I work in the fifth most safest city in the country.
Dearborn, Flint, and Detroit ring me (and Troy) to the southwest, northwest, and southeast (respectively).
I guess what they say about suburbs being bastions of white suburbia has something to it. I live in and around a safe haven, but the further away I get from it, the more dangerous things become. North to Flint is dangerous, south to Detroit is dangerous.
Though quite frankly, I'd be scared out of my wits to go to Flint, but I have absolutely no fear at all walking down Woodward during most times in Detroit. Maybe it's because I grew up in the shadow of the city and spend a lot of time there, I don't know, but I'd bet the crime is focused in a few specific warrens of Detroit, and not in the downtown, and not in a lot of perfectly safe neighborhoods. It sucks to see a large city labelled as the second most dangerous city in America when there's so many great things about the city, and when there's so many great places to live in and around it.
posted
What would be neat is if someone could organize those into a map-- where the Safe cities were colored green, and as the scale progresses, they become red.
That way we could see at a glance where the safest geographic locations of the country are-- highest ratio of greens to reds.
Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
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posted
Interesting. Just yesterday I watched a study with my roommate Beth that said that Detroit is the number two most dangerous city in the country, after St. Louis.
Where do all these places get their information from?
Posts: 7877 | Registered: Feb 2003
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The link says the FBI provides the information; I'm not sure how the FBI gets it, or what the parameters for 'safe' are.
Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
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posted
Amherst, NY (where my in-laws live) just recently fell to number 2 on the list. Buffalo (where I work) is all the way down at 340. Ouch. I'm surprised Cheekta-vegas is at 36, I guess tacky lawn decorations is not an accurate predictor of relative safety.
Posts: 5422 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
Detroit is safer depending on who you are. The crimes there rarely cross racial lines.
I lived in Palmer Park in Detroit for seven months and never saw so much as a mugging. Our air bags did get stolen once (from the church parking lot!), but that's it.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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Airbags can fetch $100 - 200, because they cost almost $300 apiece to replace. You can pop them out quickly. If there's only one thing to steal, steal the airbags.
We joked that we'd get the same airbags back when we got the car fixed. What a racket!
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
What is more interesting is to compare the final standings in pro-baseball with city safety. (#1 St. Louis World Series champs. #2 Detroit, American League Pennant Winners )
Is there correlation. Does baseball lead to crime?
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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Maybe it's just that in big baseball cities the populace is just so bored that they have to go out and commit crime. Posts: 3960 | Registered: Jul 2001
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So New York City (145) is safer than Ogden, UT (182) and far far safer than Salt Lake City (247)?
I've been to those two Utah cities, and when I was there I felt like I could have left my wallet on the sidewalk, and then been confident that it would still be there when I returned.
Interesting that my impression appears to be so far off.
I just can't believe I'd be safer walking alone at night in a non-Manhattan borough like Brooklyn than I would be walking alone at night in Ogden.
Posts: 5656 | Registered: Oct 1999
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It seems like Alabama fared pretty badly. All the cities big enough to make the list are down towards the bottom. And of course, my hometown, New Orleans, they're still trying to come up with language strong enough to describe how unsafe it is.
Posts: 3056 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
I hate lists like this. So its made based on the cities reported crime stats. Is it weighted? Like are they considering a mugging the same as a murder? And is it based on some per capita % or a combination of the metro area for each city?
I highly doubt St Louis is the most dangerous place in the country. I'd go there before I ever went to NYC or Camden or Compton for goodness sakes.
And Little Rock is a delightful city. It may not belong in the top 100 but that low is just ridiculous.
On the other hand, I live in a Memphis suburb. I have no problem with where they have Memphis rated. LOL
Posts: 176 | Registered: Sep 2006
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posted
They posted this over at woot, and pointed out that this ONLY takes into account crime within city limits. The same group that came up with these stats also has data based on Metropolitan Statistical Areas.
Detroit is still second on the list, of course if you include Dearborn and Livonia.
Posts: 5422 | Registered: Dec 2001
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Miami... where? I'm assuming Florida, but there are three Miami's in the US that I know of.
At least we beat Orlando by 20 places...
*EDIT*: Coral Springs, Florida is listed as #10, even though it's less than three miles away from Ft. Lauderdale, which is listed as #271?!?
Posts: 3486 | Registered: Sep 2002
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posted
There are exactly 371 cities in the U.S.? Really?
Almost all the safe cities in SoCal are safe because they are BORING. They have little or no cultural life, so their residents all come to L.A. to party, etc. No wonder we're down at #250.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
Odd, I didn't see any Maryland cities on that list in my quick scan. Of course, the lack of standard postal abbreviations makes the page hard to search...
quote:Originally posted by katharina: Maybe the city is wasting money on the sports teams instead of education and police.
The irony being, that in Detroit, sports bring in a hell of a lot more money than is spent on sports.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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It's not a question of whether there's an accounting profit in the amount spent vs. the amount collected; it's a question of whether there's an economic profit - if the money wouldn't bring a bigger (long-term) benefit if spent elsewhere.
I'm not well versed in sports economics, but I believe that most studies find that (all) of the benefits from sports teams aren't worth the money spent on the teams; the money could be put to a better use, and either return larger (accounting) profits, or, in most cases, return profits period.
