Falling crime rate a Hong Kong success to celebrate
Bernard Chan hails statistics that show the city is remarkably safe
Last week, US president Barack Obama visited Chicago to discuss gun crime. There were 443 murders by firearms in that one city last year, and 506 murders in all. This is a city with 2.8 million people - fewer than half of Hong Kong's population.
In other words, if Hong Kong had Chicago's crime rates, we would have had around 1,200 murders last year.
In fact, Hong Kong had 27. This is from the 2012 data released by the police.
Very few cities in the developed world are as bad as certain neighbourhoods in Chicago, where the murder rate has been spiralling upwards. New York, with a population a bit larger than Hong Kong's, had just over 400 murders. So Chicago had a murder rate more than three times higher than New York's. But to put that in context for us, New York's murder rate was about 14 times Hong Kong's; London's was almost four times ours.
Hong Kong is not by any means crime-free. The 2012 statistics show that 75,000 crimes of all sort took place last year; they included thefts, drug offences, triad incidents, domestic violence, arson and deception.
After thefts (about 33,600) and criminal damage (7,300), deception was Hong Kong's most frequent crime, with about 6,900 cases. All three are non-violent offences.
Last year's robberies numbered just 600 or so. Of the 12,800 violent crimes reported last year, the majority involved intimidation, blackmail and assault.