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The U.S. Conference of Mayors Challenges City Crime Rankings - Yahoo! News (broken link)
The U.S. Conference of Mayors today sharply criticized the latest "Most Dangerous Cities" list released by CQ Press, saying the annual city-by-city crime rankings are "distorted and damaging to cities' reputations."
Yeah, crime pseudo-statistics like this are just as useless as the annual "best colleges," "best hospitals," "best places to live," etc listings. They're great for the magazine's circulation, and they're great PR for the cities or institutions that rank well, but in reality, they mean next to nothing. They just get quoted over and over in the popular press, on the internet, and by word-of-mouth until they take on the aura of "fact."
Well now, it's true that the numerical ratings (even given with a decimal point, I believe) have an air of precision that is certainly false.
But they're not based on NOTHING. The cities at the top of the list DO have more crime than the cities in the middle, which in turn have more than the cities at the bottom.
Notice to the mayors: it's not the published ratings that scare away tourists and conventioneers, it's actually getting mugged on the way back to the hotel. Or hearing about it happening to so-and-so the year before. You want to change your city's IMAGE? Work on changing your actual city.
Crime statistics are actually based on FBI data, which is based on what the departments (under)report. They aren't perfect (due to mentioned underreporting in most cities), and they shouldn't be used as a raw analysis as to your risk, but they are a good comparison guide to other cities.
I bet the U.S. Mayors just want ST. Louis to remain the most dangerous, and not have Detroit be ranked number one. WEll, gotta tell you mayors something, things change, and if it kills you that St. Louis is no longer the most dangerous city, la-dee-friggin-dah!!!!
Location: Huntersville/Charlotte, NC and Washington, DC
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if these mayors would just make a real effort fight crime they wouldn't have to worry about the most dangerous cities list. DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
But murder and car robberies should not be weighed equally. That's absurd.
Okay, I checked CQ Press own site to see what they said about the methodology. You're correct, the weighting was equal, and yes, it is absurd in a sense. But I still say that this complaint, on the part of the mayors, represents defensive nit-picking. Nobody wants to live in a place where there's a likelihood of either being murdered or having one's car stolen, or suffering any of the other crimes indexed, and the cities that rank very high in any one of these categories also have worrisome incidence of all the others. While it might be debatable whether one particular city "deserves" to rank just above or just below another, it's still true that ALL of the cities in the upper reaches of the list have real crime problems. The mayors can't make those problems go away by attacking the reporting of the fact, even if the reporting methodology is somewhat silly.
About the only time you are likely to be senselessly killed in Saint Louis is if some gangster misses his shot. Saint Louis and Detroit are at disadvantages because their cities propers are relatively small. If you took Phoenix or Houston, isolated their worst neighborhood and made it half of their city proper, it would look bad on paper also.
In Mpls. last year the national news sat their sorry asses on the Nicollet Mall and gave some story about how all the displaced coastal ganges had made their way to mid-sized metros. Loookie how dangerous Mpls. is. A year later they come back to the same place on the mall to give a story about how crime is down. If you keep making a report that your toe hurts, you will begin to think you toe hurts. If you keep making a sotry about how Detroit is so dangerous, the drop in the perception of that city will offset any headway made against crime. My toe is getting better, but I keep telling myself it hurts so bad.
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