>I agree with your dislike of absolutes but surely we are allowed to extrapolate if risk value is high. That's why I wear a seatbelt on every trip despite the fact that I've never been involved in a major car crash and don't expect to be.

On this, I agree totally.

>If it is true that gang activity is rising in schools and if it is true that a 300-person gang-related riot occurred in a mall that presumably had been considered safe, perhaps it makes sense for parents to take a critical look at their own local "safe" mall.

I have no idea whether the first antecedent there is true or not. Instinct says that gang activity is rising in some schools and shrinking in others. Clearly, the incident that started this thread was bad, and calls for scrutiny from the local community.

Seems to me that in general, one needs to pay attention to safety issues on an ongoing basis. Things do change. However, as I said elsewhere in the thread, we do run the risk of limiting our lives unnecessarily if we're too cautious.

>FWIW I was there during a riot in (of all places) Queen Street in Auckland, New Zealand. See http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/media/photo/queen-street-riots-1984 . I was lucky enough to get off the street and into an electronics store whose proprietor I knew. We battened the hatches and prepared to repel boarders as chaos unfolded outside. Predictable? I doubt it. You can't predict mob mentality and nothing any parent might have suggested would have prepared for this.
>
>As for safety in the US: I've visited malls in many cities and have never perceived any safety risk at all. Any school-age kids I do see are respectful and more likely to address an adult as "sir" than to try to stab him- at least that's how it seemed to me. Perhaps my grim demeanor puts them off. ;-)

I've certainly seen teen behavior I didn't like at malls, but rarely anything that made me feel unsafe. I've been known to glare at kids having a smoke, but have sadly come to realize that I'm now too old for my opinion to matter to them.

Tamar