dbd33

That's East Saint Louis. Another city, in another state.

cityhog

All right, right next to S. Louis!

cityhog

98% of E S. Louis population is black and half of S. Louis pop is black and so they cross the river and visit their friends quite often, I guess.

dbd33

Because all Black people know each other?

cityhog

Nah, these ghetto bros are tight-knit as they have this "us against the world" mentality.

Partially discharged

Much of St. Louis isn't actually shangri-la. I was there a few years ago and the attached image seemed pretty typical of much of north St. Louis. As is typical of many big US cities, it can quickly go from the squallor to opulence in a few blocks

http://goo.gl/maps/gw1o

East St Louis is another story...the Google Street View car driver didn't wander too much there.

quietgiroth

Which would really be a general American attitude.

Saint Louis wasn't that bad, we lived in nice areas. Never got robbed, beaten up, mugged, or had friends killed, while in Saint Louis (all things that I have had happen in other countries).
We did live in the Central West End for a bit. That is an area where if you go 2mins to far you can be in trouble.
My mum volunteers for a battered womens organization (they also help dress children so they have cloths to wear for school). She ends up going to some interesting areas to help, however has never had a problem. Perhaps they are always in shock at the white lady with a funny accent driving an old C230 Merc in their area they don't know what to do.
When I went to middle school they started busing a lot of the inter-city kids out to our school. So I believe that one kid brought a gun, and got caught with it. I did see one fight which was scary as the kids had knuckle dusters on.

A lot different than boarding school in Rutland.

So far off the subject of Canada...

dboy

I was at a homicide conferrence in Vancouver some years ago and I remember that the East St Louis murder rate was higher than Metro Vancouver (around 80 -90 murders a year for a population of 2.4 million - lower than greater manchester) vs 100 murders a year for east st louis - population (according to wiki is around 32,000).

Baltimore was also particularly bad - Vancouver proper is about the same size - around 600,000 vancouver has about 20 murders a year - baltimore around 500.

And some actually think we have a major crime problem in Vancouver - even the much decried dtes as depressing as it is, is not overly violent

I can also tell you that when a city has that many murders, they don't get more than about a day's attention till they go on the unsolved shelf.

Partially discharged

I was in the Central West End in April 2001 and if you drive 2 minutes to the north it is a much different story. I'll be in the St. Louis area in a couple of weeks...O'Fallon out in ex-urbia....but we'll be in the City as well.

Believe me many threads get off topic here on BE.

There is a reason that Ross Kemp did an episode of his gangs series in St. Louis.

Mr Lee

Okay - I had to re-read this to make sure that you meant that the population was lower than Greater Manchester's, not the murder rate...


Right?

dboy

Population is a bit more in manchester and the total numbers of murders is a bit more so comparable to vancouver . As an aside, Moss side and Longsight have higher murder rates than some major metro areas of the states. there were more gun relates crimes in those areas as well.

the uk on the whole as a lower murder rate than Canada which is likely more to do with ease of access to firearms.

Lord Vader

not according to this, #44 and #46 http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cr...ers-per-capita

Alan2005

That puts Canada as having a higher murder rate - just. I always thought that crime rates here and in the UK were broadly similar overall despite the mythology on BE. I expect the same can be said for all western democracies apart from the US.

Lord Vader

Yes, so close that I would imagine they could trade places by the hour. Another point has to do with guns, if there are more murders committed with a gun in Canada, and Canada had more guns then Britain, then it seems like the Brits have found other ways to kill people.

el_richo

Yeah, we use knives and our bare hands. Not like you Canadian wufters.