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Originally Posted by BCPhil
I was in no way trying to compare Surrey to anything outside it's boarders, there was a bit of a debate going on between Newton and Whalley. I'll conceed that neither are by far the most crime ridden places in the Lower Mainland, Province, Country, or world. I was just talking Newton vs Whalley. If you are just going to compare them to anything, of course you are going to find more crime somewhere else.
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Indeed but again my point was that by excluding things you can make a very easily misleading comment. Often statistics are shared like yours in a medium like the news or talk shows and most people would then concluded “WOW SEE SURREY IS INSANE! STAY AWAY” This discussion was about Newton vs Walley I’ll grant you that, but your original post makes it seem like it’s pretty horrible in Walley.
I was simply trying to bring some perspective that you do actually have to kind of look at crime as a regional issue rather that every single specific. You also later on in your response state you can’t get too specific yet you are getting specific in a lot of places.
Can’t have your cake and eat it. That was my point. Statistics alone are misleading because what I include or exclude are different from what you include or exclude. Are any right or wrong? No. But first year statistics in university will teach you day 1 that what is included and excluded by people are more typically important factors that ‘prove their point’ so all stats must be taken with a grain of salt and no sweeping general conclusions should be made on stats alone.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BCPhil
I don't know about that. Just because a school class averaged 50% on their final doesn't mean that's where most of the marks were, it doesn't mean that half the class failed and half passed.
If you are analyzing chance and odds you have to look at other boarders, like geographic location. Vancouver actually breaks down their statistics from Districts into Neighbourhoods.
Newton might have a certain break in rate per 1000 homes, but probability would dictate I'm less likely to suffer a break in at Scott Road and 80th than King George and 72nd. In Vancouver, you can look at crime by the city, but that doesn't mean the odds of being stabbed in Kerrisdale or Kits are as high as at the corner of Hastings and Columbia. Both have similar densities in the immediate area, but the vast difference in social status at the locations, which are separated by geographic location affects probable crime. If you just go by rather large random boundaries, it will make crime seem less probable in certain areas (and make crime seem more probable in others).
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You have to be a bit more consistent. So in one breath you’re saying I shouldn’t expand my look at Vancouver because you were being specific to Newton and Walley, yet here you are saying it’s perfectly valid for you to do the opposite and EXCLUDE areas of Newton to make your point? See why I’m having an issue with your original statements? You can’t have it both ways. Either you are talking about Newton which is ALL of Newton or you aren’t.
I mean if you want to get granular let’s talk about how you’re most likely to find east Indian gangsters around Scott Road and 72nd compared to say 152nd and 72nd. Now is that because it’s a bad neighborhood? Or is it just because that area is home to one of the largest East Indian populations so odds are I’m correct. But that would be like me saying well you’re going to find a lot of shopping malls around 104th and 152nd compared to 0 avenue and 176th. A rather pointless statement to make.
So while you are part valid that each overall area has specific regions with different crime specifics, your ORIGINAL statement was global. You can’t now get granular after making global statements.
[QUOTE=BCPhil;4929930]If you are going to introduce that many unknowns into the system, then where do we stop. Yes, crime might seem higher because more crime is being reported, but that implies that crime reported is a subset of total crime. Meaning that even though more crime is being reported, there is actually even more crime than that happening. Which isn't a good assumption if you are trying to make Surrey seem less violent. It implies that most people are locked into a state of where they feel helpless and reporting crime does not help, or that they are scared to. Both would suggest crime affects more people than that are actual victims, as this would be a sentiment brought into the situation, not born of being a victim.[/quote’]
It’s just fact. Unfortunately it seems like you live in a utopian world but the truth is in all aspects of life, what is reported is far less than what is actually happening. There are more speeders on the road than those caught and ticketed. There are more people not paying for parking than are caught by parking patrol. There are more helpdesk problems in an organization than are reported to the helpdesk. There are more confused people filling out their tax returns than those than call in to ask questions. It’s the way life goes. If CRA sat down and said well we get 10,000 people that phone in confused about their tax return, then they turn around and say that number is an accurate reasonable representation of how many actual people are confused, they’d be so far from reality.
