Pajiba

Sweet!

We're only number 3!!!!

I feel much safer now then I did a few minutes ago. Thanks, DR.

I live right next to Camden.

Well, no wonder St. Louis is #1.
What with the Death Star hovering in the sky, and all.
(header pic, in the background "under" the Gateway Arch)

Good ol Camden, never letting me down.

Chicago didn't even make the list? Shenanigans! Lies! Falsehoods! The South Side will not stand for such nonsense.

Big ups to the District! Coming in strong at #22.

I thought Atlanta was overrun by zombies. shouldn't that boost it to #1?

The Lou is finally being recognised for being the best. It sure took a long time for everyone to acknowledge our greatness. Please get me the hell out of here. Afghanistan is starting to look like a paradise.

Don't worry, Scully, I'm sure our new mayor will do everything in their power to make Chicago a world-class crime epicenter again.

St. Louis, represent.

At this point we're just glad to be number one at something here, folks. Seriously.

I remember when Cabot Cove used to top this list.

Hah. The good ol' days...

My current city of residence doesn’t break the top 400 because it’s the 17th safest city in America. Keep that in mind if any of you folks are looking for a nice place to live, close to the ocean, topless parades, and zombie kickball. It’s also one of the gayest cities in the nation.

It also has a Tea Party governor, is surrounded by rednecks, and is entirely too close to Canada for my comfort.

It is a wretched hive of scum and villainy, I tell you.

Hmm, so you're saying I'm safer since I moved from Hartford, CT to NYC? Good to know.

Anywhere's better than Connecticut. Maybe not always safer... but better.

/loathes Connecticut

I'm confused by the Connecticuts....

I was raised near Dayton, OH. Aside from an alarming rate of population shrinkage, I don't remember it being all that dangerous in the '90s. Must be all those empty buildings driving people to a life of crime.

Gee ay: Hartford is actually a pretty tough city - it's really poor these days and has fallen on hard times. New Haven (where my parents and in-laws live) is a strange place in that there are some very affluent areas and then some really poor areas. I'd never thing twice walking around the former by myself; I'd think hard before doing the latter. Surprised Bridgeport's not there.

Curious what constitutes "dangerous".

I'm extremely surprised at Cleveland being #7. I live in Harlem, NYC so...obviously one of the safest cities in America...wait what? Yea.

Also, I've lived in Jersey for half my life and am always proud of Camden being in the top 5.

Wait, NOTHING from Arizona? B-But our recently re-elected governor told us there were illegal immigrants coming into our state and chopping the heads off people left and right! I know it's true because she said so!

I could use some clarification on Connecticut. I thought the state was comprised entirely of middle class, middle age, bland vanillas. Have the boredom and tedium gotten to them?

I have much love for Oakland and fond memories of many visits there. The burned out cars littered about the city every New Years Day were always something to look forward to.

@Samantha from the top-400 list:

*Includes murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, and motor vehicle theft. A negative score (in parentheses) indicates a
composite crime number below the national rate, a positive number is above the national rate.

Man, Pheonix is way down there. From how my friends describe it you'd think you were three seconds away from being shanked for your Whopper at all times.

Eep- DC is only 61.4 square miles and it is all the way down there at 22. St. Louis must be doing something right to be all the way up at #1.

Scully, I second you! I reject the report.

DominaNefret-- D.C. includes some pretty nice areas too. I know enough of D.C. geography to know that, but I wonder how many of the high crime areas are actually in D.C. proper? I just don't know. The other thing about St. Louis is that while a lot of people work there, relatively few people actually live there, and a very high percentage of those are impoverished, so while the crime per capita might not raise eyebrows if you counted heads during the day, the tiny number of people who actually live there again skews the per capita number.

Slash-- See my comparison of St. Louis and Houston. I maintain that's why you don't see Houston on this list. The city of Houston is comparable to the St. Louis metro.

Buffalo? Really? Is that were Bloomberg sent everyone after he cleaned up the mean streets of NYC?

After living and/or working in East L.A, South Central (right on the Compton border. A couple of coworkers of mine yelled at me for five solid minutes the day I accidentally missed my freeway exit, took the next one which led into Compton, and considered stopping for gas there. It was so cheap! And I was driving a gas guzzler during the time of $4/gallon and rising gas prices. I didn't just because I was already late to work, having missed my exit) and Harlem (which is the only placed I've ever been actually been accosted) you're telling me the most dangerous place I've been to is Buffalo?

I may need to get out more.

I grew up in Dayton and it was #1 for per capita murders a few times during the 90s. But how the fuck is Philadelphia only 30?! Behind those Fat Humps in Indianapolis? Goddammit, they call it "Killadelphia" for a reason. The FBI must not include crimes committed by on-duty police in its stats.

Hey EJ,

I'm now dying to know the size and location of these 'horns.' If the answer is what I think it is, then I think you've finally solved the mystery of what Connecticut is good for other than driving through on the way to funner places up North.

holla madison wisconsin at #302! college students love safety!

Of course, I am not taking these numbers seriously. I think it's odd that they include the property crimes of burglary, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft.

Of course, nobody wants their shit burgled or thefted or larcenied, but people REALLY don't want to be raped or murdered (or otherwise assaulted). When I think of "dangerous," I think of "shit that could hurt me physically," not property crimes.

Little Rock what what.

Apparently there is still some Banging occurring in the Rock.

Either that or exurban ennui gone horribly wrong.

Wasn't Flint, Michigan the place that Michael Moore kept talking about in Bowling for Columbine? It sounded like one of the most horribly depressing places in the world.

