I walk 4 miles a day (to and from work) in the city. The crime (of all sorts) is mainly in the really bad areas. 14th and Broadway is a somewhat higher crime area because it's a major bus transfer point (I got this from the crime maps that OPD put out).

Lots of people on the other side of the hills (Concord, Moraga, Walnut Creek) have this idea that Oakland is a really scary place. I think it's partly racial (because of the higher percentage of African Americans here) and partly a PR issue (the 24/7 news cycle only presents sensational items).

I've lived in the area since 2001. I lived in Berkeley for the 13 years prior. I had more problems with crime there, and I was fairly close to campus. People don't normally think of Berkeley as a high crime place, either.

The most dangerous thing I deal with on a daily basis? Cars and bikes. I always cross the street legally, but both cars and bicycles have issues when it comes to respecting pedestrians. I've even seen a police car not yield for a pregnant woman pushing a stroller in a cross walk! He cruised by her within inches. I was dumbfounded. She was in the middle of a 4 lane (2 each way) road.

> Lots of people on the other side of the hills (Concord, Moraga, Walnut Creek) have this idea that Oakland is a really scary place. I think it's partly racial (because of the higher percentage of African Americans here) and partly a PR issue (the 24/7 news cycle only presents sensational items).

Those may each be part of the issue, but I think that a big part of the issue is the actual crime statistics that show that, indeed, Oakland is, in fact, a dangerous place by comparison to those other places.

I mean, there's something about Oakland having a little over 3 times the population but a little under 20 times the number of violent crimes as Concord in 2012 [1].

[1] http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Crime-up-in-Oakland-much...

But all parts of the city are not the same. The very high crime areas, no where near the downtown, are what skews the stats. Downtown Oakland is no less safe than a lot of other cities. Certain parts of Oakland are a lot less safe than the worst parts of many other cities.

So, do you avoid Oakland or avoid the bad parts of Oakland? I, personally, just avoid the bad parts.

Crime's been down since 2012 (though still high).

http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/openforum/article/Oakland-sees...

I hear that Concord's gotten worse since, as well, but I don't have a good source for that.

<< Lots of people on the other side of the hills (Concord, Moraga, Walnut Creek) have this idea that Oakland is a really scary place. I think it's partly racial (because of the higher percentage of African Americans here) and partly a PR issue (the 24/7 news cycle only presents sensational items) >> Lots of people have the idea that there is a lot of violent crime in Oakland because, well, there is a lot of violent crime in Oakland. No need to bring race into it.

I think a big issue is that Oakland is way bigger than people think, especially geographically - it covers more land than SF - and there's a lot of diversity. Some regions are really bad. Some regions are ritzy. There's plenty of everything between. But the news doesn't differentiate well between the different parts of Oakland, so when you hear over and over that there was crime in Oakland and you're sufficiently unfamiliar with it that your model has it as an undifferentiated blob, and you think that blob is smaller than it is, of course you think anything about Oakland is scary.

Yep, it's all about drawing lines around things. Piedmont has little crime, but it's encircled by Oakland. Should it just be lumped in with Oakland statistically?

Speaking of which, when I get around to running for mayor of Oakland, I'm going to have only 2 planks:

1) Charging the people of Piedmont $50 to drive out of Piedmont.

2) Divesting "Oakland" of almost all of its real estate, while retaining all of its civic debts, then letting the remnant entity of "Oakland" just go bankrupt.

I think this is going to be a very popular platform!

Well, I thought it was funny.

Ethnic demographics and crime rates are correlated, so it would be a mistake to dismiss concerns over crime in an area as a "race thing". People may have legitimate concerns about an area not necessarily driven by racial animus in Oakland, Baltimore, Detroit, DC, Atlanta, and etc.

Because of the correlation between crime and demographics, it might be tempting to publicly call out concerns about high crime neighborhoods as examples of racism, but I still wouldn't check your iPhone on the street at night in Oakland.

I regularly check my phone on the street at night in Oakland and have had precisely zero issues. Of course, I'm also large and male and in one of the nicer areas of Oakland, and I still make a point to keep my head about me (it's a city...).

For your one mention of race in 200 words -- expect a flood of responses either chastising you for unnecessarily bringing up race politics, or letting you know that it's actually just fine for it to be about race.

