<p>In south Seattle, not Kabul.
[More</a> gun violence shakes a worried city | Local News | The Seattle Times](<a href=“http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2018302551_gunviolence28m.html]More”>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2018302551_gunviolence28m.html)</p>
<p>Any town dealt with gang violence successfuly?</p>
<p>Boston used to have a lot of these in the 1980s. What seems to have cured it in the 1990s was a better economy.</p>
<p>Not just Seattle:</p>
<p>[1</a> killed, 8 hurt in separate shootings - chicagotribune.com](<a href=“http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-1-killed-8-hurt-in-separate-shootings-20120528,0,1669136.story]1”>http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-1-killed-8-hurt-in-separate-shootings-20120528,0,1669136.story)</p>
<p>Chicago has 2,086,938 more people than Seattle.
More weapons. ( I hope)</p>
<p>I don’t think of Seattle as a violent place. I think of Chicago as a violent place.</p>
<p>Seattle is changing?</p>
<p>There have been a rash of incidents lately. Such thing ebb and flow and in summer you seem to get more. But that’s why I live out in the far very quiet safe suburbs after tiring of city petty crimes. And usually stay away from the city at night.</p>
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<p>I’ve often heard that El Paso, Texas has really made inroads against gang violence. Knowing that everything is relative, and not being very familiar with the city, however, I don’t know if “improved” is “acceptable” or if these improvements are the same thing as being “successful.”</p>
<p>[When</a> Good Men Do Nothing: The Price of Denial](<a href=“http://www.corrections.com/news/article/27895-when-good-men-do-nothing-the-price-of-denial]When”>http://www.corrections.com/news/article/27895-when-good-men-do-nothing-the-price-of-denial)</p>
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<p>Reading crime stories, especially deaths, in my beloved old Seattle is a real downer. More indication of how much the region has changed. Seattle has “grown up,” sadly, to be like other large metropolitan areas.</p>
<p>Kitty, I am quite familiar with the location at Cherry Street where that poor fellow, the innocent bystander, met his demise last week. And I nearly put my first through the PC monitor as I read about the mental-midget wannabe rappers in the South End of the city who pull out guns when someone inadvertently steps on their big toe.</p>
<p>For the folks who don’t know, some of the recent acts of random violence have occured within a few blocks of relatively affluent neighborhoods in Seattle. That’s another sign of an urban area “coming of age,” where knucklehead marauders can live within earshot of conscientious folks of all stripes.</p>
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<p>Those in the city shouldn’t have to cower in fear.</p>
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<p>Boston has had 12 murders so far this year which seems pretty low compared to last year. I had a look at the locations and they are all in certain areas that traditionally have crime issues. I don’t really feel particularly worried about safety in Boston but I generally don’t go to the problem areas (I have no reason to). I haven’t been to Seattle in about 13 years but I generally felt safe there. Are there safe areas and unsafe areas or do random things occur everywhere now?</p>
<p>Totally floored that we had someone shoot a gun randomly three times from their car at 1 am in my small town recently. This happened to be near the intersection where our house sits.
Population less than 20 thousand.</p>
<p>First time (and hope last) that this occurs. Am I being too optimistic??</p>
<p>Ugh! D just started work in S Seattle, lives a distance away. As she was packing up her campus housing, she had a pepper spray canister, in packaging, in the Goodwill pile. I told her to carry it, as she is working now in an urban environment. She laughed at me as paranoid, said it was a gag gift. </p>
<p>Opinions? It would do little against stray bullets, but other situations might also present in that rougher environment. Driving through, it just looked industrial, not as ‘scary’ as parts of Chicago look on casual inspection.</p>
<p>The thing is- when weapons are involved, it doesnt matter if those involved meet general gang banger criteria or not.</p>
<p>Fr example. I have been very involved in the schools, one family i knew fairly well, our oldest daughters were the same age, both attending local private schools and our youngest children were in classes together beginning in elementary school. I worked on a lot of school projects and field trips with the mom, even cochairing the parent group for a few years with her. Both our kids are very bright, but also have lots of challenges, some that affect behavior, and since the other mom, was better educated and affluent than I was, I was able to get tips from her regarding available resources etc.</p>
<p>Our youngest kids attended the same middle school but different high schools, mine attended a school between Cherry & Alder, but the mom decided to homeschool her son for the last year or so of high school, because she was concerned about his challenges affecting his performance on required state tsting.
I lost track of him after high school, my D took a year off & I think the young man was doing so as well. Unfortunately, one summer, male posturing at a local park combined with jealousy over a young woman, and “knucklehead” behavior of tryng to continue the afternoon altercation by taking a group of people to the others residence and waiting for him to return home.
Unfortunately, when he did, he also ran into his house, grabbed a gun and shot the other in the back of the head, while he sat in his car. Now one young man is dead and the other is spending twenty years in prison.
Neither gang members, neither on drugs, just teenagers hopped up on hormones, and without impulse control.
:(</p>
<p>It seems like there has been more of this going on all over our area - semi-random shootings and gun accidents. There was just another one the other day with teen shooting mom in head. There is the possibility of the economy contributing - there have been more brazen home invasion crimes involving fire arms. Much of it seems to be availability combined with stupidity, though.</p>
<p>stupidity being a stand in for lack of foresight, drugs, no education, poor impulse control, lack of understanding about consequences, glorification of weapons amongst certain youth cultures, etc.</p>
<p>Try living in an inner-circle suburb of Detroit. I hear gunfire almost every night. I’m not a big fan of turning on the AC, but at least I close the window and I can’t hear the gunshots.</p>
<p>I have a friend i visited in Detroit last year. Although she and her daughter live closer to Dearborn than " inner city", they have quite a scary neighborhood.</p>
<p>Seattle’s unemployment rate is only 6.6% so things are not that bad there so the economy doesn’t sound terrible. I do think that things are improving in MA both in terms of crime and the economy with the latter driving the former (IMO).</p>
<p>Yes BCEagle, the economy in Seattle has weathered the recession much better than other areas of the country, but the divide in education/income/opportunity between what some folks call “the Microsoft (and latte) Crowd” and the middle and working classes has become a chasm. Much of the city has become affluent enclaves while working class neighborhoods have demographically lost ground to absentee landlords and folks who don’t have as many housing options as educated white collar workers or artsy folks.</p>
<p>I guess i dont see that - but then i have lived in a semi i dustrial neighborhood since 1983.</p>
<p>For the most part, the violence seems pretty localized. But there have been just too many incidents lately. Stupid, angry teenagers, young twenties men, and gang related issues. We rarely seem to have that, but I hope it’s not trending towards something worse. It doesn’t have jack to do with the economy. It’s not as if, gee, more and higher paying jobs would stop this. It is mostly people with guns acting like idiots, and I sure hope the police crack down more on preventing this than spending their time giving us speeding tickets.</p>
<p>There was that incident at Lake Sammamish State Park last year, and now Seattle Center. I don’t remember as much random crossfire type action where it is libel to impact the innocent bystander - that temper flare up turns into public shooting stuff.</p>