seamonsta

How does the crime rate in Toronto compare to a large English city such as London or Manchester?
According to the statistics London is far worse, but what are people's experiences? After all TO is a big city.

mickj

hello there,

What stats are we talking about here? It seems like whenever stats is mentioned, some people here start coming up with figures from 4yrs ago.

All i can say is, so far this year, 9 people have been killed execution style in Scarborough, which is just outside TO. Has that happened in London so far this year? Don't even start me on the anti-semitism that has been running riot for the past 2 weeks. Synagogues being defaced, tomb stones being smashed up, people's doors being sprayed with swastikas.

http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/...tional_Toronto

A mosque was set on fire yesterday, so i don't know where all these is leading Things are getting scary round here :scared: Am not one for old stats, but if you insist on it, here it is:

http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/031001/d031001a.htm

mickj

Areas and populations:

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionar...Toronto%20Area

wizzard

Like most cities it depends on the area. If you compare a nice quiet upscale neighbourhood in London with a less desirable area in Toronto then the stats will favour London and if you compare a nice fancy area of Toronto with a less desirable area of London then Toronto would appear more desirable.

I have found that with Toronto it seems to be fairly contained within certain areas. So there are bad areas of say Scarborough (which is fairly east of the actual downtown city) that are bad and have lots of shootings, but they are all in that area and if you don't live there or go there then you are ok. Appart from the odd fracase at nightclubs which happens everywhere you don't really hear about much in the way of violent crime in actual downtown Toronto or the majority of it's surrounding areas and suburbs.

I went to univesity in Manchester just before I moved to Canada and lived there in the innercity type area for 4 years and I have to say I feel 1000% safer walking around Toronto than Manchester. In fact I'd rather walk around Scarcorough where they have the shootings than some of the areas I used to live near in Manchester. When I lived there between say 1998 and 2003 there were plenty of shootings and so forth. Same as in Toronto ie they mostly took place in dodgy areas and were drug and gang related with the odd unlucky passerby being sprayed with bullets. I guess guns are more available in Toronto because if the proximity of the US, the actual gun laws aren't much different to the UK they are just easier to get.

Gun crime aside I read about way more crime when I lived in Manchester than I do here, whether that is due to the media portrayal I do not know. However crimes such as assult and fighting in the street, knife incidents and being robbed and that kind of violent crime appeard to me to be a lot more prevelant. I myself was mugged outside my house in Manchester when I lived there which may somewhat bias my opinion however so were a lot of my friends and pretty much everyone you met had stories of being hassled in teh street or on busses and then of course there is the prevelance of the 'yob' culture. Walking through Manchester city centre which I guess is it's "downtown" was like wading through mass groups of incredbly inebriated people who spent all their time between clubs/bars etc harrasing passersby and that kind of thing. I grew up in Blackpool and I have to say there is nothing I have yet seen in Canada to compare to Blackpool on a Friday / Saturday night for sheer neccesity of police presence and taking your life in your hands walking down the streets etc.

For example last night (Friday) I was at the Paramount cinema on Richmond street west which is inbetween King and Queen and a few blocks west of Yonge so basically right downtown and after leaving just around 10pm the streets were busy but they were busy with all kinds of people. Sure there were groups of people going to bars and clubs and stuff but there were jsut everyday kinds of people wandering around and going places and stuff. There were the old hotdog vendors on every corner and no mounted police patrolling past the bars and sat on all the corners in squad type cars and really it didn't seem much different from the day.

I am sure there are large parts of London like that and conintental cities and even a few US cities with safer downtown areas but from my experience of places in the UK like Manchester it's completely different. The centre of the city isn't purely taken over by drinking and nightclubs etc.

I just get a feeling of less general anti-social type of crime, less groups of kids stood at street corners abusing you as you walk past etc which was a permanent fixture where I lived in Manchester.

Othercrime may be higher in other areas of Canada like for example Vancouver, or parts of it, have ridiculously high rates of car theft and house break ins. but maybe that just tells you there are a hell of a lot of nice houses and cars there. hehe.

All in all there are places in the UK where crime isn't a problem and there are places where it is and the same goes for Canada. In the end crime exists everywhere. I just feel that comparing the only places I can from experience, i.e. Manchester and Toronto, I feel safer in Toronto.

Drew

lee2

I completely concur with Drew's very well written post. Toronto is not a bunch of boy scouts. It's a biggish city, with some big city problems like crime and homelessness.

Gun crime is on the increase and is a worry to city officials and the police chief. I'm not pretending Toronto's a bed of roses.

Yet statistically Toronto is still way, way safer than U.S cities. The downtown is still extremely liveable and friendly. When you break down those homocide statistics, few shootings actually occur in downtown Toronto and it's usually among certain groups (IE: Young Tamils in Scarborough) who know each other.

