That can't be right, I've been told we live in a war zone by Jimmy from Glocester who hasn't set foot in Providence since 1986

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Precisely why I posted this, to counter his narrative

He's right you know. I work in Providence and I was shot and killed three times last time I was there.

You forgot to mention how it was safer when the mafia was around and murdering dozens of people each year.

Or how it “just felt safer” in the 90s when Buddy was mayor and crime rates were twice as high as today.

The thing is, you could watch this occur in near-real time as the Providence Police release weekly reports on crime in the city. But the coverage of the Providence mayoral primary election was dominated by questions about crime and safety.

Almost like the local media has an agenda and wants everyone to live in fear so they keep tuning in to their incendiary sensationalist garbage!

This was to be expected. The city has been on a steady downward violent crime trend since at least 2017, with a smaller downward trend for nonviolent crime in the same span (except for Motor Vehicle thefts and motor vehicle larceny which saw a small overall increase).

Generally, Providence is getting safer year over year, despite what certain local news outlets might have you believe.

Source: https://www.providenceri.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/2022_SelectedPart1Summary_FINAL.pdf

where’s previous floor to talk about how this clearly isn’t the case and the city isn’t safe at all?

crime has been on the decline worldwide for our entire lives, there is nothing surprising there. the trajectory of pretty much everywhere in america decade over decade is for places to get safer and safer. that doesn't make them safe though and the notion of safety is of course all relative, which is why I say, and you guys hate it, that providence is not a desirable place to live.

what IS surprising is you can have over double the previous year's (2019's) rate of homicides in 2020 and 2021 and folks on this forum will still get excited over reporting that in 2022 it's now back down to only slightly more homicides than in 2019.

2022's homicide total (9) was smaller than any of the previous 5 years. The next-smallest was 11 in 2018. Try again.

Currently have 3 bullet holes in me and some Antifa thugs burned down my street. It's chaos I tell you!

Look, I’m critical of this kind of coverage and how it warps our politics and shapes policy outcomes, but I think that’s going too far in describing at least how a lot of local journalists approach their job. There is a “if it bleeds, it leads” quality to the nightly news (the “Eyewitness News” format) that reinforces perceptions of crime. The stories are straightforward to write and draw traffic/attention, so in an industry that looks to fill time/column space, the economics of these stories contribute to their proliferation.

But a lot of news bias in our local papers and television stations is less a particular agenda of any single journalist or outlet, and their bias towards who talks to them (and who they view as a legitimate source to talk to). They are also conditioned to see “sides” of a story. Crime stories, as far as they are concerned, only have two sides: the police and the criminal, and the latter isn’t talking to them, so they only report the police narrative, which reinforces the ability of the police to write their narrative.

There is also just the inescapable reality that the corps of journalists who cover Providence are overwhelmingly white, and virtually none (whether white or not) are actually from the city. They simply don’t have contact with or contacts within the city, and so they can’t tell complex stories about the city. So when a shooting happens, they can only tell you the victim’s name and age, and can’t really delve into who that victim is/was as a person. In comparison, when a violent crime victim is not from Providence, coverage will often go a bit deeper.

The other problem is that a lot of journalists in local media do not provide analysis, but merely report what is said. Data-driven features take time to produce and are infrequent. But most “data” stories are because someone released a report, whether government as in OP’s link, or an advocacy group calling attention an issue, or as a marketing ploy for some company’s product (a lot of the rankings that get reported). Journalists are not very skeptical of these stories, and just report what is said in the report, the press release, or what some of their interviews say. But they generally won’t analyze the methodology or sourcing of such things, and tell their audiences if it’s any good.

The result is coverage that is biased towards anecdotes rather than data, biased towards what people say rather than what is actually occurring, and biased towards the loudest yellers and those with the resources and prestige to yell loudest.

