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Detroit
Tops The
2012
List Of
America's
Most
Dangerous
Cities
DETROIT
(Forbes.com)
- At a
community
meeting
in a
Lutheran
church
earlier
this
year,
Detroit
Mayor
Dave
Bing got
an
earful
about
his
city’s
distressingly
high
crime
rate.
The
heckling
started
with
members
of his
own
police
force.
“What
are you
doing to
stop the
blight,
the
drugs,
the
murder,
the
killing?”
demanded
Marcus
Cumming,
a police
officer,
at the
neighborhood
gathering
reported
by the
Detroit
Free
Press.
What
could
the
mayor
say? The
best
crime
news out
of
Detroit
these
days is
that the
rate of
violent
crimes –
murder,
rape,
robbery
and
aggravated
assault
– fell
10% last
year to
2,137
per
100,000
residents.
That’s
still
more
than
five
times
the
national
average
and more
than
enough
to make
Detroit
America’s
Most
Dangerous
City for
the
fourth
year in
a row.
To
construct
the
list, we
ranked
U.S.
cities
with a
population
over
200,000
according
to their
violent
crime
rate as
reported
by the
FBI’s
Uniform
Crime
Reports
database.
These
preliminary
2011
statistics
come
with
more
caveats
than the
black-box
warning
on a
dangerous
chemotherapy
agent,
and the
FBI says
they
shouldn’t
be used
to
compare
one city
with
another.
Differences
in
police
reporting
standards,
urban
borders
and
economics
can make
it
tricky
to
compare
densely
populated
Detroit,
say,
with
sprawling
Houston.
We used
cities
instead
of
larger
metropolitan
statistical
areas,
which
gave the
disadvantage
to older
cities
with
tighter
boundaries.
But
consistency
also
means
something,
and the
Top 10
cities
on this
list all
display
a lot of
consistency
both in
their
stubborn
crime
rates
and
their
ranking
on
individual
crimes
like
murder
and
rape.
No. 2
St.
Louis,
for
example,
ranks
fourth
nationwide
in
murders,
fifth in
robberies
and
third in
violent
assaults.
Detroit
has lost
more
than
200,000
residents
since
2001,
yet it
racked
up 344
murders
last
year,
compared
with 395
a decade
ago. The
Motor
City’s
murder
rate is
second
only to
New
Orleans
among
cities
over
200,000
population
(Flint,
Mich.
narrowly
beats
Detroit
among
all
cities,
with a
murder
rate of
52 per
100,000).
Higher
rates of
other
violent
crimes
put it
at the
top of
the
list.
Academic
crime
specialists
also
agree
the
statistics
shouldn’t
be used
to
compare
cities,
said
John
Roman, a
senior
fellow
at the
Urban
Institute
who also
teaches
criminology
at the
University
of
Pennsylvania.
The
local
police
department
may
slack
off on
reporting
certain
crimes,
he said,
“and
suddenly
the
place
got a
whole
lot
safer.”
Yet the
statistics
don’t
lie when
it comes
to
cities
like
Detroit
and
Flint,
he
added.
“The big
takeaway
is
cities
tend to
stay
where
they
are,”
Roman
said.
“They
tend not
to move
up and
down in
the
rankings
a lot
over
time.” |
