Forbes names Minneapolis safest city in America (insurance, violent crime)

[moving123456]

Originally Posted by Wingfoot

LIES !!!!!
Everyone knows its St. Paul !

The ranking is actually for the Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI Metro Area, not just Minneapolis proper.

Here is the full list.....

Full List: America's Safest Cities - Forbes.com

[pirate_lafitte]

Originally Posted by moving123456

The ranking is actually for the Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI Metro Area, not just Minneapolis proper.

Here is the full list.....

Full List: America's Safest Cities - Forbes.com

In that case, what are the rankings for THE CITY only, not the metro?

[big daryle]

Hey, dont go ripping my town of Norwood-Young America. It is a fine, fine small city.

[rcsteiner]

Originally Posted by Oscar25

Poverty doesn't make you a criminal. People always hate on poor/minority people and their areas in the city.

People tend to react negatively to anything they don't understand and can't relate to, and the media doesn't help by constantly sensationalizing and stereotyping crime.

Criminals come in all shapes and sizes. Some of the worst ones are on Wall Street, or were, but most of them will get away with little more than a slap on the wrist. Why is that?

[pirate_lafitte]

Originally Posted by rcsteiner

People tend to react negatively to anything they don't understand and can't relate to, and the media doesn't help by constantly sensationalizing and stereotyping crime.

Criminals come in all shapes and sizes. Some of the worst ones are on Wall Street, or were, but most of them will get away with little more than a slap on the wrist. Why is that?

It doesn't surprise me that many people tend to react negatively to things they don't understand. It is easier than thinking. You also have a point about the media. When all that is shown is the negative and many people don't have the personal interactions to disprove anything, or when that is all pop culture shows you, then that stuff because believable to the viewer.
Blue collar crime is always punished harder than white-collar crime. Much of it is a matter of class and race. In some cases, it really is heinous, like murder. Strangely enough, more people die from medical quackery than from homicide. Most doctors get their medical license taken away, but it isn't punished as hard as manslaughter.

Now Minneapolis, the murder rate has certainly dropped. Last year Mpls had 39 murders. This year, Mpls may not even record anymore than 30 murders. From what I hear it has to do with programs aimed at the youth to keep them out of trouble. It looks like it's working.

[rcsteiner]

Originally Posted by pirate_lafitte

Now Minneapolis, the murder rate has certainly dropped. Last year Mpls had 39 murders. This year, Mpls may not even record anymore than 30 murders. From what I hear it has to do with programs aimed at the youth to keep them out of trouble. It looks like it's working.

I wish the City of Atlanta would take a good hard look at the way Minneapolis is run, and not just in terms of crime.

[pirate_lafitte]

Originally Posted by rcsteiner

I wish the City of Atlanta would take a good hard look at the way Minneapolis is run, and not just in terms of crime.

It doesn't shock me that Atlanta is not run the way Mpls is run. There has always been much higher levels of corruption compared to Minnesota. Oddly enough, Georgia has the toughest crime law in the USA, two strikes and you spend 25 to life in prison. Georgia still has a high murder rate compared to Minnesota,which doesn't have such a law or the death penalty. Minneapolis is doing something right. I remember when I lived in Marietta,GA. There was a place for the kids in my apartment complex to go to after school. There were rules and it kept most of the kids out of trouble.

[Isabel_009]

Can someone tell me if I've made a big mistake in understanding what Forbes did... It looks like they counted the number of absolute deaths related to crime for the year of 2008 and did not weight this information against the size of the city. Minneapolis may have a small absolute number of crime-related deaths, but the city is small compared to some other cities on the list. Without considering the size (area) and population, these findings are hardly a good guide to the safest city. But maybe I'm mistaken somehow because that seems like a really obvious thing to correct for.

[pirate_lafitte]

Originally Posted by Isabel_009

Can someone tell me if I've made a big mistake in understanding what Forbes did... It looks like they counted the number of absolute deaths related to crime for the year of 2008 and did not weight this information against the size of the city. Minneapolis may have a small absolute number of crime-related deaths, but the city is small compared to some other cities on the list. Without considering the size (area) and population, these findings are hardly a good guide to the safest city. But maybe I'm mistaken somehow because that seems like a really obvious thing to correct for.

You also should consider places of smaller size(or bigger) size have higher rates of violence than Minneapolis, such as Newark, New Orleans, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Buffalo,etc.

[moving123456]

Originally Posted by Isabel_009

Can someone tell me if I've made a big mistake in understanding what Forbes did... It looks like they counted the number of absolute deaths related to crime for the year of 2008 and did not weight this information against the size of the city. Minneapolis may have a small absolute number of crime-related deaths, but the city is small compared to some other cities on the list. Without considering the size (area) and population, these findings are hardly a good guide to the safest city. But maybe I'm mistaken somehow because that seems like a really obvious thing to correct for.

They posted their methodology at the end of the list. The ranking is also for the metro area of 3.2 million people according to the full list, not just the city of Minneapolis. The Milwaukee area at number 2 has just 1.5 million.

Originally Posted by Forbes

Methodology

To determine our list of America's safest cities, we looked at the country's 40 largest metropolitan statistical areas across four categories of danger. We considered violent crime rates from the FBI's 2008 uniform crime report; 2008 workplace death rates from the Bureau of Labor Statistics; 2008 traffic death rates from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration; and natural disaster risk, using rankings from green living site SustainLane.com.