Home Safe Home

I am not normally prone to bragging, but as you may have noticed, I have no qualms about saying that the house I bought with Will is the most perfect, adorable house you have ever seen. I am comfortable saying this to friends and strangers alike.

But recently, a couple of people have answered my bragging by raising concerns about crime and the in the county since the New Year. So I have had to re-examine my feelings about my new home and neighborhood.

For example, one new acquaintance relayed the story of her daughter, who promptly had her purse stolen after starting at the university. She told this story as though it was a wake-up call for her daughter that she was not in Kansas anymore, that she was in the real world of College Park.

But stories like this do not fit with my view of my neighborhood. Perhaps my perspective is different because I am not a university student, but the feeling of safety and quiet was one of the main selling points of our house, especially compared to some of the other places we had looked at.

For example, Will and I saw one of our first batches of houses on a warm Saturday morning in August. We had just seen a small house in Takoma Park that I was interested in. We followed our realtor to the next house on the list, and as we pulled up we saw a couple of cop cars across the street from the house we were touring.

A man was being cuffed for what appeared to be some sort of domestic dispute. Needless to say, we crossed that house off the list, and we commiserated with our realtor about how impossible it is to sell a house after the prospective buyers see someone being arrested across the street. 

Before we stumbled upon our College Park house, we also put an offer on a house in Hyattsville, but not before agonizing about crime and safety in that neighborhood. While the house was on a quiet street, we were worried about the safety of the bike route I would have to take to the metro. 

When I checked out crime statistics for the area, the crime rate was higher than the national average — in some cases much higher. For example, according to The Washington Post, robbery in Hyattsville is 193 percent the national average, vehicle theft is 220 percent the national average and murder is 119 percent the national average. I still remember the feeling I had when I clicked on the crime map and saw the markers for each crime bloom across the map of my prospective neighborhood.

In comparison, we didn't even check the crime statistics in College Park because, well ... it just felt safer. And it is, according to the same website. For example, robbery in College Park is 11 percent the national average, murder is 20 percent the national average and the total risk of crime is 13 percent the national average. 

These numbers do not erase the seriousness of the recent murders in the county or the impact they have on the community. But for some reason the crime statistics feel vindicating to me — as though they confirm my gut feelings about the neighborhood. I still intuitively make decisions, like avoiding pumping gas alone at night, that show I think about crime. But I hope I don't experience anything in my new hometown to change my mind about its safety.