Same here. While I’d like to believe more crime is reported than actually happens, just the rules of reality dictate that we know less than what goes on. It has nothing to do with meaning Surrey is LESS safe, it’s just truth. I think any reasonable human being you ask would say the same thing if you asked them the question “Do you think all crimes are reported to the Police?”
If you get a “Yes” from anyone you have my permission to smack them.
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Originally Posted by BCPhil
You would also have to introduce the probability of crime reporting. In Downtown Vancouver, they might have near 100% crime report rate due to the social standing of the victims. Crime is less acceptable to people, and it's easier to feel anonymous living in a dense urban environment than small neighborhoods in suburbia. When it's outsiders who come in to do crime, people report it; if it's people in your neighborhood, you don't because you're scared of how they'll react. This could mean that Surrey could have a much higher unreported crime rate than a city like Vancouver.
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Again I think you’re living in a utopian land that doesn’t exist. You truly believe that the crime report rate would be near 100%? I give you the challenge, in your travels over the next week, I want you to phone the police for every single crime you witness. Every speeder that flies pass you, every person that turns left on a red light, every person downtown that rides their bike on a sidewalk, every pedestrian that crosses on a red light, every car that goes through a red light, every person that makes a loud noise after the 10pm noise bylaw in the West End, every car alarm that goes longer than 5 minutes, every person walking in the bike/rollerblade lane on the Sea Wall, biker/rollerblader in the pedestrian lane on the Sea Wall, the list can go on forever.
Now I may be completely unreasonable in the above statements but I think it points out that you couldn’t even start to get close to 100% in crime reports. Now if we’re talking simply MAJOR crimes, I will grant the number will be higher on the report scale but in a downtown core of 80,000+, you won’t be anywhere near 100%. Domestics alone will drop that number down considerably as most people don’t report them. Those fall under assaults btw.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BCPhil
It is far more though. If 64 assaults aren't a lot, then what is? It's not an acceptable situation to have more than zero assaults in a society. It might not be significant on the scale of the whole society, and your odds of being involved are very low, but more than zero is an unacceptable state. By saying, oh well it's not that many, you are turing a blind eye on crime because it's statistially low enough that it probably won't affect you; you are in fact abandoning the people who are victims of crime because they are statistically irrelevant.
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Again utopia that doesn’t exist. While it’s nice when going for a Nobel Peace Prize to stand on a box declaring WE MUST HAVE 0 CRIME, it’s quite a different thing to actually believe it. The truth is chaos theory means there will always be problems. There will always be a chance of getting killed in a car accident. There will always be a chance of your boat sinking due to random circumstances out on the water. There will always be a chance a plane will crash. And there will always be a chance a crime will take place. When humans are involved, 0 is unachievable.
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Originally Posted by BCPhil
If you look at Murders in Surrey, it's actually gone down this quarter over last year, from 7 to 5. While 5 murders might not seem like a huge number compared to the Hundreds of Thousands who live in Surrey, the fact that we have it 30% closer to having none, it's a big deal. It's just as big a deal when it goes up. Sure, that's a tiny number when you express it as a % or /1000, but it's still more than zero murders. It's still people who are victims, and 1 more murder or 1 more assault victim is not negligible when talking about people.
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I don’t disagree with you that reducing murders from 7 to 5 is a good thing, but where we differ is in the fact that I don’t really care for that statistic because if next month the murder count is 8 then suddenly has the rate of murder increased by 60%!? Or do we take the average and say the rate has still statistically declined?
Do we take all 3 months and stick them into a quarter? Do we look individually? Do we look across the year? Do we compare to last year? Do we compare to the last 5 years? Do we project for next year?
See the thing is, if we did all the above they’d all be perfectly valid analysis yet with the exact same number, would come to COMPLETELY different conclusions.
That’s why I say don’t make sweeping conclusions when it comes to statistics.
From my perspective and analysis it isn’t many. I stick to that. 64 assaults isn’t many. It isn’t high, it isn’t crazy. Not with a population of 450,000 people. If that number bumped up to 200 I’d still think it low and I’ d still feel safe in Surrey. Maybe my perspective is different than yours I’ll grant you that, but it doesn’t mean my point is invalid. It just means we analyze the data differently.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BCPhil
If I had 1000 friends, and 4 of them got beat up in the last 3 months, I wouldn't be all "well, that's statistically expected", I would be concerned for their well being.
