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Today, my little school in Rural Ontario, was evacuated because of a bomb threat. We were made to stand out in the pouring rain for hours, so that police could make sure our school, a place we go to every day, wasn't about to be blown sky high. This got me to thinking. In my community, in the past three years, there has been a murder, a car bombing, and many, many suicides. Now, bear in mind that I live in a relitively small town. The biggest city around is Ottawa, which is two hours away. This isn't the sort of place you'd expect such rampant violence and chaos to be seen. True, Toronto has murders occuring almost daily, amongst other crimes and catastrophies, but I never expected to see even a speck of those sorts of events where I live.The scariest thing is, it's all happening very suddenly. Five years ago, no one would belive someone would be murdered in Prescott's main street.

My question is, have you noticed a spike in violence in your communities? Is this a global trend, or is my little city the only one getting more violent?

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TURKEY! - (The only way not to get blocked for using Fowl Language)

yea, things like this happen. hell, fairly recently my city was mentioned on SA for the murder of two men by a 15 year old girl.

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moé in the streets, senpai in the sheets

Well, where I go to school in Charlottesville there was a bomb threat at the Rolling Stones concert a month ago. I was pretty impressed with how the police handled it, though, they basically kept it all uder wraps during the concert, citing "technical difficulties" as the reason for the hour and a half impromptu intermission. No one found out it was actually a bomb threat until a mass announcement immediately after the concert.

Other than that, all the violence I can think of is one stabbing in an alley on The Corner (a row of shops and restaurants on the edge of campus where students hang out at all hours) and a mugging at gunpoint a few blocks off-campus around a block or so away from my apartment. Both of those were sometime in October. There was also a string of race-related graffiti incidents on one of the Black Fraternity houses near the end of last schoolyear, but it turned out to be townies and not UVA students, thank goodness. The skinheads doing it basically had the brilliant idea of doing one of the frat houses one Sunday night, the next-nearest one the next Sunday night, and a third one the next Sunday night, where they got caught. Brilliant.

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this is a blog mostly about comics and videogames
END SPOILER

i kinda know what you mean. im from a small town also (my graduating class from hs was about 125!), and now that im at the university, whoa! in san diego, lots af crazy things go on....last week an hs cheerleader was killed in a bank robbery and a couple sorority girls were taken hostage. im not used to it so i freaked out! but ppl from here didnt seem to care at all. i was kinda trippin you know? im still tryin to adjust even tho its my soph year....

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"The answer is, of course, that it would be best to be both loved and feared. But since the two rarely come together, anyone compelled to choose will find greater security in being feared than in being loved."
- Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince

My high school was evacuated once (about three or four years ago) because of a bomb threat.

Ever since Columbine, there's been the idea among disgruntled and somewhat-psychotic teenagers that it's possible to cause mass chaos and murder at a school. Which is sad and troubling. First that they'd want to anyways, second that they feel it's something they could do.

I don't feel like going off on a long rant about why these troubled people end up having such vastly destructive thoughts, partly because I just finished writing a paper and I'm tired of organizing ideas, and partly because that's not part of the topic here.

Other than that, I'd say the most common cause of injury in the towns I've lived in is traffic accidents.

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Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )

Back when I was in high school, one of the guys I know called in a fake bomb threat.

Also I found out Al Queda was hiding out in my home town. Fancy that.

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Arts

Farts

Twarts

We once had an anthrax scare in my humble town of 2,000 people. They had the guys in those bulky space suits and everything. We also had a car at every stop sign at our 4 way intersection once.

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The clouds ran away, opened up the sky
And one by one I watched every constellation die
And there I was frozen, standing in my backyard
Face to face, eye to eye, staring at the last star
I should've known, walked all the way home
To find that she wasn't here, I'm still all alone

-Atmosphere "Always Coming Back Home to You"

We had frequent bomb threats one year back in high school. One week in particular was really hectic, with five threats in just four days - two of those in a single day. It was almost like a fad, which is both morbid and disgustingly ignorant. It sorta died off after a couple weeks into the school year, and no more occurred (that I remember) afterwards. I think there had been eight or nine in total.

Violence seems rather common in my area. Almost every day the news reports on local murders and/or attempted homicides, as does the newspaper. Robberies, domestic disputes, assaults, road rage... the list goes on. Not all happen exactly where I live, but nearby; this entire region seems swamped with more violence than it'd appear to. For one thing, all the forested areas and lakes within the mountain range are apparently convenient places for murderers to rid their victims. I lived for twelve years on one of these mountains, up a long straightaway surrounded by dense forest. I didn't learn till long after I had moved that the natural atmosphere there had made it a favorite of sorts to criminals; it was a prime place for murders and dumping off dead bodies without any suspicion, and most wouldn't be discovered for weeks. It and other, similar locales were featured on an A&E program last month for that very reason.

But has this violence escalated in my location? No, I don't believe so. There have been increasingly idiotic crimes commited in recent years, but not necessarily more of 'em.

This post has been edited by SilverFork on 17th November 2005 09:39

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Words of Wisdom:

If something can go wrong, it will.

If anything simply cannot go wrong, it will anyway.

If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong. - Murphy’s Law

Boing! Zoom! - Mr. Saturn

I think it seems easier for you small-area dwellers to become worried by this sort of thing. I mean, in towns where you actually know how many people live there (!) it's harder to distance yourself from the crimes, these things are happening in YOUR little community.

