KWED
Scratching head, scratching knee
"Feeling" safe or unsafe often has nothing to do with actual safety or crime rates.I have a friend of mine living in the UAE (Abu Dhabi) running some grocery businesses because he prefers the lifestyle there. Ironically he contacted me today for a specific purpose and it so happened someone tried to rob one of his outlets last night. Probably around 2 or 3 AM. It was such a shock to him and to everyone else I spoke to about it. Some one broke his cctv camera, entered the front door using some kind of key that actually opened the door, and tried to rob the cash register. Failed.
The thing that came to our minds was that it is such a big deal that someone tried to rob a store that the whole neighbourhood have woken up. All seem to have realised that there is a faint chance they can get robbed too. The police are apparently going all over the place looking for camera footage to trace whoever was walking around at that time to nail the culprits.
Why is this such a big deal? Ultimately the guy didn't even get robbed. All he lost was a camera or two. When you ponder over it, in this city you will never imagine a robbery would take place. Of course crimes do occur but something like this is so rare that it really feels like a crime. I think it is quite similar in Japan or at least in the places that I can trace like in Tokyo and Gunmaken. I don't think people are even bothered closing doors. Also I think in Denmark you have a similar air around the city. Do you really dream you will get robbed?
All of these countries are rich enough to provide this level of safety in my opinion. I mean the developed countries and some rich cities. Why is it that in some developed countries you would not feel safe after 7 PM? Some robbery happened down the street? Ah, thats nothing. No big deal.
Despite steeply falling rates of violent and property crime in the US for nearly 10 years, public perception is that crime has been steadily increasing. Much of this is down to the way crime is reported and recorded.