America’s Most Dangerous and Safest Cities

Morgan Quitno Press recently published its annual City Crime Ranking which ranks 384 cities with 75,000 population or more across the country based on per-capita crime rates reported by the FBI. Serious crimes considered in the study include murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary and motor vehicle theft. According to the publisher, each crime is weighted equally and the weighted numbers in each category are added together to generate an overall score.

After falling to the second place behind St. Louis, MO in WCBS880.com, the top 25 dangerous cities with their respective scores are:

1. Detroit, MI: 407.2
2. St. Louis, MO: 406.2
3. Flint, MI: 381.0
4. Oakland, CA: 338.9
5. Camden, NJ: 323.8
6. Birmingham, AL: 268.8
7. North Charleston, SC: 254.3
8. Memphis, TN: 245.6
9. Richmond, CA: 245.1
10. Cleveland, OH: 244.4
11. Orlando, FL: 237.4
12. Baltimore, MD: 236.7
13. Little Rock, AR: 233.8
14. Compton, CA: 223.6
15. Youngstown, OH: 222.0
16. Cincinnati, OH: 218.3
17. Gary, IN: 214.0
18. Kansas City, MO: 203.4
19. Dayton, OH: 201.5
20. Newark, NJ: 197.3
21. Philadelphia, PA: 192.9
22. Atlanta, GA: 189.9
23. Jackson, MS: 188.8
24. Buffalo, NY: 187.8
25. Kansas City, KS: 187.6

At the other end of the spectrum are cities with lowest crime rates, including

1. Mission Viejo, CA: -82.1
2. Clarkstown, NY: -81.0
3. Brick Township, NJ: -78.7
4. Amherst, NY: -75.4
5. Sugar Land, TX: -75.4
6. Colonie, NY: -74.6
7. Thousand Oaks, CA: -73.8
8. Newton, MA: -73.5
9. Toms River Township, NJ: -72.7
10. Lake Forest, CA: -71.7
11. Irvine, CA: -71.1
12. Orem, UT: -70.6
13. Round Rock, TX: -69.4
14. Cary, NC: -68.6
15. Greece, NY: -68.5
16. Chino Hills, CA: -63.2
17. Coral Springs, FL: -62.0
18. Troy, MI: -61.8
19. Farmington Hills, MI: -61.7
20. Centennial, CO: -61.3
21. Glendale, CA: -59.2
22. Broken Arrow, OK: -58.8
23. Parma, OH: -58.8
24. Sterling Heights, MI: -58.5
25. Simi Valley, CA: -58.5

As you can imagine, the cities in the most dangerous list are not happy about the ranking, which only took the raw numbers without any context. And the publication of the report has been criticized by U.S. Conference of Mayors, as well as the FBI. However, I do feel the report has values, though itself is not perfect. If a city has a crime rate that’s 100 times higher than the city I am living in, I’d think twice before considering a relocation.

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