Romania actually has a lower crime rate than the US, so you were unlucky.
The cop part is what they're working on with the whole anti corruption initiative.
For example, corruption is a very serious form of crime. Romania ranks #58 (below Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Croatia, and Greece) on Transparency International's corruption index, compared to the US at #16.
With Romania having such extreme corruption, how can you be certain its crime stats are worth taking seriously? How under-reported is crime - rape, theft, violent crime etc - likely to be in a nation with corruption problems that are that bad? From other countries with even worse corruption (eg Venezuela or Brazil), what we do know is that there tends to be a direct correlation - for extremely obvious reasons - between high levels of corruption and poor crime reporting.
And my anecdotal evidence says that Romania is truly a safe country. I probably know 1000+ Romanians and I know 1 that has been robbed while being threatened with a knife and several that have had things stolen from them. This feeling of safety is one of the few things that's reported constantly by people I know, either in rural areas or in urban areas: violence is not wide spread. We even have a proverb that says: "mamaliga explodeaza greu" ("it takes a long tine for mamaliga to explode": mamaliga is a local dish, a sort of corn porridge; the meaning of the expression is that we don't get aggravated quickly; we do talk a lot, curse and threaten and whatever but we tend to not actually fight that much... maybe we're cowards :) ). Most people over here would find the US gung-ho mentality quite threatening ("don't take my guns", "stand your ground").
What does happen constantly, and what the agency I posted above tries to fight, is wide spread practice of asking for bribes for any kind of service performed by a public servant. Which has a huge negative impact on small businesses, especially.
Interestingly, this phenomenon isn't limited to Romania - a Latvian friend running a furniture company does the same thing for the same reason - for the first two years of his business he filed genuine books - the first year, they came asking for a bribe, he refused - the second year, they raided him and took all the machine tools - so now he just "makes a loss" every year and they don't bother him.
Similarly, a Lithuanian friend who used to run a telco found himself stuck in the middle of a lover's quarrel between the state telecoms regulator and another telco who had paid a bribe to win a tender, which he then bid for and made things awkward.
Corruption is no joke - I think many underestimate the chilling effect it has on everything from civil liberties to tourism to business to tax revenue collection - if your tax collectors are corrupt, you are well and truly on the road to hell.
Re: Romania feeling safe, you're right - which is in no small part why my experience in Bucharest was such a shock - it was at total odds with the Romania I'd experienced up to that point.
