A conversation got started over on abetteroakland.com about crime in Oakland. V Smoothe (one of the truly great Oakland bloggers), wanted to make the point that crime in Oakland is bad, and to do so she used the FBI’s Preliminary Annual Uniform Crime Report to build a graph comparing the crime rates of several cities to show that Oakland’s is particularly bad. While I agree that crime is bad and that some people are unrealistic about the existence of a problem, I said that the numbers aren’t an honest or conclusive comparison of cities. » Read on »