~~an Oakland resident

I lived in Oakland briefly. I can't speak to Oakland crime broadly, but I will say one of the big drivers of crime is gangs. In Baltimore city where I grew up, the crime is drug related so shootings are targeted and don't have collateral damage. In Oakland, the gang-related shootings tend to be spray-and-pray with innocent bystanders getting caught in the middle. I moved out of Oakland after one such shooting happened < 100ft from my nice $2k a month apartment.

I live near 19th Street BART, and honestly I feel safer after dark in downtown Oakland than I do any time after 8 PM around the Powell Street station. I usually go for a run after sunset around Lake Merritt and there have only been a handful of occasions where I felt uncomfortable.

The other night I saw a young woman walking by the lake at 10 PM while talking on her iPhone -- and that seems normal for me as a newcomer, but my wife grew up in Oakland and tells stories from the 90's when it wasn't smart to park your car by Lake Merritt in the middle of the day on a weekend, let alone go for a walk by yourself at night with your phone out.

What I don't understand is given the skyrocketing real estate prices in San Francisco, versus the much cheaper and undeveloped density that the BART corridor could support in Oakland, why more high-density residential isn't springing up on this side of the bay.

This is pretty much my experience as well (and Jake - we should grab a beer or something, I'm at Grand & Perkins).

Yeah, that'd be fun. How should we coordinate?

Shoot me an email ([email protected]) or hit me on IRC (davidthomas on freenode - typically lurking in #haskell, #snowdrift, and a couple other random channels).

You can walk around downtown/Uptown at dark. The crime, especially murder, is not spread evenly around the city. There are neighborhoods that experience flash points quite often -- as is the case in most cities.

Oakland, for reasons unique to Oakland, did not benefit from the move-back-to-downtown movement of the 90s-on that turned around city cores like Chicago. Still, Oakland's downtown is so small and geographically special that another strong wave of residential building will turn it around quicker than other cities. I'd argue we are already witnessing the run...

Resident here. If you live or work here, I think the best advice is to not be naive. Trust your instincts. Don't assume that a transitional neighborhood (where the houses are quaint but well-kept) is safe. Don't walk around with your iPhone out if you see other people watching you, etc. Living in Oakland can have its attractions, but if you're at the wrong place at the wrong time, you might be ganked, so keep tabs on your surroundings.

I've lived in Oakland for ~8 months and I'm yet to be in a situation where I felt at risk (disclaimer: I'm a reasonably tall man and rarely feel at risk in cities). I live north of Lake Merrit, work in Jack London Square, and deliver bagels up and down Broadway and Telegraph on my bike. Primarily traversing that terrain, I feel very safe.

That said, there are other parts of the city that are much more dangerous. I generally put these in two categories: (1) neighborhoods with a high concentration of crimes like robberies and (2) neighborhoods where gang-related violence occurs. (2) is very often a subset of (1).

I'm not an expert, but from my understanding, (2) areas are heavily concentrated in East Oakland (east of Park Blvd), so if you generally don't traverse that part of the city, you avoid much of that danger.

One thing people fail to appreciate is that Oakland is geographically enormous. You can live here for years and fail to visit the majority of it, as I have. It's unfortunate that there's a lot of parts not worth visiting. Some parts are just brownfield industrial relics, some are just endless housing.

But you can say the same thing about SF. I doubt for example that when people talk about the hot SF real estate market they are referring to the Excelsior. If you center yourself on the SoMA area in SF, many parts of Oakland are closer to it, in terms of travel time, than most of SF. It could take you an hour to get to 1st and Folsom from 48th Ave & Noriega in SF. But you can get there in ten minutes from West Oakland.

I live at The Grand, which is close to Broadway and Grand. In the last 6 months, I have heard one purse snatched and one assault and carjacking. Both happened in broad daylight, in heavily trafficked areas with people around. I was unable to assist OPD with the former case, but for the latter I ran down to give a statement. OPD never caught them last I heard, the car hasn't been recovered, and an elderly couple was very shaken.

However, I personally have never been the victim of a crime.

It's not much different than most big American cities. Same rules of personal safety apply in Oakland.