How safe is San Diego for women?
Recently a friend of mine was mugged walking up to her front door. As she reached for the doorknob, she felt a huge tug at her side where her purse hung and before she even realized what had happened, the screech of rubber against asphalt rang in her ears, her purse snatched. When she told me about her experience, I immediately began to think about how scared she must have been and then also thought about how lucky she was— lucky that she wasn’t raped.
The whole incident reminded me of a lecture about rape and safety I had attended a couple of years ago at UC Santa Cruz. The room was filled to capacity with about 400 students. The speaker began the lecture by asking all the men how many times they felt afraid when walking alone at night, or had opted not to go out for fear of harassment or possible attack. Only two raised their hands. She then asked all of the women the same question, and every single woman in the auditorium raised her hand. The reality is that most women do not feel safe alone at night. My friends and I have even decided to carry around forks, which we deemed were safer than knives but still as potent.
All this got me wondering how safe it is to walk the streets around here. According to the San Diego Police Department, from January to November 2007, there have been a total of 265 rapes in San Diego. The most dangerous neighborhoods for women being Pacific Beach with 15 reported rapes, Mira Mesa with 14, and East Village and North Park with 11. Then I wondered how this compared to the schools here and found that San Diego State University reported a total of 15 forcible sex offenses, which include those that occurred on campus or at off-campus properties in 2006. The University of San Diego has a reported three forcible sex offenses that occurred on campus. UCSD has no reported rapes and four sexual offenses for 2006. These statistics, however, do not include the rapes that occur and are never reported.
There is some good news for the 49.6 percent of San Diego’s population that’s female— the number of total rapes in the city have decreased dramatically in the past couple of years. In 2005, there were 376 rapes in San Diego, and in 2006 348. While the stats for 2007 do not include December, there were 83 fewer rapes than in 2006. Those are some positive figures, and I must admit, reassuring. If you still want to feel safer, SDSU and UCSD offer rape prevention classes to offer women a better understanding of how they can avoid a possible attack.
