Neighborhood crime

[TGantz]

My neighbor had a break in the other day in Maplewood. She lives across the hall, and it's just the two apartments on our floor (4 family unit). They tried kicking in the door, but failed. Instead they used a Sawzall to make a tiny square in the wall next to the door and unlocked the door from the inside.

My girlfriend and I knew that our neighbor smoked/dealt pot, but I can't imagine someone putting that much effort in to stealing an ounce. I'm sure she had upped her game recently, or switched to something more expensive. Our neighbor has been evicted, and my girlfriend has a sudden interest in going to the shooting range with me, so there is a silver lining. The cops told my girlfriend that judging by how the dogs reacted when they arrived, the dogs probably deterred them away from burglarizing our apartment. Our dogs go nuts at the door when anyone walks up the stairs, so I imagine they were barking non-stop while this was going on. There was a punch in the dry wall on my wall in the hallway, probably out of frustration at the dogs.

[tlombard]

Here is a ranking of what kills people. Homicide is pretty high up there for middle aged people.

http://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/pdf/1 ... 2010-a.pdf

This is just for 2010, but it's pretty consistently a top 5 cause of death for every age group from 10 years old to 44. Of course, so is suicide. And, overall, it's not a top 10 killer.

Of all those homocides I wonder how many were random though? It seems like most of the time when someone gets shot it's because of some sort of domestic dispute or maybe a bar fight. I feel like if you don't stick your nose where it belongs most of the time you can have very little risk of getting shot.

That is my feeling as well. I would love to see actual statistics comparing homicides where the victim knew the killer. I would bet that it leans exremely heavily (well over 75%) but that may be hard to prove with the cases that are never solved because nobody will talk or whatever reason. My view is that if nobody saw anything, the person know their killer.

Just like a family friend had just about every car stereo he ever put in his car stolen over a one or two year stretch when he was a teenager. His was the only car on the block being broken into and they even stole a couple of $20 or $30 stereos from Advanced Auto Parts. He was not an angel by any stretch and was into his fair share of trouble. I am 100% convinced that someone he knew and had ticked off was the one breaking into his car constantly. He was always talking about how bad the neighborhood was getting. Nope. When you move out of your parent's house to a 'nicer' area with friends and trouble still follows you then you have to look at the common denominators which are you and your 'friends.'