The Christmas crime season is the US begins. This storyfrom the NY Daily News. [November 30 Update] And the Chicago Sun Times. Street crime really does up before Christmas. Keep that in mind.
I’m in a pub in York, UK, right now. Leeds, where I’m staying, and where David Simon said he might have set The Wire if he set it in the UK, has maybe 3 or 4 homicides a year (or so I was told). Population 440,000. Baltimore, population 630,000 has more than 200.
In answer to one burning question here in the UK: Are parts of the cities becoming “like The Wire”?
No.
Baltimore (and most American cities) have more killings than the entire United Kingdom. Amazing how they manage to fend off all the anti-social drunks here without firearms. Somehow they manage.
That Cambria Heights neighborhood in Queens where the thieves shot the guy and left the TV behind actually seems like a fairly nice neighborhood.
Do these type of incidents often take place there?
I don't know much about Cambria Heights at all. But as far as I know, it does not have a particularly good reputation.