Has crime risen in your area or are local Facebook groups making it look like it is?

[Sallycinnamum]

I live in a reasonable affluent London suburb. We're on the fringes of the city and I've lived here all my life.

I have never been a victim of crime and still quite happily walk home on my own at night.

I belong to several local community Facebook groups, which feature regular posts from people who've had their cars nicked or they'll mention someone was seen acting suspiciously etc etc.

I've always taken it all with a pinch of salt because there are often ridiculous posts from residents who've got too much time on their hands.

Now I'm wondering if I'm being naive and there lots of crime going on around me or has social media just made it more visible?

We live in Maine USA, one of the top 3 safest states (23 murders last year) we don’t ever lock our doors or car. It’s very safe

However there is lots of talk about the drug epidemic sweeping the state.

These are today's highlights....schoolboy had his bike and phone stolen, a BMW was stolen from someone's drive and a man knocked on several doors asking for Betty. Must be a potential burglar apparently!

Hardly any crime here other than drunk driving. The only crimes I've seen reported in about 2 years was a drink driver going the wrong way along the nearby freeway, and someone discovering that during the night a drunk veteran skidded off the road, across her front garden, and into the side of her car, then drove away leaving behind a license plate. No one heard a thing.

Occasionally someone demands to know in a very aggrieved way why fireworks are going off nearby.

I do live in a very low crime part of the world.

Stupomax

We have a neighbor who is ex military who occasionally sets of pipe bombs on his back yard which winds up a neighbor, but it’s not really doing any harm.

A few houses down lives a family with a drug dealer/waste of space son. The guy in the house next to me talked to him and said live your life however you want but if your crap ever impacts my family I’ll shoot you.

I know there's going to be a certain level of crime living in a heavily populated urban area but when I look at the stats we do live in a relatively safe area.

I find my local group makes m anxious if I look at it too much as so many minor crimes are being posted about. It's a safe area generally, people just like to talk. It does make it feel more dangerous though

I'm in East London and crime has massively increased around me.
I used to be really confident walking around at any time. Now I avoid going out after dark if I can.
So many stabbings, murders, muggings. I don't know anyone who hasn't had a burglary or an attempted burglary.
All my adult children have moved out of the area to quieter small towns in Essex. I'll do the same when I downsize either this year or next year.

FB groups just make it look like it, someone just walking down a road can get mentioned 'just in case'

Since we lost our local police presence crime here has definitely increased. We have had cars damaged/robbed, houses attacked, people attacked. Used to be quite nice

Man in white van driving down the road going through rubbish bags
Men in white van taking scrap metal from driveways
Man with a hood up walking in a suspicious manner

and so on..

I live in one of the safest urban areas in the country, regularly high on the 'best places to live in the UK' lists, but to read my local FB page you would think the crime level was on a par with the mean streets of New York.

bitterboy that is definitely how my local FB page feels. And of course it's always down to the nasty forriners of course

Video footage every time a van drives slowly along a road 'looking suspicious' with no realisation that a lot of the time that could well be a delivery driver trying to find a house, especially at night as so few people have house numbers with any kind of lighting on them.

There was a huge thread on my local fb page yesterday about how unsafe children were going to secondary school and how best to protect them from knife crime which made me sick to my stomach even though I’m not at all sure how ‘real’ the threat is.

Someone in our local Facebook group actually made up a story about a gang of men breaking into her house in the early evening when her teenage son was home alone. She's just round the corner from me so I was really anxious about leaving my dcs alone before she got found out. What a weird thing to do.

I've noticed this too.

I live in a very nice part of the Midlands - I'd say a very safe area.

Yet if you believe everything you read on FB, there are potential burglars round every corner and cars stolen every night. Often thats followed by 'I did forget to lock the car' - asking for trouble IMO

In my local group there are lots of posts about vans being driven slowly; dishcloth sellers doing their rounds; and more recently, videos from Ring doorbells of ne'er-do-wells trying front doors and car doors.

I suppose forewarned is forearmed. I suspect the crime level hasn't actually changed much; but there's more awareness of it. It doesn't give me pleasure to see these in my Fb feed all the time; I feel happier when I have a news detox. I used to live in south London, where an unattended bike would be gone in less than a minute (and locked ones wouldn't be totally safe either), so things like locking your bike, car and front door are basic common sense.

Ah yes the suspicious white van, usually driven by a foreign paedophile, lurking round schools.
That's a popular one in.our city.

We lost the local police station and the next nearest about 5 years ago and crime definitely did increase - a few more burglaries or car thefts a year.
Now this year we’ve had two high profile murders on the high street and I have finally seen police patrols for the first time in five years.

"These are today's highlights....schoolboy had his bike and phone stolen, a BMW was stolen from someone's drive and a man knocked on several doors asking for Betty. Must be a potential burglar apparently!"

Tbh, you seem to be minimising the crime against the child. Was there threat involved, a knife etc.

I live in a rough bit of Liverpool. There's always been a middle level of all crimes. There used to be a high level of burglaries and DV/general violence. That's dropped. But kids could go to school safely on, or off bikes. That's changed.

But crimes against young people have risen. We've got, like a lot of areas, teens being stabbed/badly assaulted. Two have been stabbed to death locally.

So, if you've got Teens, you've got reason to worry. The murder rate in my City, just for young Men on a night out is shocking.

As for local crime, we did have, Men from one place, going round in vans robbing anything they could. They tend to hit an area and move on. I don't want to start an argument by naming the place.

As long as the 'nosy/over zelous' curtain twitches will phone the Police etc, they are doing you a favour, don't underestimate the value of that.

I should have added, has the increase in knife and acid crimes passed you by?

From the incidents I've seen, it's crept into even the more affluent areas.

We get loads of posts about chalk marks/flour on roads that are apparently signals from one burglar to another or marks telling you which houses have dogs to steal (actually the local running club marking routes!) and regular posts about anyone who happens to walk up a road they don't live on after 5pm, must be up to no good. Saw a post the other day about a guy who had some new trainers and a laptop stolen out of his car...why on earth would you leave valuable stuff in there?

@Yearinyearout I've not come across chalk marks left by a running club, although I have heard of the ones that burglars allegedly leave, with meanings such as "vulnerable and elderly" or "nothing worth nicking"; this sometimes does the rounds on Facebook, followed by replies that it's a myth.

Remembering what crime fears were in the 1990s, it's interesting how these change. Remember when brightly coloured car steering locks were popular? You don't see so many now. Also I think keyless entry has made cars less secure: I've seen several local headlines of such cars and contents being stolen. Also, remember when car stereos being stolen was a thing, and we were told we had to take the front panel with us? That doesn't seem to be the case any more, and stereos are still easy to remove if you know how (easy to find out on YouTube).

Also in the 1990s, teenagers weren't worried about being mugged for their phones: it was the trainers off their feet (and their money). I now smile when I walk past a front door which has new-looking trainers left outside the front door no doubt a MN shoes off house, within the reach of thieves, sometimes enough pairs to open a small shoe shop.

No one posts about crime on the 2 I'm on that I've noticed

Its mainly
Articles (either way) about Brexit
Links to nice community things eg - food projects, cheap classes
Posts trying to save local nature reserve from getting turned into flats
Occasional 'do you remember X in Y road' posts

I could post a local crime kids have nicked a load of grapes from my parents shed where they keep the spare fruit. I won't of course!

Funnily enough, this morning there's a post on my local group saying "What's happening to our town? It seems we are crime-ridden." Many of the replies are echoing that there's mostly more awareness, rather than crime itself.