Lies, Dam Lies & Statistics - How you are being lied to about the crime rate

Crime is not going down, all the headlines are saying that today, but it is all twisting of numbers and statistics.  Toronto, like a lot of cities has a huge violent crime problem, but you will hear the Chief say that crime trends are down.  How can statistics Canada and the Chief be wrong, because they twist the numbers and use improper denominators in their math to make crime seem rare, distant, & not worth worrying about.

You'll notice media and the Chief "flub" the word crime and "crime rate"......which are two totally different numbers....they will say the crime rate is down 7% across Canada, and most will take this at face value....but crime is not down 7% the "rate" of crime is down 7%. 

For example you are driving towards a wall in you car at 100 miles and hour.....your speed slows to 90 miles per hour as you hit the wall........well, your "rate" of speed when you hit the wall was down 10%, but you still hit the wall, just not as fast.

The crime "rate" is not a percentage....although the Chief and the media talk as if it is....the crime rate is based on the number of crime divided by 100,000 of population......that is not a percentage, a percentage would be number of crimes divided by 100 people.  So the number appears one thousand times smaller than a percentage.  That is the first way it works to make the number appear small.

A second way that number is distorted is by saying the crime rate for sexual assault level 1 is 62 per 100,000 people in the population, as Stats Canada says....sounds pretty rare right?   Wrong....first off 50 per cent of those 100,000 are male and are not likely to be raped....so that dilutes the number right there, you can essentially double whatever rate the police are showing.

Same as our gang problem and the homicide rate.  Depends on the year, but off the top 90% of Toronto's homicide victims by shooting are black men between the ages of 14 to 29....roughly.  We tout our Homicide rate as being 1.4 per 100k people, but not if you are Black and live in a housing project between the ages of 14 to 29......that murder rate, by the time you take our white people, females, and people outside of that age range would jump to a rate of 26 per 100k.....New York is currently at 6.6 for the general population.

So you can lie with numbers....and right now everybody seems to be doing that.  By the way, you do have a better chance of being involved in a violent crime in Toronto, then you do of being struck by lightening.

Why Keys By Themselves are Not Enough?

If you have valuables you care about protecting keys are not enough anymore.  Locks are very easy to defeat with a technique called "key bumping".  You can find a video on how that is done on my youtube channel.

Information on how to copy keys....even keys that are not allowed to be copied by their design, can be defeated.  You can read about how to do that simply here.

So what you need to do, is be careful about leaving your keys about or giving them to someone who may get them copied to come back and steal from you later.

Use some sort of an alarm system as a back up, even if it is not monitored, it will record for you if someone opened and entered your home or office with a key by the audit trail on the system.

If you are a woman and concerned about a stalker or an old boyfriend who had a copy of your key at one time....bite the bullet and pay to have the lock re-keyed to another key.

CCTV is another back up and is more affordable than it has ever been.

Just don't rely simply on keys anymore, they are not sufficient.

How Not to be a Victim of a Card Skimmer at the ATM

This is part of a new series called "Now I See" to help you to learn to see risks and dangers to your personal security.  Bank machines are are risk that can be managed, once you know what to look for.  Please share the video with friends.

Protect Your Kids - Lock up you prescription and non-prescription medications

Between 2001 and 2008 there has been a large increase in kids age 5 and under ending up in emergency rooms after having ingested some of their parents medications.

Prescription medicines as opposed to non-prescription medicines made up the majority of the cases, and cases with opiod painkillers like oxcycodone having huge increases.

It's strange how comfortable we have become with these drugs lying about, and no doubt the huge increases in medications prescribed means more will be out there.

By habit, we tend to put these in the "medicine cabinet"...usually a small awkward shaped, unlock-able space above our bathroom sinks.  Funny but experts will tell you that is probably the worst environment to store medications in.  Its not secure for one, and all the heat and steam and moisture can help to shorten the lifespan of some medications.

Many kids today are used to taking pills or seeing friends take them for sickness or adhd, so for a little one to climb up and grab them is not such an unlikely scenario.

But if you have older children or teenagers, you are not out of the woods either, kids have been know to take their parents medications like oxycodone, or to steal it from their friends parents when they visit.  They know that some pills can be used to get high, or to sell to other kids.

So I would suggest you find a place to lock up you medications, don't leave them out or lying around, where little hands, or stealing hands can get to them.  Invest perhaps in a safe for your bedroom, for both your medicine and your jewelry.

Better safe than sorry.

Giving your daughter an I-Phone? Get this App as a Start

Don't forget to read my previous entry of not showing off your I Phone so you don't get mugged, but if you have a daughter with an I Phone or you are giving one....consider putting this free app on the phone from the YWCA of Canada.

I don't think its the perfect app for protection, but it is a great free start. It has several functions and conveys info about date rape and other issues in a fashion.

I like the fact it will send out an emergency sms message and your location.....I don't have an I phone, but try it out, let us know.

You can get more info here.

Don't Show Your Cell Phone After Dark

All over the city, at all times, but especially after dark, people are being mugged for their cell phones.

Sometimes they are assaulted, but it is quite often just snatched from the hands of victims as they are using them.

Easy to steal, easy to sell. Teens are also being mugged at an alarming rate for their phones.

I actually saw a cell phone snatch, right at Yonge & Bloor Street in broad daylight in downtown Toronto from my car while waiting at a red light, in broad daylight.

The victim was standing talking hands free into his phone, when the thief came up, interrupted him with some kind of looking for directions ruse.

Then just snatched the cell phone from his hands and was off an running, before the victim realized what happened the suspect already had a 50 yard head start.

When you are out in public, don't flaunt your cell phone, especially at night.

How to quickly Cool a Car that is Hot as an Oven

Now this could be a personal safety  tip, if you had to put a child or a pet in a car, but  if you have to put you in a hot car left out in the sun, try this.

Open the drivers side door, roll down the window, and close the door.
Go to the passenger side door.
Open and Close the door widely 5 times.

According to physics what will happen is each time you open the passenger side door, you are actually sucking out massive amounts of hot air from inside the car, and it will dramatically lower the heat level inside.   Try it!