What the Numbers Don't Tell You

When choosing a place to call home, people are often concerned about safety. Is it a "safe" neighborhood or a "good place to live"? Consider the following when making your decision:

• Comparing raw numbers of crimes in two areas to decide which is more safe is difficult. The same number of incidents can mean different things in different areas. Some neighborhoods, such as those near downtown, have a lot of people moving within them every day. Other neighborhoods have relatively few people in them during the day. 
• No one can predict solely on the basis of past data exactly where crime will occur in the future. This makes it difficult to choose a house or block that will always be "safe."
• Not all crime is reported to the police. Almost 50 percent of crime goes unreported, or human error causes crime to be placed at the wrong location on maps.

Instead of relying on numbers of crimes reported, we suggest you do the following to determine if your new home will feel safe for you:

• Experience your new location. Go there several times at different hours of the day. Talk with neighbors, local businesses, and religious institutions to see how people feel about the area.
• Is there a community watch group or apartment club? See how often they host socials and/or meetings to find out if there are issues. Visit "Our Communities" to contact your division commander or community resource team.
• If there is no active community watch group in the area, we can help you start one. E-mail or call us at 336-373-2636.

We believe it’s important for you to know about crime in your neighborhood. By being more informed about what is happening in your community, we hope you will be more involved with us in reporting suspicious activity and partnering with us in other ways to prevent crime.

Here are two important websites to help:
 ~ Crime Mapping
 ~ Police to Citizen (PC2)

And more importantly, you have Community Resource Officers who can help make your neighborhoods safer.