At Level 1, this is obviously not true. For murders in particular, I would expect it to be especially not true. Murders are easy to count, so I would expect the data to be very accurate. While anecdotes about murders tend to be very newsworthy and so we read about them and might feel like they're more frequent when they are not.
But at Level 2, I do think there's a kernel of truth to this (Jeff's statement), because sometimes it is hard to measure the same thing that people actually mean when they are talking about something like crime.
For example, in this article: There are "two really visible crises" in the downtown area: homelessness and open-air drug use. "And honestly, people conflate that with crime, with street safety," she said."
So basically the author is saying people feel unsafe about homelessness and drug use, but those aren't really crimes (people "conflate" them with crimes), and so those don't count as higher crime. So people are mistaken about the crime rate. Fair enough, but that's a technicality of what we are actually measuring, VS what people are feeling about it when you ask them about "crime" or safety or something.
But at Level 2, I do think there's a kernel of truth to this (Jeff's statement), because sometimes it is hard to measure the same thing that people actually mean when they are talking about something like crime.
For example, in this article: There are "two really visible crises" in the downtown area: homelessness and open-air drug use. "And honestly, people conflate that with crime, with street safety," she said."
So basically the author is saying people feel unsafe about homelessness and drug use, but those aren't really crimes (people "conflate" them with crimes), and so those don't count as higher crime. So people are mistaken about the crime rate. Fair enough, but that's a technicality of what we are actually measuring, VS what people are feeling about it when you ask them about "crime" or safety or something.