I don't like the poll options:
Perfectly safe - there are no reasons to avoid downtown day or night.
Somewhat safe - OK by day, but avoid downtown at night
Day or night downtown has a problem with crime.
Given the visibility of social disorder, it's easy to
say "Day or night downtown has a problem with crime," yet that wouldn't be true. At the same time, it's ridiculous to answer "Perfectly safe" unless you're Pollyanna. Why? Because Victoria
isn't perfectly safe, simple as that. But would you "avoid downtown" for that reason? "Day or night"? C'mon.
As for the middle option, that's no good either. Sure, it's easy to agree with "somewhat safe," but just because I might think it's "somewhat safe," I should agree with "avoid[ing] downtown at night"?? I don't think so, lads and lassies.
By the way, I have no problems letting my kids go downtown -- gasp!, unchaperoned, alone, not traveling in packs, but individually, by themselves. Even if it's dark - admittedly in the winter, that means anytime after 4:30, so yes, I don't mean at 10pm, when d/t gets really empty. But 6 or 7 or 8, when there are still plenty of people about? Fine. They know what to avoid: empty, unpeopled spaces. (aastra is right: we need
more people living downtown. more beat cops, too.)
I think it's very sad if Gordon Head parents tell their kids it's not safe to be downtown (during the day even!, iirc from mat's post, somewhere earlier on this thread or on another from where this was moved from).