I live in Providence and I get shot every single day, sometimes through the windows in my apartment on the second floor

Can’t be true because my friend from Seekonk thinks she’s gonna get shot if she goes to Providence place 😂

This is why panel data is important. You're looking at too short a time scale. This is a form of sampling bias, not to mention (and I do apologize for stating this so bluntly) just a poor research practice.

Furthermore, it seems that you're indulging this bias in order to falsely deduce something about this forum's users- namely, that we're all Providence Apologists who actively overlook stats and figures in order to push a false narrative about the city's safety.

That sentiment is, simply put, not reality. The people on this forum by definition identify with the city of Providence and have a vested interest in open collaborative discussion about it. No one is looking to grasp at straws or downplay real issues. That's why so many posts here involve collected data or primary news sources. If anything, this is one of the better places to find providence residents willing to take a good hard look at the issues faced by the city... and, when we have occasion, give it some hard-earned credit.

try again? idk if i have it in me after that cringe

>The people on this forum by definition identify with the city of Providence and have a vested interest in open collaborative discussion about it.

I've made this very point before myself and had folks on this very subreddit disagree with me in making it.

Am I the one looking at too short of a time scale though, or are you? I'm just being critical that the year-over-year numbers are the headline and folks are glomming onto them like they're meaningful in that relative vacuum. If someone wanted to post and say, 2022 homicides in providence are down X percent over the 10 year average, I'd have nothing to say. That would be a reasonable way to present this data.

My point isn't about the numbers or even the safety of PVD in general versus the subreddit's perception, it's about the gullibility of the readers that the headline could exist in the first place.

> Journalists are not very skeptical of these stories, and just report what is said in the report, the press release, or what some of their interviews say.

I'm on board with pretty much everything you said, but then there's this. If this is the case (and it probably is), they're bad at their jobs. Period. I was a journalism student in college (didn't pursue it for a career) and every single one of my professors described this type of approach as lazy, arrogant, irresponsible, and sloppy.

Your purpose, as a journalist, is to find the truth behind a given story and then report the facts in a manner that resonates with the audience. It's not to parrot talking points you're fed by political strategists or the fucking cops. And that's what local news outlets are at this point – mouthpieces for authority figures with whom they have a buddy-buddy relationship. Most consumers are not media literate enough to decipher spin from reality, and so we end up with otherwise ordinary people turning into fearful conspiracy nuts and letting their fear become rage against [insert target of the day here]. If you're contributing to that cycle, you're the problem.

wow, sounds like someone that knows they lost. sad.

If your point is that we're dealing with such a small sample size here (24 vs. 9) that the percent decrease YoY is a worthless data point, I completely agree. But that argument also reinforces that Providence is an incredibly safe place where very few homicides occur any given year, since we're dealing with such a small set of data.

My point is more that the statement in the headline is designed to oversell the relative "increase in safety" for PVD residents over time, and that based on the comments here it seems to probably successfully oversell that.

American cities are not particularly safe compared with similarly sized urban areas throughout the rest of the civilized world so to hear people talk about how safe PVD is is just a little laughable. You're safer than in NYC, I get it. But let's be real here and stop pretending that American crime is in a good place, simply because it is perpetually on the decline.

I just don’t know how to read situations where journalists write up these fake “studies” like the HonestTea PR stunt where they evaluated the “most honest” cities by leaving a barrel of their product out and asking for people to use the honor system. Or having press releases I’ve sent out personally run word-for-word without a call to me or any other sources (and then I know enough to know when I’m reading a release). Or heck, just a couple of days after BLM RI held a Tyre Nichols vigil, every mainstream local news outlet ran a winking PR stunt story where the Cumberland Police claimed to have arrested Santa Claus and presented “evidence” of his existence.

Every single journalist I’ve ever talked to has said what you wrote about how they’re supposed to do their jobs. And then I see them do these things over and over again. It’s disheartening.

