scary incident happened to where I live

[unsure_about_this]

We had a helicopter going over last night, we later find out about 20 minutes later there had been a stabbing near to where we live and the person sadly passed away

This has put my anxiety on edge, I normally don't go out very far on my own

[BlueIris]

I live in a pretty rough area; we had a drive-by shooting attempt the other year and it scared the life out of me, there's also been a couple of murders in recent years.

I know it won't help for me to tell you this, but a lot of this sort of violence is gang-related; people like us are unlikely to be the target.

[.Poppy.]

I wish I had better advice for you, but I do know how you feel. I have often struggled with feeling safe. I don't live in a bad area, really, but I do have some fairly sketchy people living across the street from me and violence in general is quite rampant on this side of the pond.

Like Blue said, most violence is between parties that know each other, it's very rarely random.

[ErinKC]

I'm so sorry that happened and upset you! I live outside Baltimore, Maryland and go to school in the city. Our violence is truly out of hand, but like someone else said, it's typically drug/gang related and doesn't spill out to random people very much. Most violent crime is committed against someone the offender knows rather than a stranger. I lived in the city for 5 years and there were shootings and other crimes right down the street, but even then I really never felt unsafe.

[Lencoboy]

I know I'm bumping this thread a little but I share the views of BlueIris, Poppy and ErinKC in that the vast majority of fatal stabbings, shootings and other extreme methods of murder and violent crime in general (on both sides of the Atlantic) are in the vast majority of instances gang-related where the perps and victims are usually known to each other and such atrocities committed against random strangers willy-nilly fortunately are extremely rare (at least here in the UK).

And while we do unfortunately have certain instances of gun crime here in the UK, luckily it still remains a much lesser phenomenon here compared to many other countries around the world (even in some countries within mainland Europe), and is statistically lower here now than at its peak recorded during the first half of the 2000s.

Plus remember that events such as those in Nottingham earlier this week, as shocking and terrifying as they are, still very much remain the exception in the grand scheme of things.

ETA, Unsure_about_this; please remember that for the most part if you leave alone other people whom you may perceive as threatening or intimidating in the moment, they're most likely to leave you alone. I was explained this by a consultant clinical psychologist about 20-odd years ago when our local paper seemed to be going through a phase of spewing out highly sensationalist articles about violent assaults within my town of residence which were really putting the fear of God into me at the time, but luckily no one ever actually laid a finger on me back then while I was out and about, in spite of my own personal vulnerabilities.

[WiredIncorrectly]

I live in a rough area. There's been stabbings, shootings, a lad died from a fist fight. It seems to be constant at the moment.

Rarely do randomers get stabbed. This will be gang activity. If you're not involved in gangs or shady characters then you are as safe as the rest of us

Hi Lenco btw. A guy in Dudley recently got sentenced for boring out replicas. It's on the rise thanks to UK Drill music. Those shady characters are bad, and a lot of rappers in Drill speak about what they do. Google "Uk drill rappers in prison" or "Uk drill rappers that died". It's such a sad world we live in. And this music is poison transforming children into idiots. A neighbours young son has just started to get involved in it, and he's running around in a balaclava and machete. It's nonsense and really angers me to see these kids change.

[Lencoboy]

I live in a rough area. There's been stabbings, shootings, a lad died from a fist fight. It seems to be constant at the moment.

Rarely do randomers get stabbed. This will be gang activity. If you're not involved in gangs or shady characters then you are as safe as the rest of us

Hi Lenco btw.

Hi there James.

You're also correct that these nasty incidents are usually between certain factions (especially gangs and druggies) and luckily innocent random strangers are very rarely on the receiving end of such atrocities, which all other posters who replied above who live in, or have previously lived in 'dodgy' areas are testimonial to.

[Lencoboy]

I was involved in a bit of a heated conversation with another (highly opinionated) client at my day centre today where he brought up last Tuesday's tragic stabbing incident in Nottingham and also referred to various other likewise incidents that have happened around the country both before and since. He was saying (in his opinion, not mine) that it's about time the govt reinstated the death penalty and school caning, and also started routinely arming all our police officers, before this country degenerates into a full-on 'war zone'!

I tried to explain to him that as appalling and unnerving as the current knife crime situation is, such extreme measures aren't really the answer, and that none of such measures that are still commonplace in parts of the USA are really proven to serve as a significant deterrent against violent crime there in the grand scheme of things (though I could be wrong, of course), but he was having none of it.

I've already mentioned this particular client in another thread on here before, as we had a similar verbal 'carry-on' over the Christmas meal there last December when he was saying that he thought 'zero tolerance' should be brought back in all day centres to deal with certain clients who may sometimes display certain 'inappropriate' behaviours, like back in the 90s and 2000s, and again I recall trying to explain to him that such draconian policies never really solved many of the underlying issues back in the day, and were probably more for the benefit of certain staff members at the time, especially the more power-mad 'jobsworth' types, but he was also having none of it then either.

Luckily he doesn't normally attend on the same days as me but he happened to attend today as a special 'one-off' for some reason or another, but our 'disagreement' really did put me on edge with me feeling extremely humiliated at the end of it all, and I had to take a Lorazepam tablet when I arrived home, whose effects are now starting to kick in.

Apologies to unsure_about_this for hijacking your thread once again.