Crime Rankings for largest 32 MSAs in US

[boreatwork]

What year is this info from ..because Washington is almost in the top 10 in almost every category

[airwave09]

That made sense up until the last few lists.

Are we supposed to believe that Las Vegas has twice the violent crime of LA and NY in raw numbers?!

Or that tiny Cincinnatti rapes more than LA and Phoenix combined in raw numbers?!

Or that Pittsburgh with only 309,000 in 55 sq. miles had 10 times as many cars stolen as Philly with 1.5 mil in 150 sq. miles?!!!

I think they need to rethink how they gather the data on those few statistics.

[moorlander]

Originally Posted by AK123

You don't seem to know much about Houston... it's not a high-crime city with low-crime suburbs. There are pockets of bad areas, high-crime neighborhoods like Gulfton, Sharpstown, Greenspoint, Alief (the last two of which are definitely more suburb than city), while most of the rest of the city ranges from fairly normal to very safe. There's no real pattern to it (can't say city = bad, suburb = good.) Additionally, the core of Houston (downtown and surrounding) has been improving and attracting new development for the last decade... not in some sort of decline like other places.

Knowing all of that, I would have to disagree with your statements, and would say the core of Houston is most definitely safer than the core of St. Louis.

The point is... St. louis proper is ~ 60 square miles while Houston proper is ~600 square miles. St. Louis did not annex any of its street car subburbs and therefore does not have all that extra acreage to water down the crime stats. A better comparison is to compare msa vs msa.

[ZGare]

Originally Posted by AK123

Knowing all of that, I would have to disagree with your statements, and would say the core of Houston is most definitely safer than the core of St. Louis.

I don't think so.

If that were true, then your Houston suburbs must be riddled with violent crime, since at the full metro area rankings, Houston ranks 36th worst for crime, where St. Louis ranks 103rd, according to CQ Press.

http://os.cqpress.com/citycrime/2009...9_Rank_Rev.pdf

If Houston metro overall is much more dangerous than St. Louis metro, it is unlikely that your metro core is safer than the St. Louis metro core. It is much more likely that it is even more violent than the St. Louis metro core. But "city limit" rankings don't show that, because your city limits extend far beyond the core and into the suburbs, diluting your "city" ranking numbers.