In some cases "nicer" areas have more reported crime because the people who live there are more likely to report minor crimes to the police. I was born in P.G. county and even though I'm white we still almost never talk to the police unless we have to, and all I hear about PG from Calvert folk is "crime". I've lived in Edgewater MD too, and it has high crime rates but when you look into it it's all fraud and domestic abuse, bad but not the kind of crime people clutch their pearls over. Almost everyone I tell I live in Baltimore to, that cares to point out crime has also told me of instances they have knowingly broken the law. People universally see it as ok to break laws they don't like but fear monger that other people engage in the same behavior. We do have more of the kind of scary crime people worry about but it's just an odds. Urban areas have more crime, but unless it's a particularly poor area, they have more college graduates, they have more people earning 6 figures, they have more of everything.

Just remember our unofficial slogan I'm making up.

"Baltimore, actually I like it"