Mostly True Tales

This story is both surprising and not surprising. St. Louis has been named the most dangerous city in America.

You would think, dead center in the heartland of America, we would be safe, but apparently not! I would have never predicted St. Louis to be more dangerous than New York, Chicago, or Detroit. I wouldn’t even expect it to come in on the Top 10, but according to this story, St. Louis has been in the Top 10 for several years, and has now peaked in the number 1 position.

Two important stats are the murder rate and the overall violent crime rate. St. Louis’ murder rate is almost 4 times the national average, the violent crime rate, nearly 10 times the national average. Why? Why is St. Louis more dangerous than New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit, Miami and every single other city in the U.S.?

I believe one answer is, an immaturity of sorts. St. Louis isn’t really a big town, but it is bigger than ever and the people that live here don’t know how to handle that growth and still get along.

St. Louis still doesn’t have a practical mass transit system (I’m sorry, I don’t call a train, that you have to drive a car to, effective mass transit). Many people don’t want it. They feel it will allow low income low life’s to travel into our suburbia, and the crime will increase. So instead, the people of St. Louis continue to fight the traffic on outdated roads and highways that are almost continuously under construction. Major construction, like highway on-ramps, interchanges, and bridges.

I moved to St. Louis from the city of Chicago, about 30 years ago. My family moved to a little town in West St. Louis County, called Olivette, about 10 miles from downtown. Ironically, after moving away and living a dozen other places around the world, I live in Olivette now, just 2 tenth’s of a mile from the house my family purchased those 30 years ago.

Down the road about a half mile from my house is an elementary school. My younger Brother went to that school, so did my oldest Daughter and so does my youngest Daughter. The school is located on a residential road most of which has a double yellow line (no passing) and a speed limit of 30 M.P.H., except in front of the school where it’s 20 M.P.H..

My Brother walked to that school for years, we would walk everywhere, or ride our bikes. My kids don’t. They can’t, they’ll get run over! The traffic running down this quiet little residential street is now quite different, denser, faster, crazier. There is a 4-way stop not 500 feet from my house, where any cop could issue a hundred tickets a day.

The people are different too. They are in a hurry, and they are in more of a hurry than you! They are in a hurry to do something that is also, more important than what you are on your way to do. In fact, it’s so important, the rules do not apply. There is no speed limit, there are no stop signs, there isn’t a crossing walk with children in the middle of the road. The one-way, drive-thru parking lot for the school, is now a passing lane. Anything goes. Courtesy is out the window, so is respect, so is integrity.

I believe society has rules for a reason, and a world without rules is certainly chaos. The problem is, these people are angry, they’re late, and their business is more important than anything. More important than laws, common courtesy, and safety. They are more important. Once a person gets to that point, they ARE dangerous, or more likely, in danger.

Hostility breeds hostility. When I see some guy in a convertible sports car, wearing a business suit, come up behind me while I’m on the way to pickup my daughter from school, pass me and snake through a stop sign with traffic on all sides, a crossing guard, and children in the street, then turn into the one-way school parking lot going the wrong way to pass traffic, I know how I feel. I want, at the very least, to send that guy to the hospital. I’m pretty sure, it would fall under the violent crime category.

But I don’t, or at least, I haven’t yet. I haven’t because, I try to maintain self-control, courtesy, and integrity. I try, to live in tolerance. But, there are certainly people with less tolerance, less self-control, and less courtesy. And I believe, that’s how a lot of violent crimes happen. When these basic moral values break down.

We battle to get here and there. We arrive late, angry, and stressed. We are weaker, more irritable, less tolerant.

I believe it. I believe that right now, I am living, in the most dangerous city in America.

And I blame it on the traffic.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061030/ap_on_re_us/city_crime_list

This entry was posted on Monday, October 30th, 2006 at 5:24 pm and is filed under Top of my Head. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.