Albuquerque crime....

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

1. Given that it's a city of over a million people,

I don't think the crime there is any worse than any other similarly sized city. The problem with listening to a police scanner is that you will only hear such bad news. I see that Pasadena has less than a fifth of the population of ABQ, so even if all things were equal, you'd have a fifth the number of crimes.

I can tell you that I live on the supposedly crime-ridden south side of Santa Fe, and I don't feel in the least unsafe. I do read regular reports of tourists in this city getting mugged, especially in and around the Plaza, our main tourist area. I think the problem is two-fold: one that tourists are almost always very easy to spot, which makes them obvious targets, and two that we have a shockingly large homeless population, and they often seem to be the ones robbing the tourists.

Truly, there is nothing to cope with. Crime is everywhere.

As a side note, in the 1970s I rode the bus from Alexandria, VA to my job at National Airport, and back again. I did shift work so I was often coming home late at night, and needing to walk a couple of blocks to my apartment. Every so often grown men (I'm a small woman) would express shock that I would do so, assuming that I'd be attacked regularly. Never happened. On the other hand, my sister lived in Los Angeles for a decade or so and was robbed several times.