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Crime statistics in Brooklyn: I heard the natives are getting tired of cars honking like they’re competing to be the fastest to die

@Mia Sinclair2/7/2026blog

so i’m here, like, running from a leaking faucet in my apartment in cawit, and i’ve got this irresistible urge to talk about how brooklyn’s crime numbers are supposedly going down but every time i walk past a 24-hour bodega i hear someone yell ‘GET THAT PIZZA OUT OF MY LIFE’ and question whether safety is a thing anymore. i don’t trust data. i trust the guy who sold me a soul-shaped keychain at the duffel bag mercado. he was definitely a tourist from london.

ok so i checked the fbi’s crime stats and sure, the violent crime rate dropped 8% last year. that’s great! but then i scroll through craiglist and there’s some guy offering free couch surfing near the milton bradley park. ain’t that the same park where some clown tried to sell cocaine in a pepperoni slice last month? data says it’s getting safer, but i saw a flicker of a suspiciously shiny necklace in the backseat of an suv parked outside 7-up. maybe the data’s lying. or maybe the numbers they don’t track are getting worse. like, how many times do you have to get yelled at by a deli worker before you file a report? i bet it’s not in the stats.

someone from the r/brooklyn subreddit told me over a spilled coffee at b-kickup that the job market’s been a dumpster fire. i mean, sure, there’s more remote work now but half the places i applied to are run by landlords who also run a goat farm in queens. classic. they’ll say ‘we’re a tight-knit community’ while jacking up your rent 20% because ‘you’re one of the few working here.’ but then the community turns on you when your acvbert doesn’t open late enough. that’s not safer-that’s performative hyper-local.

the weather today is like a kettle of broth. cold outside, hot inside. i’m in my underground bunker, which is just my 6th-floor walkup bathroom with a heated blanket. my roommate’s dog is outside yapping at nothing, which is weird because he usually runs off when he hears sirens. last week, there were two sirens. one was a fire truck near my block, and the other was some guy revving his lawnmower in park slope. the neighbors here are the kind who’d rather film a ‘documentary’ about their suspicions than actually report anything. remember that time the fire department responded to a ‘gas leak’ in my hallway, and it turned out to be my neighbor’s yoga mat on fire? classic.

oh and the brooklyn bridge design is trash. i mean, it’s iconic, sure, but i’ve seen better bridges made by my 2nd grade art class. the way they built it with asphalt and hope? that’s crime stats, basically. they patched things up but now it’s just a mess. i don’t trust the data either. i trust that my cousin bart somehow avoid the subway at rush hour by bribing a token hispanic worker with a bag of peanuts. that’s not on the reports, that’s on the black market.

i asked a random yoga instructor at a park if the area felt safer. she said, ‘i don’t know, but the hot yoga classes here are getting more popular because people want to sweat out their trauma.’ i want to yell at her because trauma isn’t a weight you can just lift. but then i remembered my own trauma: that time i was mugged for my art supplies near the douglass park subway. i lost my watercolor set. the thief kept it for a week to see if i’d come looking for it. no cope. no survivors.

so what’s the deal? is brooklyn getting safer? according to the numbers, maybe. but then i pulled up the cost of living index on zillow and saw rent prices up 15% in a year. that’s not safety-that’s just the city turning into a titanic. i talked to an independent film scout last night, and they were talking about how the local indie scenes are booming, which is great, but also a lot of the film crews are from out of town and don’t care if they get mugged because they have good reps in other states. that’s not safer-that’s just selective amnesia.

wait, i just saw a t-shirt in a thrift shop that says ‘brooklyn is a ghost town’ and i’m like, no duh. it’s a ghost town with a 24-hour hotdog stand. the hotdog stand is probably the only thing keeping the ghosts from haunting too hard.

i’m not saying the crime stats are fake. i’m saying they’re not telling the whole story. like, how many times have you walked by a construction site and seen a worker based in bustall who’s not on any legal forms? that’s not in the data. or how many times do you get a text from a masked solicitor saying, ‘free crypto if you don’t report your crime’? that’s the real crime, man.

you gotta check the reviews, man. i did for some random yoga studio in greenpoint and the Yelp said ‘great vibes, but the neighbor’s kid keeps setting off my smoke alarm at 2 am.’ that’s not a safety issue-that’s a cry for help. maybe the city should offer free smoke alarm tech support. but then again, who funds that? maybe the same people who don’t fund public art.

here’s the deal: i don’t think brooklyn is getting safer. i think it’s just hiding. like, the numbers are like a facebook profile-everyone’s posting pretty pics but the real stuff’s in the comments. i saw a post on tripadvisor from a girl who said she got followed home by a group in north brooklyn. she didn’t report it because she was too late for her tinder date. classic.

so what should you do? i say stay alert, but also don’t let the numbers make you think it’s a fairy tale. check the local subreddits, talk to your neighbors, and maybe bring a noise-canceling headset to drown out the sirens. data is just a tool. in brooklyn, the real tool is your gut. or your lack thereof.

so there you have it. crime stats in brooklyn: a mess of numbers and vapor. i’m gonna go sit on the bridge with my oh-so-professional camera and take a selfie with the sunset. maybe that’ll make the data talk. who knows? maybe the photo will expose the real crime-how nobody takes the bridge seriously. it’s basically a death trap painted gold.

check out the local scene here: thebrokeblog.subreddit.com for more drunken opinions. if you’re thinking of moving here for the vibe, visit brooklynvibes.tripadvisor.com and read the reviews about the 3am sweeper truck that’s either a blessing or a curse. for rental tips, quietbrooklyn.zip claims they know the best places to hunker down. and if you’re a tourist, yourtutty.pin has that list of cafes where baristas know how to make coffee that doesn’t taste like regret.

p.s. if you see a shiny necklace near a 24-hour bodega, don’t let your dog near it. trust me. i learned that the hard way.

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About the author: Mia Sinclair

Quietly plotting to make the world a slightly better place.

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