Aware of your surroundings?

The other day I was approached by a friend of mine to ask how they could build their awareness so they could avoid dangerous areas. Now in the ancient days of the ninja, there was no easy way to gather information from the news or internet, but today it is a different story. Let’s start with an easy  question, go to Google and type in “5 most dangerous cities in the USA 2013”, you will see a host of articles populate the search. I chose one to which include the FBI’s Preliminary Annual Uniform Crime Report(I bet you never heard of this one!)

#5 Memphis, Tenn

#4 St Louis , Mo

#3 Oakland, Calif

#2 Detroit, Mich

#1 Flint, Mich

Ok, now after gleaning through the report, I also gathered this tidbit, all of the most dangerous cities have the highest unemployment levels(all above 10%) and low percentage of High School diplomas(below 86%). After gathering this information, I reviewed the local surrounding town and city data around my home location and found that all of this data is available(for free) especially on various real estate, and Town/City webpages. Now what does this all mean to you as a lesson? Well, if you want to be aware of your surroundings you need to be informed about your surroundings. Utilizing the internet to gather information on a particular subject is pretty easy today, but then the analysis and further exploration to glean out the information required for your purposes can be somewhat difficult if you don’t understand how to analyze and lean down the information to something useful.

Your lesson today is to find the same type of information on the local surrounding towns and cities in your area, so you know where the higher crime areas are, what type of crimes are most prevalent, so that you can avoid or be prepared to prevent them. Hey, during the 15 min search for the information in my area, I came upon an  a brief report of a rash of car break ins in my town!

You never know where the information may lead you.

Bufu Ikkan!

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