Now, I think for people like me, who has only lived in London and the surrounding areas, hearing that you've had a murder, and carbomb, and suicides, in three years? Wow, I think most around here would say you are damn lucky. Infact, independent of town size I think you have had a good run of things. Ok, so, suicides, not really a crime, and you can actually count the other major crimes on one hand. But they are always closer to home for you. A murder could happen in my town and I would not even know where the area is. Easier to distance myself from it then. And it would soon get forgotten, since theres the next major crime to hear of. In the end, we'd all just become hermets, to worried to leave the house, if we over-thought every single major crime.

Every week my local paper has a major crime on the front (It's printed every Friday).

And then theres whatevers printed inside too.

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Whether you take the doughnut hole as a blank space or as an entity unto itself is a purely metaphysical question and does not affect the taste of the doughnut one bit.

http://slightly-bitter.blog.co.uk

I read an article about this once that suggested that it's not so much that violence is increasing, but that the reports of violence are increasing. There was a time where every little crime from trespassing to rape/murder/suicide was not necessarily put in the paper (though generally, the most serious were). Now, media people are very quick to get all the bad news out there and heard.

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I had an old signature. Now I've changed it.

I think Elena's thought holds some water, though I think that sort of thing is a climatic change and has been happening for the last thirty years, not just recently. I'm not sure what sort of time frame Ultros is looking for, though.

I know in my more-or-less hometown, outside which I grew up and within which I lived for a couple years between finishing Uni and moving to NY, has been on a downturn of violent crime in general since about 2001.

I haven't been up on school violence since I left school, but as far as I'm aware there still aren't many major issues at any of the schools around where I used to live, and I just don't even bother keeping up on where I live now. The only violent crime I can recall from White Plains at the moment was the one this summer where the convicted rapist decided he wanted to kill a white woman. I know there is a fair amount of violence around here, I just don't pay much attention.

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

I remember back in Middle school, we had a LOT of bomb threats, just because some people believed they could get out of class. Everyone would be evacuated and the bomb squad would be called and search the school for the so-called bomb. At one point we had 3 bomb threats in a week.

Then a couple years ago someone called in a bomb on a teacher's phone. I guess the call was made in the morning or the previous night or something, but the Teacher didn't check his/her messages until 5th period, the class before lunch. Afterward we were evacuated to the field we spent an hour or so there until the bomb squad declared no bomb. After that we suffered a 10 minute lecture from our Superattendant. His speech ended with something like "we will go to MY cafeteria and eat MY food" or to that effect.

Some students even did the Nazi salute as they left the field. We haven't stopped calling him a Nazi behind his back since.

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Neneko is Neneko because Neneko couldn't be Neneko if Neneko wasn't Neneko!
--as quoted from Neneko, Mahoraba {Heartful Days}

I can stab a man with a thick paperback book thru the ribcage.

Way back when I was in Junior high there was a string of bomb threats and we got to sit outside for like an hour before school started. That ruled because it got us out of class.

Even farther back, when I was in first grade, we had a bomb threat to my elementary school and the first grade class went over to these nice old people's house and we watched Nickelodeon until our parents could come and get us. That was even more awesome.

There's been anincrease in gang-related deaths in my city, but other murders haven't really been high. almost all being women killed by estranged common-law spouses, sadly.

though two years ago, a co-worker of mine that i spoke to a little bit was murdered by his son. the nicest 60-year-old man, found in the basement of his burned-out home. it was a real shocker. they found his son trying to get over the border somewhere in Quebec a few weeks later. it's avery disconcerting feeling when someone you know has been murdered...

This post has been edited by Jenny on 18th November 2005 00:01

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The first duty in life is to assume a pose,
and the second duty is...well, no one's found out yet.

I have to admit that I don't pay much attention to what goes on in my community but I do remember about 2 1/2 years ago a couple of things happened.

1. Some local girl disappeared. And it turned out the guy that was last seen with her (who was a friend) was the culprit. I don't believe they found her alive, if at all.

2. I was up late one night (probably after working til midnight at Blockbuster) and outside I heard gun shots and these people screaming and running away and I heard a car drive off. It turns out that some people had shown up at my neighbor's townhouse and busted down the door and started beating him up so his roommate grabbed a shot gun and started shooting.

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Elena Indurain

Currently Playing: Suikoden II

Not where I live, but in Richmond VA, 15 minutes away, their has definetly been more gangs and murders and stuff. Fancy that, Richmond. With gangs. My mom, who used to be a nurse practitioner in trauma, would get many of the people that she saw on the news on her care.

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Dead Winter. A nice comic.

Apparently someone killed John F. Kennedy, but WTK is he?

But in my region, there was this whole thing whichI don't even know about but someone got raped and then this dude was found guilty and went to gaol and that was so like that so shut up.

But I think this equation works: x games = x violence. If you paly Conker, or GTA, or Perfect Dark, then you kill someone for every 10000 Skedar/dudes/noobs.

I blame Rare's ware.

Moderator Edit

I see the quality of your contributions to somewhat serious conversation has gotten better while you were gone. -R51

This post has been edited by Rangers51 on 18th November 2005 21:10

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You say I'm weird: you're the person who is exited when you kick a leather testicle into a net.

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