CQ Press has once again crowned St. Louis as “the most dangerous city” in their latest City Crime Rankings released Sunday.
The FBI has a warning on their crime statistics website stating that these rankings, “lead to simplistic and/or incomplete analyses that often create misleading perceptions adversely affecting communities and their residents.”
According to a statement released by the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department, even one of the publishers of the rankings does not seem to believe in their validity. In 2006, one of the publishers told a St. Louis reporter that he would be “stunned if there is a criminologist out there who will support this.”
The location of boundary lines is critical in how the statistics are reported. St. Louis City is densely populated within 62 square miles and does not include as many suburban or middle class areas as other cities on the list.
Included on the other side of the report is O’Fallon, Mo., which was named the second safest city in the country. Tom Drabelle, director of public relations for the O’Fallon Police Department, says that the recognition is a “tremendous honor” for the city of O’Fallon. O’Fallon is outside the boundary lines of St. Louis City and is only located about 33 miles from St. Louis.
The SLMPD’s statement also notes that unlike some other cities, St. Louis follows crime reporting standards set by the FBI, which is why St. Louis is included in the rankings. New York doesn’t report theft of items worth less than $100, cities in Tennessee use a different reporting system, and Chicago isn’t on the list because it does not meet FBI standards for reporting crimes.
In fact, St. Louis crime rates have been falling since 2007. The SLMPD states that so far in 2010, violent crime is down 17 percent and overall crime is down nearly 9 percent. Kara Bowlin, press secretary to Mayor Slay, says that if the current downward trend continues, city crime rates are “about to fall to some impressive lows.”
The main message from SLMPD and the Mayor’s Office is that St. Louis is unfairly ranked and that the city is generally a great place to live, work and be entertained. “A vast majority of our neighborhoods are safe and are getting even safer,” Bowlin says.
Check out statistical crime data for the city of St. Louis at slmpd.org/crime_stats.html, and for every other city that reported to the FBI at fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2009.
