I've been here about 3 years now and like it so far but it seems the crime rate in OKC is pretty high. Is that the case or am I just paying more attention to the local news than I was before.

Local news is anecdotal. Anecdotal information =/= statistical evidence.

The only conclusion you could draw from that would be that more news stories are covering crime than in years past. And that doesn't show anything more than lazy broadcast journalists.

^^ Exactly.. Compared to Detroit, Baltimore, Chicago... We are heaven.

Most crime is confined to certain parts of the city. I believe the SE side has the highest crime rate overall but there are higher crime neighborhoods in all parts of the city sometimes right next to nice neighborhoods i.e. the areas around Britton & Western to NW 122 & Penn just north of Nichols Hills.

Remember, the news is there to make ratings.


Here's a link to 2010 crime rankings of cities.

http://os.cqpress.com/citycrime/2010/City_crime_rate_2010-2011_hightolow.pdf

From this I don't think we're doing too bad.

Its all relative to where you live, work or spend your time. I have friends who often leave without locking their doors and I know others with bars on their windows.

Remember, the news is there to make ratings.


Here's a link to 2010 crime rankings of cities.


http://os.cqpress.com/citycrime/2010/City_crime_rate_2010-2011_hightolow.pdf

From this I don't think we're doing too bad.

It shows we are a little worse than Dallas; that's pretty surprising.

It shows we are a little worse than Dallas; that's pretty surprising.

Crime stats are always misleading. They only count the crimes which are reported.

The really, really bad areas don't report crimes.

Remember, the news is there to make ratings.


Here's a link to 2010 crime rankings of cities.

http://os.cqpress.com/citycrime/2010/City_crime_rate_2010-2011_hightolow.pdf

From this I don't think we're doing too bad.

Might be because I came from #257 to #50 ..... thanks for the link

Yeah, you really have to get specific to an area/neighborhood and you can't rely on what has been reported. For example, most of the violent crime in the DC area is limited to certain areas. Moreover, the local television news, there, didn't even bother to report it - even murders/multiple murders - much of the time. And even in the written news the murders would often be in the back pages.

But have a tourist mugged in a nice area and it was front page news.

That's a really neat link, btw. Still, since it lumps violent and nonviolent crimes together, it is a bit misleading. The car theft capital of the world could inch out the murder capital of the world in terms of rankings because it looks like each crime is counted equally.

If you use headlines as a measurement of event occurrence, then flying must be the most dangerous mode of transportation.

OKC has a high property crime rate. The violent crime rate isn't terribly high, but it certainly isn't low either.

According to 2009 FBI statistics (http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2009), OKC had the 8th highest property crime rate and the 26th highest violent crime rate among the 76 largest cities in the country (worse than Dallas in both categories).

Overall metro area crime (http://os.cqpress.com/citycrime/2009/MetroCrime2009_Rank_Rev.pdf) is relatively high, too.