Posts: 2409 | Registered: Sep 2003
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The city of Detroit has three sports teams actually in the city.
Hockey - Red Wings
Football - Lions
Baseball - Tigers
The city of Detroit doesn't even spend any money that I know of on the teams, and if it does, the millions, and in the case of last year's superbowl BILLIONS of dollars that these events bring into town are well more than worth it, especially considering the bill for the teams is mostly footed by the owners and the franchise in one way or another, and the profits come from the citizens of the city, and it finds it's way back into the city coffers.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
I thought the abbreviations they used were awful odd, it was completely arbitrary, some cities weren't good enough to have states included, some had postal codes, and for others the whole name was written out. It really made me feel unsafe just naviating about the site.
Posts: 959 | Registered: Oct 2005
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quote:Originally posted by James Tiberius Kirk: Odd, I didn't see any Maryland cities on that list in my quick scan. Of course, the lack of standard postal abbreviations makes the page hard to search...
--j_k
Only Baltimore made the list and it's at 360. According to all the news reports, that's an improvement, since it's no longer one of the 10 worst cities. Yay?
Posts: 959 | Registered: Jan 2002
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posted
How did this study define "safe"? Lowest crime rate? Lowest violent crime rate? Lowest accidents per capita? Lowest death rate? Lowest rate of natural disasters? Lowest rate of terror attacks? Lowest rate of environmentally related diseases? Lowest rate of allergies? Lowest rate of food poisoning?
quote:Originally posted by James Tiberius Kirk: Odd, I didn't see any Maryland cities on that list in my quick scan. Of course, the lack of standard postal abbreviations makes the page hard to search...
--j_k
Only Baltimore made the list and it's at 360. According to all the news reports, that's an improvement, since it's no longer one of the 10 worst cities. Yay?
360 out of 371? Sounds about right, though I wonder how Richmond, VA is only about three places better than Baltimore. --j_k
Posts: 3617 | Registered: Dec 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: The city of Detroit has three sports teams actually in the city.
Hockey - Red Wings
Football - Lions
Baseball - Tigers
Miami has only one, basketball's Heat, and there have been times that even that was at risk of moving North. The Miami Dolphins and Florida Marlins play thirty miles away, less than a quarter mile from the Broward County line. The Florida Panthers play even farther, in Broward, but it can be argued that they're not a "Miami" team (as is the case with the Marlins, for that matter).
posted
MrsM could talk more about Richmond than I can...but (I think) it has to do with the vast amount of poverty on the East side of I-95.
Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
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"Coral Springs, Florida is listed as #10, even though it's less than three miles away from Ft. Lauderdale, which is listed as #271?!?"
I could understand that there'd be a big difference between the two (though not 250 place difference). Ft. Lauderdale is much busier and crazier than Coral Springs.
"94. Plantation, Fla"
We made the top 100 .
Posts: 2054 | Registered: Nov 2005
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posted
One of the problems with this type of study is the definition of "city" in the US. Cities are defined based on political boundaries and not community boundaries. So for example the population of Salt Lake City is ~197,000 while the population of the Salt Lake Metro area is closer to 1 million. The city of Seattle has a population of 560,000 but the Seattle metro area is closer to 2.5 million.
How does this distort crime statistics?
Well look at Salt Lake for example. Crime rates are counted based on the number of city residents. But the number of people who are in the city limits is at times much much greater than the number of residents because people from all over the metro area commute to Salt Lake to work, go to Jazz games, go to restaurants and bars, attend the Symphony or the Ballet, attend the University of Utah and dozens of other activities. That means that the crimes committed inside the Salt Lake City boundaries are committed by and on people from all over the metro area. As a result, the crime rate for Salt Lake City is artificially high because the wrong population is in the denominator. In contrast, Draper (a city about 15 miles south of Salt Lake which has become a bedroom community in recent years) has an artificially low crime rate. Why? Because for 8 to 12 hours a day, most Draper residents aren't in Draper. If Draper residents commit a violent crime or have one committed on them, its most likely not while their at home asleep in Draper.
The end result is that if you look at the violent crime rate for Salt Lake City, alone, you get a number that is double the rate for the entire metro area and this isn't because neighborhoods in Salt Lake City proper are fundamentally more dangerous than neighborhoods in West Valley, Murray, or Draper. Its because we have defined the wrong population associated with the crimes.
The end result is that cities like San Antonio that have very expansive city limits which include most of the metro area will end up having lower crime rates than cities like Seattle, Boston and Salt Lake where the city limits don't accurately represent the size of the metro area.
[ November 01, 2006, 09:06 PM: Message edited by: The Rabbit ]
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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posted
30 out of the top 100 are in California. Pretty good odds. Unfortunately, Berkeley is 226.
I say this after recently learning that 10 people were injured in a Halloween party shooting in SF (#270) last night. Posts: 3950 | Registered: Mar 2006
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posted
The site I linked to earlier for the folks that made the list explains it, something to do with the way Chicago reports their data for rape that makes their numbers not usable on the list.
(This is TheTick, my wife didn't log out on the laptop)
Posts: 153 | Registered: Aug 2002
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