I think you are missing a few things about crime in a big city. People don't want to be victims of crime. So when crime rises, people adapt their behavior to adjust for that. People will stop going out at night in certain neighborhoods for example. They also stop reporting certain types of crime, like property crime.

So when there is a multi-year trend in crime, it means that where and when the crimes are happening have to change multiple times to adapt to people's changing behaviors. And if you don't keep up on how that changes, your chance of getting robbed goes up quite a bit. This is why you don't tend to see crime yourself (unless there is mental illness involved), it tends to happen where there are fewer eyeballs.

I knew quite a few people who have been the victim of violent (and random) crime. Each time it happened where other's couldn't see it. But its nice that you lived in a part of town where you never had to learn this type of street knowledge. Not everyone is so lucky.