Quote:
Originally Posted by trueviking
Of course but the reputation is that winnipeg's downtown crime rates are much higher than in other cities. Air canada crews didn't move out of downtown Calgary and Edmonton out of a false perception of crime.
Turns out the reality is that downtown crime is higher in both those cities. Significantly in calgary's case. Few would believe that.
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They might not believe it, but only because they're confused about what they're scared off by. It's not the crime rate but the sense of danger that you have in a place where there doesn't seem to be any way of behaving that is guaranteed, in all but exceptional circumstances, to keep you safe (other than staying away, which is what people do). There is a good deal of crime in the high-density, high-activity and rather wealthy area of downtown Toronto that I live in, because there are bars and nightclubs around. But I can avoid all that (except maybe the occasional gunshot) by staying away from certain places and being part of the crowds of nice, normal people who are around all the time. When I lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts it was the same: along our main street (Massachusetts Avenue) there were some pretty strange looking characters and not infrequently fights going on among them. But peaceful people could avoid this easily because there were so many of us around and because the drunks stayed in certain areas (the sidewalks were very wide and the drunks occupied one side of them, typically, in which some well-meaning previous council had installed trees and benches that had become home to a lot of these guys). It also impressed me that in Cambridge in the evenings, rarely did it seem that 5 minutes went by without a police car driving past, looking out for any brewing trouble (which, if spotted, was dealt with right away). It was very reassuring.
The point is that, whatever the statistical crime rate might have been, there was no overall sense of disorder, only of the sort of contained disorder that makes New York or Cambridge or Toronto "vibrant" (to use a cliche). In contrast, it's the sense that, however modest (but certainly not low) the crime rate might be in downtown Winnipeg, there is no effective way to avoid it, no conventions about what exactly the down-and-outers can do or where they can do it, no sense that ultimately the good people are in control of the situation (perhaps now there is just the hint of the beginnings of this, but there's a long way to go). It's that constant sense of having to be on one's guard, of not quite being able to relax, that wears you down and makes you ask yourself why you'd even bother going there.
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