[Handro]

Originally Posted by OrdoSeclorum

*snort* New Orleans, of course, but St. Louis, Kansas City, Indianapolis and Minneapolis all have a higher violent crime rate than Chicago. And we are tied with Houston and just above Atlanta. Chicago's crime rate isn't great, but it's typical for a big American city. Anyone who believes otherwise has been consuming media that's meant to scare, not to inform.

There are lots of reasons to lie about the crime rate in Chicago. It's a big, successful city in a blue state in the Midwest. If you point to Chicago, it seems close enough to swing voters in Wisconsin and Iowa that you want to trick into buying gold or a reverse mortgage that it works as shorthand. Why not use D.C.? Too much media based in D.C.. They'd say "I'm there all the time. D.C. doesn't really seem that bad. This crime rate thing isn't really a story." Why not pick Houston, Dallas, Miami or Atlanta to scaremonger about crime? Those cities aren't in solidly blue states, like Chicago, so saying that they are "dangerous and failing" doesn't wrap up the narrative as tidily as Chicago does.

This has been going on for years, but when Obama came out of here... whoo boy. It was game on.

Yes it does get annoying arguing against Chicago's rep as a crime capital. Plenty of other big, "safe" cities that people visit and move to each year have higher violent crime rates than Chicago (Philly, Washington, Houston) as you mentioned. I don't know how the city would even begin to point this out though.