As Drew says, I very rarely feel in any personal danger when walking around downtown Toronto. Even the parts of Toronto that are rough, like Parkdale still don't feel as rough as most parts of London. It's much cleaner than British cities too (and there isn't that eau de pisse in phone boxes, car parks etc.)

And unlike London (or Manchester) there's way less vandalism, petty crime, breaking and entering, violence, fights etc. It's just not the norm here. And unlike many U.S cities, Toronto prides itself on having a downtown with plenty of vibrant, proud civic-minded neighbourhoods, often with an ethnic twist (like Little Italy or Little India).

In fact it's amazing to me how in such a diverse expanding city, it still retains those qualities.

Manc

evening Lee. me thinks you went to the wrong parts of Manchester mate

CalgaryAMC

I'm from Manchester. I think his account was not inaccurate. Or are there havens of peace I have overlooked all these years!

Manc

It's just a typical working town, the weather doesn't do it much favours, but if it rained in Benidorm, then it would look like Salford by the Sea.

There are plenty of really nice areas like Hale, Romiley, Mellor, I mean, even Stalybridge looks rustically nice.
Trouble is, these are offset by the shite that is Wythenshawe and Oldham.

Interested

As a young female I feel very comfortable walking around Toronto at night by myself. I've never had any problems and I'm not even scared if I see a gang of youths heading towards me. They are more likely to say a friendly hello than mug you etc!

I lived in London during my university years, 1998-2001 and constantly felt unsafe. I would not walk alone in London at night and even during the day I felt uneasy.

My perception is that Toronto is a relatively crime free city in comparision to London or Manchester. I'm sure the numbers back my thoughts up.

In a similar vein to Drew I would pay walk through Scarborough if it meant that I didn't have to walk through Moss side.

Int.

Alexandra

Just offering some of the personal experiences:
We lived in Calgary for about 15 months now. Before that, in 12 years in London we have never been victims of crime, even remotely. However, in 15 months here in a nice, quiet, expensive area:
- we have police alerts several times on child abductors in the area;
- my neighbours garage has been broken into and some stuff stolen;
- several instances of prowlers in our and neighbours backyards;
- my daughter had incidents of stuff being stolen from her school bag at school;
- my workplace has been broken into twice with some computers and equipment stolen;
- icing on the cake: yesterday somebody broken into my garage and tried to hotwire the car, some considerable damage done.

Go figure.

lee2

I actually don't know Manchester that well. I wasn't singling out Manchester. I put it in brackets because it was the original comparison asked for and I assumed Manchester is probably like most other urban places in the UK and has a fair amount of vandalism etc.

Whenever I went there it was always pissing with rain so I didn't get to explore it much beyond the Arndale Centre. I also heard things when I lived in Britain about the Hacienda being taken over by armed drug gangs and gun violence generally on the rise there, so it didn't strike me as a squeaky clean place. But I'm not really qualified to make the direct comparison.

seamonsta

I used to live in Manchester and felt extremely unsafe on many occassions. On one occassion in Salford, I actually thought my life was in jeopardy.
One of the reasons I left was after an incident in which a couple of girls took over this poor old womans home, killed her and put her body in a wheeley bin, which they then pushed into a canal. That sort of evilness didn't surprise me in the least, it's commonplace in big cities in the UK.
At the moment I live near Leeds and the sheer volume of violent and petty crime is terrifying. The worrying thing is, it often seems to be aimed at innocent people. It's quite possible to just be attacked walking along the street in the middle of the day for no reason, in fact I've seen it happen. I now survey situations all the time, if I see someone who looks dodgy, I will cross the road or go the other way. If someone is walking too closely behind me, I will also stop to force them to pass. You just can't be too careful.

Parts of manchester indeed are truly dangerous. For instance, I would never in a million years walk around estates such as Langley, Ordsall or Collyhurst. You would probably have a 90% chance of being mugged or beaten up.

seamonsta

Alexandra, those sorts of things are nothing compared to the nightmarish things that happen in Leeds. People being butchered and dumped in canals etc.

mickj

This conversation seems to have gone off track. To compare Manchester to TO, is just ludicrous, Manchester is not a big enough city, its funny how some towns consider themselves cities nowadays.

There are many towns in Ontario here that consider themselves cities too, we have to go back to what we really mean by CITY. Paris, New york, Vienna, Prague, Toronto, Lagos, Cairo, Johannesburg, Sydney are all big cities, i don't think Manchester fits into that group.

You can compare London to TO, but real Torontonians will tell you that there is nothing wrong with their city, as they know it inside out. Myself as a real Londoner will tell you the same thing, i feel safer in London, than i do in some small town in blighty.

CalgaryAMC

What a very strange thing to say. Probably a trollish post but I shall respond nonetheless.

At any rate, in Britain a city is a town usually with a Bishop with its status as a city conferred upon it by the queen. Manchester fulfils that definition.

Fortunately population is irrelevent, which is helpful, because the city of London only has a population of about 7,000.