The individual responsible for the piranha's aggressive reputation was Teddy Roosevelt. In 1913, Roosevelt made a highly-publicized trip to the Amazon. The local officials, trying to impress their guest, blocked off a section of the river with nets and filled the temporary fish enclosure with armies (or navies?) of piranha, which they intentionally did not feed. When Roosevelt eventually arrived, the officials tossed in a cow which was quickly skeletonized by the ravenous fish. Roosevelt was quite impressed, and spread the story (at least the part he knew about, which started with tossing the cow in) throughout the USA in his memoirs.
At one time, the scientific name for an orange-bellied piranha was Rooseveltia natteri. The zoologist who imposed the name was not thinking of Roosevelt's Amazon trip but instead applied the name to the bloodthirsty fish because he despised the President.
Under normal conditions, people routinely swim in piranha waters without injury.
I knew a lawyer who kept a tank with two piranha (which he named after a couple of his banking clients). He provided them feeder goldfish daily. On one three-day weekend where his pets were not fed, he returned to discover only a single piranha--albeit a highly-satiated one.
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