CQ Press: Most Dangerous Cities in America, 2010 (state, crime, place)

[18Montclair]

First, let me say as I've said in the past, that this is an incredibly reckless and irresponsible way to characterize municipalities. This ranking throws a huge blanket over entire cities and that is in very poor taste. I believe the company that does this seeks to be as sensationalistic as possible and deliberately ignores to the damage they know this horrible ranking does to the image of these cities.

Another thing that irks me about this ranking is that it presents data from the previous year as the ranking for the current year-and that is wrong. If this is data from 2009, then it should be presented as a ranking of 2009.

Example: Richmond, California has had a 50% drop in homicides in 2010 and crime is down across the board this year, but if you take this 2010 ranking at face value, you'd assume the city was in the midst of a crime epidemic having jumped 7 spots from the previous year-but the reality is crime is signifantly lower in Richmond this year(year-to-date).

So let's take this with a grain of salt folks, because these cities should not be defined by CQ Press, but by the opinions and experiences of the people who live there.

25 Most Dangerous Cities, 2010(Data is actually 2009)
Rank/ City, State/ Change in ranking from previous year
1 St Louis, MO +1
2 Camden, NJ -1
3 Detroit, MI +1
4 Flint, MI +1
5 Oakland, CA -2
6 Richmond, CA +7
7 Cleveland, OH +1
8 Compton, CA +4
9 Gary, IN +2
10 Birmingham, AL -3
11 Baltimore, MD +2
12 Memphis, TN -2
13 New Orleans, LA -7
14 Jackson, MS -5
15 Little Rock, AR +8
16 Baton Rouge, LA +9
17 Buffalo, NY(Not in Top 25 last year)
18 New Haven, CT( Not in Top 25 last year)
19 Hartford, CT +4
20 Dayton, OH Unchanged
21 Kansas City, MO -6
22 Washington, DC -6
23 Newark, NJ (Not in Top 25 last year)
24 Cincinnati, OH -5
25 Atlanta, GA -7

Most Dangerous Cities 2010 - WalletPop

Cities that Fell out of Top 25
Philadelphia, PA
North Charleston, SC
Orlando, FL

2009 Rankings(Based on data from 2008)
1 Camden, NJ
2 St Louis, MO
3 Oakland, CA
4 Detroit, MI
5 Flint, MI
6 New Orleans, LA
7 Birmingham, AL
8 Cleveland, OH
9 Jackson, MS
10 Memphis, TN
11 Gary, IN
12 Compton, CA
13 Baltimore, MD
14 Richmond, CA
15 Kansas City, MO
16 Washington, DC
17 Orlando, FL
18 Atlanta, GA
19 Cincinnati, OH
20 Dayton, OH
21 Philadelphia, PA
22 North Charleston, SC
23 Little Rock, AR
24 Hartford, CT
25 Baton Rouge, LA

[Thomas R.]

Isn't Baton Rouge at 16? So in what sense did it fall out of the 25?

[18Montclair]

Originally Posted by Thomas R.

Isn't Baton Rouge at 16? So in what sense did it fall out of the 25?

gracias...I had to do a double take.

Corrected.

[moorlander]

What a joke. St. Louis is not the most dangerous city. Not even close.

Greg Scarbro, unit chief of the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program, said the FBI also discourages using the data for these types of rankings.
Kara Bowlin, spokeswoman for St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay, said the city actually has been getting safer over the last few years. She said crime in St. Louis has gone down each year since 2007, and so far in 2010, St. Louis crime is down 7 percent.
Erica Van Ross, spokeswoman for the St. Louis Police Department, called the rankings irresponsible.
"Crime is based on a variety of factors. It's based on geography, it's based on poverty, it's based on the economy," Van Ross said.
"That is not to say that urban cities don't have challenges, because we do," Van Ross said. "But it's that it's irresponsible to use the data in this way."

[moorlander]

2009 Most Dangerous Metro's

#103 - St. Louis

That's all you need to know.
http://os.cqpress.com/citycrime/2009...9_Rank_Rev.pdf

[RichmondGrl28]

I have had people murdered in Richmond that were not ghetto gang members or drug dealers. I have lived in Richmond mt whole life born and raised, and I work over in the iron triangle, I also live over in North Richmond. I would have to agree with this study sorry to say but it's true. When young men go into a church, and shoot two people, people are outside working on a car and 4 people are murdered, your at the donut shot and watch someone get stabbed in front of you, same place 2 mos later someone blast someone, and runs into grocery store and tosses gun in freezer? There is so much more I could go into, and do you not realize how small Richmond is??? In retro spect really?

[BigCityDreamer]

Well, it's good to see that DC has improved significantly. Hopefully, it won't be in the top 25 any longer by this time next year.

[GLS2010]

Good job Orlando. It went from number 17 in 2009 to not in the top 25 at all in 2010. In 2008 I believe it was in the top 10. Crime has dropped significantly.

[waronxmas]

Originally Posted by moorlander

What a joke. St. Louis is not the most dangerous city. Not even close.

With this I agree. Saying which city is most dangerous based on simply dividing the number of residents by the number of crimes occurred does not tell you how "unsafe" a city is. Has it gone without notice that none of the cities in the first post are larger than 200 square miles, with most in the 100 square mile range or lower? This measurement will always lean against cities with smaller square mileage.

[18Montclair]

Originally Posted by waronxmas

With this I agree. Saying which city is most dangerous based on simply dividing the number of residents by the number of crimes occurred does not tell you how "unsafe" a city is. Has it gone without notice that none of the cities in the first post are larger than 200 square miles, with most in the 100 square mile range or lower? This measurement will always lean against cities with smaller square mileage.

+1

What an excellent observation. I never thought about it that way.

I've always been very critical of this ranking and never could quite point my finger on why I thought it was so unfair, but I think you may have hit the nail on the head!