Living in the "Big City"

I'm not accustomed to living in a larger city. Saint Louis is a beautiful city full of (in my experience) very friendly people. But this semester the news and crime statistics are somewhat frightening.

Last Friday three people were robbed at gunpoint near the Metro station by the Saint Louis University campus. According to the SLU Crime Log for 2006 these sorts of crimes occur every few days. SLU's crime statistics report indicates that crime is on the rise in the area around campus for the last few years. In the past, car thefts have also occurred right here at the seminary.

For a much worse view of this area, just turn on the news. There is a woman that killed her pregnant friend and several children last month. Also last month, just 40 miles from the seminary, another woman slashed the throat of another mother and stole her baby.

I set out to see how Saint Louis ranked relative to other U.S. cities in terms of crime statistics. I searched Google, looking for a seemingly authoritative source for such data. I don't know which source is good, but it doesn't matter. They all agree that Saint Louis, in every study that showed up in my search, has been in the top four or five most dangerous cities during the last five years. In 2002, ABC News ran a story explaining how this city topped the list. I think it's around forth or fifth these days.

UPDATE: In October, 2006, I spotted an AP news story reprinted in the Bismarck Tribune, that explained that Saint Louis has again topped the list of the most dangerous cities in the United States, beating out Camden, NJ, Detriot, MI, Flint, MI, and Compton, CA. Read the full article here.

This kind of frequent and often violent crime is simply unfathomable to me. What kind of a city am I living in? The place seems so peaceful, the people so friendly. There is apparently a darker side to this city I have (thank God) not yet seen. It's enough to make a man homesick for good ole' North Dakota. Not that violent crime doesn't happen back home. It's just not as frequent.

Don't worry mom, I'll be careful.