The motto that many (including myself) have adopted is "Harm Reduction Is Valuable Even When Harm Elimination Is Preferable". I agree that the media is overstating the drop, but this is largely because other media is overstating the problem. It's a reactionary media circlejerk, and it's been that way at least as long as I've been a Providence resident. This is why it's always better to go right to the data and draw your own conclusions, especially in a small and hyperpoliticized city like this one.

"Crime is down, so why does it feel like it isn't"

At the end of the day, they're beholden to their corporate overlords. There's a whole ecosystem of middle management that cuts stories in the blink of an eye that will fly in the face of corporate spin. So to that end, it's not the journalists' fault that the narratives are being forced on them. But by choosing to be part of that system, you're perpetuating it. It's frustrating that so many well-intentioned, talented people end up in that situation and choose the easy path that directly causes harm because they don't have the gumption to stand up for what's right.

And I'm not saying I'd be any better in their shoes – I didn't go into the field for a reason. But I also don't think they should get a pass.

I guess I just don't get how you're coming to that conclusion after looking at the data that disproves it. You're moving the goalposts – saying "American cities are unsafe compared to the rest of the civilized world even though they're getting safer every year" isn't the point at hand. The point is that Providence, specifically, is safer than it's ever been. Violent crime has dropped precipitously for decades. Should we not be happy about that?

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Some people just want to rage

If providence is so safe then explain this fact: IF YOU WALK THROUGH DEXTER PARK AT MIDNIGHT YOU WILL DIE

People are too busy stealing cars.

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It’s safe compared to other major cities, but could be safer, but it’s not as safe as people want you to think it is, but it’s getting better, and it’s not that bad.

You actually don’t seem to have a point at all.

A man was stabbed in downtown Providence yesterday.

I guess this means rent is going up even more this year.

Is this the afterlife??

You're doing good work PM_ME_ASS_SALAD

Your anecdote, however tragic, does not undermine the overall data

Once again you demonstrate your inability to parse individual stories and isolated incidents from the overall trends and relative safety of our capitol city. Posting those out of context is either an intentional attempt to mislead or an ignorant understanding of how data works. Regardless, I will follow your posts with posts like mine every time, and I hope you will open your mind to the reality of the data and city living.

This is 2023. Every weekend there has been shootings. Many stabbings also.

Posting that misleading 2022 article is nothing more than an attempt to distract.

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So you choose to keep your head in the sand. Fair enough. Thankfully this sub doesn’t seem so easily fooled by your fear-mongering.

If you want to fan flames about an actual increasing wave of crime, go ahead and post about catalytic convert theft. It’s twice as bad as it was in 2021.

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good sign? maybe instead of turning our aggression towards one another. We organize and channel that to those whom exploit and oppress us

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Move to the south side or north side of St. Louis for a year, buddy. Providence and Rhode Island in general are safe as fuck.

But yet we need to make more law abiding citizens into felons because they want to defend them selves with a gun.

Don't forget the east side of STL. But seriously new England as a whole is safe AF compared to most other parts of the country.

>So you choose to keep your head in the sand.

The irony...

>Move to the south side or north side of St. Louis for a year, buddy.

This is a just a form of downplaying the crime issues in Providence.

This is a form of you have no perspective at all and are irrationally afraid of what you don't understand.

>This is a form of you have no perspective at all and are irrationally afraid of what you don't understand.

"Hey it's safer than St. Louis!" is not acceptable.

You're the guy who eats frogs, right?

Wait where was GoLocal on this? previousfloor?

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Sounds like Tucker “just asking questions” Carlson

Lmfao "I'm racist and paranoid but you eat frogs!!!"

what does this have to do with anything?

I think if people zoom out and look at other cities around the nation, they'll see that this sort of thing has far less to do with local law enforcement or politics and almost everything to do with the economy and stress caused by macro factors.

