Study Calls Detroit Most Dangerous City
Controversial Analysis Of FBI Stats Pushes Motor City Past St. Louis
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The study drew harsh criticism even before it came out. The American Society of Criminology launched a pre-emptive strike Friday, issuing a statement attacking it as "an irresponsible misuse" of crime data.
The 14th annual "City Crime Rankings: Crime in Metropolitan America" was published by CQ Press, a unit of Congressional Quarterly Inc. It is based on the FBI's Sept. 24 crime statistics report.
The report looked at 378 cities with at least 75,000 people based on per-capita rates for homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary and auto theft. Each crime category was considered separately and weighted based on its seriousness, CQ Press said.
Last year's crime leader, St. Louis, fell to No. 2. Another Michigan city, Flint, ranked third, followed by Oakland Calif.; Camden, N.J.; Birmingham, Ala.; North Charleston, S.C.; Memphis, Tenn.; Richmond, Calif.; and Cleveland, which was ranked the 10th most dangerous city.
Three other Ohio cities made the Top 25 list: Youngstown was No. 15, Cincinnati was No. 16 and Dayton was No. 19.
The study ranked Mission Viejo, Calif., as the safest U.S. city, followed by Clarkstown, N.Y.; Brick Township, N.J.; Amherst, N.Y.; and Sugar Land, Texas. Parma, a suburban Cleveland city, was ranked 23rd.
CQ Press spokesman Ben Krasney said details of the weighting system were proprietary. It was compiled by Kathleen O'Leary Morgan and Scott Morgan, whose Morgan Quitno Press published it until its acquisition by CQ Press.
The study assigns a crime score to each city, with zero representing the national average. Detroit got a score of 407, while St. Louis followed at 406. The score for Mission Viejo, in affluent Orange County, was minus 82.
Detroit was pegged the nation's murder capital in the 1980s and has lost nearly 1 million people since 1950, according to the Census Bureau. Downtown sports stadiums and corporate headquarters - along with the redevelopment of the riverfront of this city of 919,000 - have slowed but not reversed the decline. Officials have said crime reports don't help.
Detroit Deputy Police Chief James Tate had no immediate comment on the report. But the mayor of 30th-ranked Rochester, N.Y. - an ex-police chief himself - said the study's authors should consider the harm that the report causes.
"What I take exception to is the use of these statistics and the damage they inflict on a number of these cities," said Mayor Robert Duffy, chairman of the Criminal and Social Justice Committee for the U.S. Conference of Mayors.
The rankings "do groundless harm to many communities," said Michael Tonry, president of the American Society of Criminology.
"They also work against a key goal of our society, which is a better understanding of crime-related issues by both scientists and the public," Tonry said.
Critics also complain that numbers don't tell the whole story because of differences among cities.
"You're not comparing apples and oranges; you're comparing watermelons and grapes," said Rob Casey, who heads the FBI section that puts out the Uniform Crime Report that provides the data for the Quitno report.
The FBI posted a statement on its Web site criticizing such use of its statistics.
"These rough rankings provide no insight into the numerous variables that mold crime in a particular town, city, county, state, or region," the FBI said. "Consequently, they lead to simplistic and/or incomplete analyses that often create misleading perceptions adversely affecting communities and their residents."
Doug Goldenberg-Hart, acquisitions editor at CQ Press, said that the rankings are imperfect, but that the numbers are straightforward. Cities at the top of the list would not be there unless they ranked poorly in all six crime categories, he said.
"The idea that people oppose it, it's kind of blaming the messenger," Goldenberg-Hart said. "It's not coming to terms with the idea that crime is a persistent problem in our society."
The report "helps concerned Americans learn how their communities fare in the fight against crime," CQ Press said in a statement. "The first step in making our cities and states safer is to understand the true magnitude of their crime problems. This will only be achieved through straightforward data that all of us can use and understand."
The study excluded Chicago, Minneapolis, and other Illinois and Minnesota cities because of incomplete data.
© MMVII The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.



