I keep hearing everyone say Manchester is dangerous but the crime stats tell a different story

I was looking up data on NH city crime rates last night for a friend moving here, and Manchester actually has lower violent crime per capita than Portsmouth. Found it on the NH State Police uniform crime report for 2023. Portsmouth had 15 violent crimes per 10,000 people and Manchester had 11. So I stopped buying into the hype about Manchester being some kind of war zone. Am I reading those numbers wrong or does anyone else see this pattern?

2 comments

2 Comments

paule5317d agoOG Member

Wait, Portsmouth had MORE violent crime than Manchester? That's wild. Never would have guessed that in a million years. I always figured the bigger city would have the worse numbers but I guess that's why we look at the actual data instead of just listening to people talk. Appreciate you sharing that because it completely changes how I think about both cities.

noranguyen17d ago

That "bigger city would have the worse numbers" thing you said @paule53 really stuck with me. My cousin lives in Keene and everyone talks about how quiet it is there. But last year her neighbor got arrested for running some kind of storage unit drug operation. Three different units. Went on for months. Nobody suspected a thing. Makes you wonder how much of this "dangerous" stuff is just about what people see on the news versus what's actually happening in their own backyard.