Waldemar Ingdahl wrote:
>
> I personally live in one of the most dangerous cities in Europe: Stockholm.
>
> You think it is strange? Well, Stockholm has in all its recorded history
> been a violent city. For instance, today Los Angeles has a murder rate of
> about 10.8 murders on every 100 000 inhabitants, Stockholm has 10.2!
Very interesting.
> Stockholm is the only metropolitan area in Sweden though, so the average
> crime rate is comparatively low. The violence in Swedish society is also
> very much concentrated on specific segments of society. Most often those
> segments that don't receive much media coverage. "Bum A and Bum B met at Bum
> A's ratty apartement and started drinking, then Bum B killed Bum A in
> drunken stupor", is the average Swedish murder, nothing sassy to write
> about. But the violence is very much present in Stockholm, and its expanding
> outside the usual segments of society.
Thats how much crime is here as well, only the media spins the story based on
the circumstances. If Bum A was a woman and Bum B was a man, its a case of
'domestic violence' or 'stalking'. If Bum A is black and bum B is white, its a
'racist hate crime killing', while if it were the other way around, it would be
'gang violence'. If the ratty apartment were near a school campus and both bums
were students, it would be a 'school shooting'. If Bum B was working for Bum A,
it would be a 'crazed worker going postal' incident, and if the 'apartment' was
the back of Bum A's van, then its 'murder on the highways'.
>
> Europe often points fingers at the US for its crime rate, while conveniently
> forgetting its often higher (or at least comparable) crime rates. The US is
> often more heterogenous that the European countries (that have been heavily
> centralized) so comparisions between European countries and the US are often
> not that good.
Thank you Waldemar for the honest commentary.
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