Robbery last night outside Venezia at 88 SGR

dorothy

I went through a phase of smoking recently and had the chance to stand on SGR, outside the Sugar Lounge, the Nobel or elsewhere of an evening. I routinely saw the police searching people, sometimes greeting the regulars in the Sugar Lounge before asking them outside and frisking them, then moving on the WLM. I thought at the time how handy SGR was for the local constabulary. I think violent crime used to be worse in Stroud Green, although have no figures to back it up. Around twenty years ago there were more attacks on the Parkland Walk. The park was more seedy, I used to see more drug dealing and prostitution.

Fin

A feeling based on personal experience and observation Arkady, not just Stroud Green though, seen similar trends in other areas such as Clapham and West Hampstead. But no firm stats, would be difficult given they'd have to be cross referenced against average income, wealth or something similar. Common sense though no? Criminals arer attracted by opportunity.

And I am by no means a scare mongerer, I tend to agree that fear of crime is far greater than actual crime, and that Stroud Green is undergoing rapid, exciting improvements, proud to live here.

Arkady

I understand Fin. I tend to be hyper-rationalist (read as: irritating) about these things. Cross referencing based on income is one of the things that the BCS does. I have no reason to think that any individual's perception beats that. Given that we have proof that crime is generally falling while perception of it is rising, and given that your belief is based only on your perception, I’m afraid I’ll continue to assume that your perception is likely to correlate with the statistics ;-) Similarly – your reference to ‘common sense’ always sets off alarms with me. ‘Common sense’ is a largely meaningless phrase. It is neither common nor a sense. It is usually used when people want to justify their opinions without recourse to objective evidence (and sometimes without recourse to reason or evidence at all). This, I fear, is a case in point: we know for a fact that wealthier areas experience less crime; we know for a fact that demographically Stroud Green has grown wealthier in recent decades. Therefore, without objective evidence to allow us to deduce otherwise, inductive reasoning would suggest that crime in Stroud Green is falling. You made me bore *myself*.

Fin

I'm more of a lies, damn lies and statistics man myself Arkady.

As for common sense, I'm sure a man like your can find all sorts of evidence that criminals are attracted by opportunity if you need it to satisfy yourself that it's not just...errr....common sense.

What I do know for certain is that I heard less about robbery and burglary when I first moved to the area in 1998 than I do now (and no, not just because of the internet).

Arkady

:-) Don't get me started on the fallibility of human memory...

tosscat

It's rubbish isn't it? I was chatting to someone at work today who thought the last few summers had no sunny weather, while all I can remember is sitting in the sun in the park.we can't both be right.