I'm truly surprised Atlanta isn't higher up. This place is a shit-hole that makes Mos Eisley look like Shangri-La.

Three cities in Ohio? Fuuuuuuck....

It's all that counting theft and whatnot that gets Little Rock ranked. Also, are we including the areas east of the airport? If so, yeah, that explains it.

The FBI must not include crimes committed by on-duty police in its stats.

Posted by: Tracer Bullet at November 22, 2010 1:05 PM

Thanks for the laugh Tracer! Ah, how I love Philly!

Portland Maine didn't make the list huh?

Don’t mess with me Rowles! Where the hell is Miami? I want a recount, we was robbed! Buffalo makes the list but Miami doesn’t? Don’t you know that we’ve had more city officials indicted per capita than any other city. Don't you know that you can get elected mayor and not know how to speak english? We actually had to buy refrigerated eighteen wheelers to hold our dead bodies because the morgue was too full. Don’t you know that we’ve got the only convention and visitors bureau in the country that actually warns visitors to say away? Don’t you know that our schools average two lock downs a week? Don’t you know that one of our elected city officials actually got caught somking crack with a hooker long before Marion Berry got caught? Don’t you know that in our city a dead body or a bale of coke is more likely to wash ashore than a piece of drift wood?

Cleveland should be bumped up a couple notches because I'm pretty sure they forgot to take our Hellmouth into account.

Damn! Orlando is number 46? And here I am thinking this place is safe. Lame but safe...

Number 5, bitches!

Grew up in #52 and went to college in #82. Being sheltered is a wonderful thing. I am pretty happy to see that Texas barely broke the top 50 - and that Houston is not only the dirtiest, but the most dangerous.

Damn Houston. When Texas secedes, you can keep Houston.

My nonagenarian great-grandmother lives alone in an apartment complex in downtown St. Louis. She is the coolest woman.

Cleveland should be bumped up a couple notches because I'm pretty sure they forgot to take our Hellmouth into account.

Posted by: ShagEaredVillain at November 22, 2010 3:52 PM

I how I miss the Buckeye State. Proudly representing with THREE cities in the top 25. Cleveland is more dangerous than Compton, bitches.

Oh, please. STL isn't dangerous at all, so long as you don't wander across the river into neighborhoods that look post-apocalyptic. Seriously, I've lived in several different parts of town over the last two decades, and only rarely* ever felt unsafe. The 'burbs actually scare me more than the city proper.

*Except when driving, that is. Everytime I get on 1-70 I say a little prayer first.

@Empress of All the Russias: It may have been a typo, but it's East St. Louis that's across the river in Illinois. As a Metro Easter (Easterner? Eastian? Easton?) I... well, I'm not sure why I felt compelled to point that out. Anyway, North St. Louis has enough problems without it being sent over to Illinois.

Random ESL trivia: there is a building in the middle of what once was the city's downtown that has several swastikas on its facade. As in part of the original architecture, not graffiti.

Heh! I survived 2 of those cities (St. Louis and Kansas City) over 40 years. Seriously-this survey is bollocks! Between the 2 cities, I had 2 muggings, 2 stolen cars and 1 attempted break-in over 4 decades (and the latter 2 events occurred in Kansas City). BTW-agree w/you, Mario Speedwagon: while I lived in Midtown (not too far from Powell Symphony Hall), parts of North St. Louis were seriously sketchy!

I can't believe Sunnydale, CA wasn't #1, what with all those goddamn vamps trying to bite your neck.

Ohio has 7 of the top 50 most dangerous cities in America?! Combine this info with the fact that a disproportionate amount of presidents have come from Ohio, and America better watch its ass because it's about to get cray-zay up in this muthafucka!!!

"My fiance has a friend who bought a house in the Hills and it had a swastika tiled into the floor of his front porch. Changing it would require ripping out the whole floor so he just has a large rug over it."

Let's remember something here folks, these aren't "swastikas" in the swastika sense. The rotating cross symbol has been used in the Hindu religion for many many more centuries before the 3rd reich and was incorporated into architecture designs for long periods. Even an old building at my college in Indiana had swastikas added into the tile pattern.

An old building in East St. Louis and a house in the Hills? Odds are both structures were built before 1925.

Here's an fun-fun crime fact: St. Louis recently expanded their public transportation service, the metro-link, to include more Northern areas connected to more southern parts.

A stop was put next to one of the local shopping malls, and within 6 months the crime had risen almost 300 percent at that one mall. The police chief responsible for revealing that little statistic to the Riverfront Times was sacked a few weeks later.

@Uriah Creep
These stats are from 2009. Sunnydale was already a crater.
(Why, yes I will see the new Buffy movie nomatter how shitastick it turns out.)

RICHMOND uber alles

Even though my particular area of Richmond has some break ins and car fires, I'm more worried about rattlesnakes and mountain lions on a daily basis.

#5? I've only been mugged at gunpoint twice in 4.5 years of living in Oakland. And these were in Downtown Oakland - not Deep East or Deep West. And Oakland is the best. Berkeley is miserable.

I wonder if the sociologists are having any luck determining a common denominator that these cities all share to help with solving the problem.

Buffalo is in the top 25?! Im going to a taylor swift concert right in buffalo. Hopefully nobody gets me :-P

im from Cleveland and im not supries to see that we are that high come to any hood u can see for your self ...KINSMAN ROAD/GARDEN VALLEY PJ/KING KENNEDY PJ/ 40TH /30TH/131ST/MILES ROAD/not to say the most famous ST.CLAIR THE HOLE STREET 22ND TO 188TH /ALSO CLEVELAND HIGHTS IS FUCKED UP TO NOW