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Originally Posted by GGG
But you now get every stabbing from everywhere.
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But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking strictly about the ones in Calgary.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GGG
And so this one stabbing becomes a touchstone for a few days to discuss all of the other "issues" that get rehashed over and over. So instead of hearing about this 5 times over the course of a year it becomes part of an ongoing anxiety inducing narrative that society is falling apart.
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I understand the phenomenon of media attention distorting perceptions of crime and crime trends. And I agree that overall rates of violent crime are going down in Canada.
However, we're talking about a specific kind of crime - random stabbings of strangers. And I can assure you that when they did happen, random stabbings in Calgary got loads of press 20 and 30 years ago.
Yes, we should use statistics and empirical data to assess crime trends. But personally, I'd like to see those stats in Calgary broken down into attacks where the victim knew the perpetrator and where the victims were strangers. Because I've been avidly following the news in this city for decades, and I don't think it's just my distorted subjective impression that random knife attacks on strangers are happening more often recently. You will concede that's at least possible, won't you?