Is KL (not) that safe?

I always thought that KL is a safe city. Not until a new expat at my work got beaten and robbed in his first couple of months in KL. Pretty bad. Unconscious for several hours until in the morning. He managed to drive by himself back to his place, and later was taken to the hospital. He needed several plastic surgeries.

What I thought was right. All articles I could find on the net claim KL is safe - from fairly safe to one of the safer cities in Southeast Asia. One even claims that violent crime is almost unheard of. However, some local colleagues do feel and complain about the increasing crimes in the city. One even said that he wouldn't walk by himself in the city center by himself today, as a comparison with what he'd done several years ago. I also got the feeling that some blame the increase in crimes to the increasing number of Indonesian workers in Malaysia. Yeah, right, blame in on the Indonesians when you have problems. What I think they fail to see is that when the city grows in population, it's harder to manage, and the crime will automatically go up as well. At least that's what I learned while playing Sim City.