Even though I complain about the post office and the deer who eat my plants, Salado is a pretty nice place to live. The crime rate is fairly low. Jesse James is supposed to have camped near the banks of Salado Creek in the 1800s but didn’t kill anyone. I believe that’s the last desperado we had in town. Sam Bass must have passed through on his way to be killed in Roundrock, but I don’t think he even stopped at the Dairy Queen or Stagecoach Inn. We did have an attempted bank robbery a couple of years ago but the female bank teller apprehended the culprit. After that embarrassing fiasco, no respectable criminal wants to commit a crime in our town. Our women are too tough. I think there has been some hanky panky with a few of the preachers but no murders by irate husbands. We don’t even have much child-molesting going on since there are no childcare centers and only one priest. There are a few gays in the community but they keep pretty much to themselves or do their stuff in the near by gay capitol of Texas in Austin. All in all Salado is pretty safe compared to some places like Detroit. I’m sure glad I don’t live there.
Detroit was recently ranked as the most dangerous city in the US. It is number one for crime. It has also been called the murder capitol of the country. The city officials are up in arms about this report and claim it is really hurting their city for information like this to get out. If you exclude murders by domestic violence and crimes like rape, they are no worse than anywhere else. Certainly their child molestation rate has to be lower than Boston or most of the cities in California. Everyone knows Washington DC has the largest number of crooks and Los Angeles has the greatest number of DWIs because of the movie stars. Miami and New York City have to reign as the drug trafficking centers of the country. Las Vegas must still be the gambling and prostitution hot spot of the nation and Chicago remains the home of the mob. So, why are they picking on poor Detroit because of a few extra murders? After all, Detroit is in Michigan and that is the home of Michael Moore, the conscience of America.
Here are a few if the comments by folks who think it’s unfair to put such a terrible label on Detroit.
Detroit police officials released a statement Sunday night disputing the report, saying it fails to put crime information into proper context.
The mayor of 30th-ranked Rochester, N.Y.—an ex-police chief himself—said the study's authors should consider the harm that the report causes.
The rankings "do groundless harm to many communities," said Michael Tonry, president of the American Society of Criminology.
"They also work against a key goal of our society, which is a better understanding of crime-related issues by both scientists and the public," Tonry said.
Critics also complain that numbers don't tell the whole story because of differences among cities.
""These rough rankings provide no insight into the numerous variables that mold crime in a particular town, city, county, state, or region," the FBI said. "Consequently, they lead to simplistic and/or incomplete analyses that often create misleading perceptions adversely affecting communities and their residents."
After all that, my little town of Salado looks pretty good even if we are close to Killeen. I still think I’m going to keep the doors to the house and porch locked.