Another note about crime and pollution...
-
10/21/2007
I'll probably win a lot of enemies with my SperlingView of Quincy, but I stand by what I said. Sure, the pollution in Quincy may not be as bad as in Washington DC or Los Angeles, but I've been to many cities in the United States -- these include Seattle, Oklahoma City, Dallas, and many smaller cities -- and Quincy is the most polluted of all those cities. I mean, at least in those places, people don't lay their lit cigarettes on the sidewalk or smoke carelessly near children.
People are always complaining about how dangerous Hannibal, Missouri (the city across the river about 15 miles south of Quincy) is and how safe Quincy is. Again, people are grossly misinformed when they think that. Hannibal has a violent crime index of about 450; Quincy's is 850. And those are based on crimes committed per 100,000 residents, so don't say that Quincy's larger population is distorting the crime statistics. By contrast, the violent crime indexes in New York City and L.A. are both about 700. You heard that right. Quincy is more dangerous than NYC and LA. That says a lot, considering the negative image that both cities get when it comes to crime.
People will say, "But if you stay away from the bad parts of town, you'll be OK". That's not true, either. The crime rate affects the entire city because everyone from all parts of Quincy go to the same part of town to do their shopping, eating, etc. So somebody could get beat up at the Quincy Mall by someone from the bad parts of town. Since there's only one public high school and one public middle school in Quincy, every teenager from every part of town goes to the same school (unless they go to Quincy Notre Dame, which is a private religious school). This creates a good opportunity for drug-dealing kids from the projects to be making drug deals to non-project kids at school.
Clint | Liberty, IL