Is Detroit Nation's Most Dangerous City or Is Someone Cooking The Books?
You know family, my momma is from Detroit, as is one of the bros on this site. So we ain't none too happy over in these parts right about now.
Clearly a blow to the Motor City's already tarnished image, Detroit pushed past St. Louis to become the nation's most dangerous city, according to a private research group's controversial analysis of annual FBI crime statistics. So much for Kwame Kilpatrick's mayoral legacy.
The 14th annual "City Crime Rankings: Crime in Metropolitan America" was published by CQ Press, a unit of Congressional Quarterly Inc. It is based on the FBI's Sept. 24 crime statistics report. The report looked at 378 cities with at least 75,000 people based on per-capita rates for homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary and auto theft. Last year's crime leader, St. Louis, fell to No. 2. Another Michigan city, Flint, ranked third, followed by Oakland Calif.; Camden, N.J.; Birmingham, Ala.; North Charleston, S.C.; Memphis, Tenn.; Richmond, Calif.; and Cleveland.The study ranked Mission Viejo, Calif., as the safest U.S. city, followed by Clarkstown, N.Y.; Brick Township, N.J.; Amherst, N.Y.; and Sugarland, Texas. Out on the Southern California, Compton ranked the 14th most dangerous.
The study assigns a crime score to each city, with zero representing the national average. Detroit got a score of 407, while St. Louis followed at 406. The score for Mission Viejo, in affluent Orange County, was minus 82. Detroit was pegged the nation's murder capital in the 1980s and has lost nearly 1 million people since 1950, according to the Census Bureau. Downtown sports stadiums and corporate headquarters -- along with the redevelopment of the riverfront of this city of 919,000 -- have slowed but not reversed the decline. Officials have said crime reports don't help. The study excluded Chicago, Minneapolis, and other Illinois and Minnesota cities because of incomplete data. [Source]