The northern cities of U.S. were very unequal in the early 1900's, but had much lower murder rates than today. In Baltimore and Philadelphia mansions inhabited by old money sat blocks away from immigrant tenements. Yet the murder rates were a fraction of the rates today.
Crime is the default state when you combine low class people with lax law enforcement (and by low class, I mean the cultural attributes of the lower classes. A rich drug dealer is still low class. A grad student living on ramen is not low class). In general, the countries with more low class people will be more unequal. But if you just give the low class people McMansions with pools, they do not become any less violent ( http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/09/us/09housing.html ). Conversely, if you take an unequal society with a huge lower class, and just get rid of the middle and upper classes, you get Zimbabwe.
Edit: If you're going to downvote a well reasoned argument that provides supporting evidence, you better post your own counter argument.
The thing people reacted negatively to was probably you unfounded claim about the causal relationship between lax law enforcement and criminality. Just look at the US which has a law enforcement that is ridiculipously rigid by western standards (IIRC an embarrassing 1% of the adult population is stowed away in jail) and still has considerably higher crime rate than many european countries, and especially the more egalitarian european countries.
In the U.S. a variety of factors caused law enforcement in the major cities to break down in the late 60's and 70's (factors include: supreme court rulings, the great society, demagoguing politicians, lawsuits). As a result, crime shot upwards. In the 80's and 90's there was a backlash, and law enforcement increased significantly (Rudi Guiliani, etc). As a result, a lot of criminals ended up in jail, and the crime rate dropped.
The paradox of lax law enforcement is that in the long run you have a much higher rate of imprisonment because lax law enforcement creates more criminals. Conversely, Singapore, with its ultra-strict enforcement has very low crime.
In terms of policing, America is like the awful parent who alternates between allowing their kid to drink and get in trouble, and then every once in a while throws a fit and beats the kid. The recipe for good law enforcement is consistency and nipping problems in the bud. If you've ever studied American law enforcement, you'll find it operates in the exact opposite manner.
The crime rate differential between the U.S. and Europe goes back a long time. If you really want to understand it, I highly recommend this book: http://books.google.com/books?id=NGBLAAAAMAAJ&printsec=f... Written in 1920, it barely needs any updating today. And what is the primary causes of the difference in crime rate? President Taft sums it up the best: "It is not much to say, that the administration of criminal law in this country is a disgrace to our civilization, and that the presence of crime and fraud, which is greatly in excess of that in the European countries, is due largely to the failure of the law and its administration to bring criminals to justice."
London in 1900 had a much lower crime rate than London today, despite being far more unequal. ( http://www.parliament.uk/commons/lib/research/rp99/rp99-111.... )
Crime is the default state when you combine low class people with lax law enforcement (and by low class, I mean the cultural attributes of the lower classes. A rich drug dealer is still low class. A grad student living on ramen is not low class). In general, the countries with more low class people will be more unequal. But if you just give the low class people McMansions with pools, they do not become any less violent ( http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/09/us/09housing.html ). Conversely, if you take an unequal society with a huge lower class, and just get rid of the middle and upper classes, you get Zimbabwe.
Edit: If you're going to downvote a well reasoned argument that provides supporting evidence, you better post your own counter argument.