Likewise, I would never bad mouth Birmingham, except to a fellow Brummie, but I did experience quite a bit of mostly low scale crime when in Birmingham. In the mid 1980s I lived in Arden Road, Alum Rock. Our row of terrace houses were burgalled one night. Ours wasn't because I had made a dummy alarm sign and stuck it in the window. The council upgraded some of the house roofs, but not ours. Next door was done and many months later I discovered the builders had gained access to our loft and nicked stuff. I had petrol syphoned off from the car, packages stolen from the front door step. Kids would go along all our back gates and nick stuff from our gardens. We had trucks dumping waste material on the knocked down houses at the top of the road. But the worst was our friend was groped as she walked up Arden Road past the park. But inspite of all that, I still thought it was a lovely area. We were there for 4 years.
I felt much safer there than when we stayed with a friend in Newcastle. I really thought the car would be minus wheels in the morning. Needlles to say, they weren't, so that perception was wrong.