SE, Stockton (Calif.) Record

This is disturbing, but it's also from Wikipedia ... a 2005 Central Connecticut State University survey ranked Stockton as the most illiterate of all cities with a population of more than 250,000. Also, in 2005, Forbes magazine listed it as having 6,570 crimes per 100,000 residents — the highest listed.

 

I wonder if they even read the newspaper there.

 

i was going to chime in that stockton does have a high crime rate. when my dad used to live and work on hammer lane, he got carjacked and shot in the face.

 

My parents still live in Stockton despite having three cars stolen, and two neighbors' homes broken into. And they live in a nice part of town, right next to Van Buskirk golf course.
Still, outside of the crime, it's an OK town.

 

... and, it's still in california.

where do you sign me up?

 

The big thing with crime in Stockton is auto theft. It's a port city of sorts, so it's quite easy to steal the car and get rid of it to the Bay. It's quite a lucrative business from what I hear. If you plan on living there, don't have one of the vehicles on that top-10 list of most stolen cars.

Other than that, the sports atmosphere in Stockton isn't too bad. Nice new arena and baseball stadium complex make for a nice minor league area. It's not a terrible little town otherwise either.

Oh and Barbara was at the SacBee. She is good people.

 

so, other than all that crime and the stupid prices of houses, it's a nice place to live?

you fucking californians amuse me.

 

Actually, Tom, I just left California for exactly those reasons. And having to enter my kid in a lottery to get a spot in the neghborhood public kindergarten.

I grew up in California, and I was glad to leave. I'd had enough. But I know a lot of people love it and would never consider leaving. So yeah, cost of living sucks, but it is what you make of it.

 

ian - been there. lived there. still go there.

love the hell out of it one or two weeks a year because i know i get to leave.

 

Sorry, guys. Lived in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Florida and Montana. I'm in California to stay. Does it have problems? Absolutely. But so does the rest of the country. I'd rather deal with these than the ones I ran into in other states.

 

There might be a context for those stats.

1. It might just be that there are a lot of immigrants who don't speak or read English. It doesn't necessarily mean people are stupid.

2. I would be more scared about the poster who said his father was carjacked than the overall crime statistics. When you see FBI crime stats, those are reported by local police departments and different departments have different standards. I remember my sister worked in a city which really had crime problems, but the reporting was low. It mattered to her because the phone company where she worked gave employees a little extra pay if they worked in a high-crime area, with the result that people in a large city which had crime but not so much in the downtown area got the bonus, while people who worked where my sister worked in the neighboring town didn't.

My point is, the best way to find out about crime is to ask people who live in the area.

 

Love where I live.

But I loved California, too, and would live there again for the right job.