I used to bounce between Providence, New Haven, and NYC quite a bit, and I was always sort of stunned by how each community would be experiencing the same exact thing and each thought it was a local issue. Then I'd look up somewhere distant like Dallas, Jacksonville, or Minneapolis and the stories were the same there too.

https://www.nhregister.com/news/article/new-haven-homicides-dropped-gun-violence-priority-17685848.php

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/30/briefing/crime-murders-us-decline.html

So strange that he didn’t post this article himself, considering his very genuine interest in local crime.

Its almost like he ignores info that doesn’t fit the Mainstream Media narrative he wants to believe!

Honestly, I was going more for the New York Times.

"Dear sub: I'm moving to Providence from Ohio ...WHAT'S THE SAFEST NEIGHBORHOOD?"

At least it sounds like you’re immune to bullets now

This is because most of the real killers and shooters are dead or locked up.

His credibility of course 😂

More like reported and documented shootings dropped by nearly half in 2022.

>So strange that he didn’t post this article himself, considering his very genuine interest in local crime.
>
>Its almost like he ignores info that doesn’t fit the Mainstream Media narrative he wants to believe!

This article is from January 4. Five weeks ago. It has been posted on here multiple times.

It was posted again by a member with ulterior motives. Specifically, with the hope that people will overlook all of the shootings and stabbings that have been happening in Providence in 2023. The intent is dishonest, and it's purposefully misleading.

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>what does this have to do with anything?

Just making sure this was the person I thought it was.

But I suppose it does go beyond that. If I recall correctly, this person had no problem whatsoever with the cruel treatment of frogs, as well as the unsanitary conditions, at Good Fortune. That speaks volumes about this person's character, IMO.

>That speaks volumes about this person's character, IMO.

And it comes as no surprise that he would make baseless accusations about racism.

It’s cuz everyone’s high and chill now

the fuck do you think you’re even saying here? i don’t trust cops for shit either but this is… nothing?

did you forget to switch to your alt before responding to yourself?

>did you forget to switch to your alt before responding to yourself?

You should be permanently banned from reddit. And not just for constantly harassing other members, but because you're currently evading a temporary ban.

You showed up after no activity for 4 months right after your u/misterpeanutsman account got a temporary suspension from reddit.

If anyone doubts what I'm saying, just take a look at the profile history for u/ryanfingawesome and u/misterpeanutsman.

​

• Both members have stated they are from Sunnyside Queens NYC.
• Both members claim to be currently living in Fox Point.
• Both members spend the majority of their time on reddit posting in r/MLBTheShow.
• Both members are big fans of Dwight Gooden (a baseball player who retired ~30 years ago).
• Both members follow around and harass u/leavingthecold as well as other members.
• The Ryan account seems to only be active when the Peanut account is temporarily suspended.

you have a lot of free time

“Providence crime rates are reaching historic lows. Here’s why that’s bad for Joe Biden’s 2024 campaign.”

You sound like a moron and probably just moved here. Shouldn't you be slamming the rails or hitting the pipe. I've seen shootings and houses shot up and cops never came. So if those are not reported and documented it skews the numbers. But overall Providence is really safe for a city and population its size.

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Yeah, kewl story bro; like I already said:

Its almost like you ignore info that doesn’t fit the Mainstream Media narrative you want to believe! 😂

2 crazy 2 b tru tho.

>like I already said:
>
>Its almost like you ignore info that doesn’t fit the Mainstream Media narrative you want to believe! 😂

It made zero sense the first time you wrote it. No idea why you'd repeat it.

::proves the point without realizing it::

😂😂

>::proves the point without realizing it::

Incorrect.

A man was just shot on North Main Street.

I was hoping this was going to be the first weekend in 2023 without someone getting shot or stabbed.

Starting to understand why the Jan 4 article about 2022 is misleading in context?

>A man was just shot on North Main Street

Quick, log into your alt and post it to /r/rhodeisland!

edit: hah, you did! just a few minutes later

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Police respond to shooting on North Main St. in Providence

So my thoughts and prayers have done nothing? What a surprise.

"Compared to Ohio right now? All of them, because we don't have trains with exploding hazardous cargo."