6. Apples and Oranges, of course

Comparing the crime rate in the entire state of Alabama and NYC is a poor comparison and disingenuous.

If you remove Birmingham and Montgomery, Alabama's rate would be far lower. That's because that is comparing city crime versus an entire state.

Most Alabama, (and Memphis and Chattanooga), murders are due to inner city and/or gang murders.

[Kaleva]

7. 59% of people in Alabama live in urban areas

What is the crime rate of the urban areas of the state compared to the crime rate in the rural areas?

[surfered]

8. Their bias is showing. Large city's tend to be more liberal.

Rural area tend to be more conservative.

[modrepub]

9. I'd Counter With This Strawman

I work in a major MidAtlantic city. If I’m going to be involved in a major medical emergency I’d rather it happen in a big city than someplace out in the boonies. I’ll take emergency care from professionally trained and experienced medical personnel that’s literally a few minutes away (city cops are also trained in basic first aid) over the response you’d get in rural areas.

Out in the boonies it would take probably 15 minutes for help to arrive. While appreciated, most rural emergency personnel are volunteers and probably have less experience than their urban counterparts. Tack on the half hour to transfer you to the nearest hospital and chances are you’d pass if you were in any type of acute medical emergency.

[allegorical oracle]

10. The federal crime reports I've seen appear to calculate the rates on the basis of

100,000 population. Then it's broken down into types of crimes. My rural county has a population of approx. 18,000 people. So one murder appears to seriously increase the crime rate. That would be misleading, though, as most years there are no murders. Stranger-on-stranger murder is virtually non-existent.

Our crimes fall more in the categories of drug abuse, drunk driving, theft, fraud, and sexual predation of minors.

[usonian]

16. Three reasons: racism, racism and racism.

Welfare mothers
War on drugs

All smokescreens.

[Heidi]

18. EXACTLY!

[hunter]

19. Sigh. We'll probably never know why Big Balls was beaten up.

Most of us who thrive in urban environments can't help but think it was something sordid.

And even if it was truly random violence, we still feel safer in urban environments than we do in small town U.S.A., most especially those of us who have escaped stifling small town communities that might have killed us, if not physically then spiritually.

[JustAnotherGen]

23. I'm outing myself

I don't believe it happened at all, and if it did - we aren't getting the true story.

[Heidi]

25. This for the win. Add me to the "prove it" column.

[Heidi]

26. We don't know for a fact that he even *was* beaten up.

Nor do we know for a fact that Trump’s big orange ear was wounded in an “assassination attempt.” I’m far from but this all seems very convenient.

On the other hand, FAFO, right?

[hatrack]

28. He was at Dupont Circle at 4:00 AM . . .

I think we can all guess why he was.

[Torchlight]

20. As well, the disparity of cost between white collar crime is extensive

White collar crime's financial consequences are far more extensive, impacting the overall economy on a much larger scale. But, it doesn't have the flash, pizzazz or convenience of blaming a culprit needed by any immediate narrative.

[Heidi]

24. Not a target! Nothing to see here, right?

Same old shit: war against the weakest. We’ve seen this film before.