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See all 74 CommentsBut I''m sure the cities in Mexico and Canada, (where GM, Ford, and Chrysler moved some of their auto plants), probably have fairly low crime and good economic prosperity.
Buy American? NO!
Buy from the companies that actually SUPPORT America, not sell out America.
If Detroit has a problem, it won''t help to hide behind words or spun up figures. You won''t ever fix a flat tire by calling it only flat on the bottom. You won''t lower crime rates by denying it exists.
You don''t buy a noose, you make one. I guess you were never a Boyscout.
Memphis ranked number 9. Pretty dangerous place.
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- Posted by ms38654ob at 10:27 PM : Nov 18, 2007
I never could get the hang of it.
I guess that"s why I missed out on my Racist Lynching Merit Badge.
- Posted by ms38654ob at 10:27 PM : Nov 18, 2007
With all those crazed Elvis impersonators running around loose, I"m not surprised.
National polls:
"Election 2008: Obama vs. McCain and Romney
Obama leads McCain by Three, Romney by Six"
Source:
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/election_2008__1/2008_presidential_election/election_2008_obama_vs_mccain_and_romney
'' ... the world is full of raped dead two year olds, let''s pump more bucks and votes than the rest of the world combined into treating two year olds like two year olds ... ''
I won''t have this, Philly deserves to be on that list, why do they let Camden hog up all the glory?
By the way, the war on drugs only causes crime, if you sell drugs. You don''t have to sell drugs, you could say for instance get a job... I know it''s a lot to wrap your brain around, so sit down and think about it for a while. BTW what would you have? Should we just let people sell crack to children?
Also, the bullet trace thing...it wouldn''t let everyone who''s been convicted off of the hook, it''s but one part of the evidence. That report doesn''t only help black people, so it''s kind of funny that you would assume it would.
Self Defense
A-HUMAN-RIGHT.com
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- Posted by gunownerdan at 10:33 AM : Nov 19, 2007
That must be why there"s very little crime in places like Detroit, where so many people are armed.
Maybe liberal moonbats like Code Pink should hold a peace march there...
A large percentage of violent crimes are also drug-related. When you give drug gangs and drug dealers a monopoly on billions of dollars in black-market profits, it can fund a large amount of crime and violence just like it did during alcohol prohibition when gangsters and bootleggers were running the streets using machine-guns.
STOP THE MADNESS
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Maybe liberal moonbats like Code Pink should hold a peace march there..."
- Posted by One_American at 10:39 AM : Nov 19, 2007
More to the point, Moonbat Bush should have sent the troops to Detroit instead of Iraq.
What are they doing some 13,000 miles away in Baghdad, when America"s own cities are gripped with greater violence ?
That"s why the murder rate is so high.
It is the Iraqi "citizens" who should be given weapons and the right to carry them, to take back their communities.
The troops should come back to patrol places like Detroit.
- Posted by gunownerdan at 11:30 AM : Nov 19, 2007
Then crediting guns for self-protection is equally wrong.
a-human-right.com
The honest citizen who uses his gun for self-defense on Wednesday, can get drunk on Saturday and shoot his wife and kids.
If blaming guns for crime is wrong, so is praising guns for self-defense.
Studies have shown that is effective in deterring crime.
And they cannot be used by a drunk to murder his family.
It has increased the murder rate.
That"s like saying, "Don"t waste time researching HIV. HIV doesn"t cause AIDS. People having irresponsible s*ex -- that"s what causes AIDS."
A ridiculous non sequitur.
Both factors are responsible and both should be addressed.
"...the presence in Detroit of a large number of armed citizens, has not reduced crime.
It has increased the murder rate."
I''m willing to bet that most of the people in Detriot who are armed are not law-abiding citizens who are armed legally. In Washington DC there are a large number of armed criminals even though all handguns are illegal.
So why dont your liberal leaders want to touch gun control with 10 foot pole anymore?
Because they dont want to loose the congress again.
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Posted by gunownerdan
And they reside at 1600 Pennsylvania Blvd. along with the congress.
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