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You’re proving my point without even realizing it. What you just said in the quote above is “based on perspective, statistics can be misleading” which is what I challenged you on from the start. ;-) Again your original point I was taking issue with was how statistics proved something and I was simply stating they don’t.
And you above just said I was right.
Again I have no issue with you making the statement that Newton ISN’T the worst area statistically compared to Walley. That would be valid given the data you provided. But the original debate wasn’t with this cut in time it was with the notion that Walley was improving while Newton was not. I think your stats prove that isn’t quite so cut and dry. But that’s not what your point was originally.
Your point was “If you want your stuff taken, live in Newton, if you want your nose broken, live in Whalley” which has nothing to do with the original question.
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Originally Posted by BCPhil
I actually think that's a serious point. While I was debating earlier if Newton or Whalley was better/worse, that's all about the present. I'm pretty worried that Cloverdale will be Vancouver's example of Suburban Decline. It will stagnate and people will eventually be born into it with little chance of escape.
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I think again you’re being a bit too drastic here. Just like thinking crime should be 0 across the board, thinking Cloverdale will become some stagnate pool of east Vancouver with little chance to escape is also a bit ridiculous. I know a lot of people in Cloverdale and venture around all of Surrey and it’s not really that bad. It has growing pains like any area that has had a huge influx of development. Policing has been focused on Newton and Walley for quite a few years and suddenly you have a region bumping up in population with different communities going in and everything takes time to adjust.
While I would agree with the point that you can’t ignore it and hope it gets fixed on its own because that’s just leading to it getting worst, I thinking sky-is-falling mentality is equally destructive because that’s when NIMBYism starts to rear its head and sweeping generalized rules get put into place that don’t have any change on reality.
If you want to know what I mean, look at gun laws in Canada as a result of the massacre in Quebec and then come back to me on sweeping laws that did little to address a single event and instead cost tax payers a lot of money to reduce 0 crime simply because people thinking the sky-is-falling went crazy.
Balance, analysis, and decision. Time to think and be clear, and correctly address issues. That’s what we need.
[QUOTE=BCPhil;4929930]Whalley and Newton are both centers of new prosperity, and the growth and economic investment will continue for decades. The old Whalley and Newton were born of Suburban Decline (no one for a long time wanted to live in Surrey when you could buy redeveloped land beyond it for cheaper/sqfoot), but now with Urban development taking hold in both those locations, I expect to see a lot of change over the next 5 years and Cloverdale be the crime champion in less than 10.
Really? And Surrey hasn’t grown from 200,000 people when I was young to 450,000 now? One of the largest and fastest growing cities in Canada? So nobody wanted to live here? Again I think you’re being drastic. A lot of people wanted to live here. A lot of people do live here.
As for Cloverdale, again perspective. I still think you’ll have less assaults in Cloverdale than in Walley overall for the same point you made above. But since we can’t change the scope I can’t make that statement. If we want to open it up though then again regionally Cloverdale is nothing. There are at least 5 cities in the Lower Mainland with more per/capita crime than Surrey yet it still has the reputation of not being a nice place to live.
It’s statements like “Cloverdale be the crime champion in less than 10” that I’m trying to stop. Too general. Too leading. Too deceptive.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BCPhil
Again, depends on where you are. Your odds of being assulted in the CBD downtown are about 9 times as likely as being involved in a non fetal accident.
IN all of City of Vancouver, there were 17 murders in 2009, and 15 fatal motor vehicle accidents. Seems just as likely to have your life taken either way in some areas, and even more likely to be murdered than hit by a car in others. For Example, D3 (south east Vancouver) in Vancouver had 7 murders vs 1 fatal vehicle accident in 2009. And even in West Point Grey, there were 29 assaults vs 12 non fetal accidents all of last year.
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Exactly yet everyone goes crazy if police start enforcing traffic violations in Vancouver instead of ‘STOPPING MURDERS!’
I think I just read a thread on these forums about “Why do police give tickets to people bicycling instead of fighting REAL crime!”
That’s also the reason police forces in the region really don’t listen to 1) the media and 2) the general public when it comes to how they fight crime because really we’re all clueless, even me, and know less than actually is going on.
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