I've lived in a big city for years now. Never seen anybody get mugged, or shot, or carjacked, despite doing activist work that often has me visiting poor minority neighborhoods.
The only time I ever really felt uneasy was when I had to walk alone at night through a neighborhood where all the businesses had bars on the windows. Worst thing that happened was a couple of people asking me for money, and they didn't give me any shit when I said I didn't carry cash.
But any time I visit the small town where I grew up there's always someone or another acting like I came back from a fucking warzone lmao
Yeah St. Louis is real, real bad. That place is a mess. Ferguson, the place where Michael Brown was murdered and Black Lives Matter started, is part of that metro. iirc there were more outstanding bench warrants for petty crimes and non-crimes in Ferguson than there were adults. The city was farming those people for revenues, it's disgusting. Then add all the other issues America, and especially the state of Misery/Missouri, have, and you end up with a metro like St. Louis.