Ten safest and most dangerous ranked American cities

By M&C US News Nov 19, 2007, 3:53 GMT

Bucolic Thousand Oaks and Mission Viejo, California are top-ten safest towns in the Safest City and Metropolitan Area Awards.

Mission Viejo now ranks for the first time as the United States’ safest city.

At the opposite end is Motor City: Detroit, Michigan, reappears as the nation’s most dangerous city, a position it last held in 2003.

The rankings are contained in the 14th edition of City Crime Rankings: Crime in Metropolitan America, edited by Kathleen O’Leary Morgan and Scott Morgan and published by Washington-based CQ Press, the reference and textbook-publishing division of Congressional Quarterly.

Mission Viejo had zero murders in 2006, had the nation’s lowest rape statistics, and boasted the third-lowest rates of aggravated assault, violent crime, and property crime among cities with populations of 75,000 or more.

Joining Mission Viejo among the safest city ranks are Clarkston, New York; Brick Township, New Jersey; Amherst, New York; and Sugar Land, Texas.

Detroit has the worst crime of all the major cities in the country. St. Louis, Missouri, ranks second to Detroit in the dangerous cities ranking, followed by rustbelt Flint, Michigan; Oakland, California; and Camden, New Jersey.

The rankings of the safest and most dangerous cities and metropolitan areas are calculated using six basic crime categories: murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, and motor vehicle theft.

These categories have been used for determining city ratings since 1999. The rankings include all cities of at least 75,000 residents that reported crime data to the FBI in the categories noted. In the most recent survey, 378 cities were considered for the awards.

The 2006 statistics released by the FBI on September 24, 2007, determined their rankings.

CQ Press’s annual rankings of crime in states, metro areas and cities are considered by some in the law enforcement community as controversial.

The FBI, police and many criminologists point out that crime levels are affected by many different factors, such as population density, composition of the population (particularly the concentration of youth), climate, economic conditions, strength of local law enforcement agencies, citizen’s attitudes toward crime, cultural factors, education levels, crime reporting practices of citizens and family cohesiveness.

The CQ Press also published five other reference books that analyze and rank states and cities in various categories: the smartest state, the most liveable state, the healthiest state, the safest and most dangerous state, and the most improved state.

Top Ten Safest Cities:

1 Mission Viejo, CA
2 Clarkstown, NY
3 Brick Twnshp, NJ
4 Amherst, NY
5 Sugar Land, TX
6 Colonie, NY
7 Thousand Oaks, CA
8 Newton, MA
9 Toms River Twnshp, NJ
10 Lake Forest, CA

Top Ten Most Dangerous Cities:

1 Detroit, MI
2 St. Louis, MO
3 Flint, MI
4 Oakland, CA
5 Camden, NJ
6 Birmingham, AL
7 North Charleston, SC
8 Memphis, TN
9 Richmond, CA
10 Cleveland, OH

Source: CQ Press