Rodent Regatta

The tenth annual ranking of the nation’s safest and most dangerous cities is now out and in the news. Morgan Quitno Press in Lawrence, Kansas does the study and announces the awards.

Here’s how:

The Morgan Quitno Safest City Award is based on a citys rate for six basic crime categories: murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary and motor vehicle theft. All cities of 75,000+ populations that reported crime data to the FBI for the six crime categories were included in the rankings. Final 2002 statistics, released by the FBI on October 27, 2003, were used to determine the rankings.

You’ll find the top and bottom 25 overall winners/losers in this list.

Highlights:

• Memphis is #11 of 350 cities when it comes to most dangerous
• Memphis is #4 on the most dangerous list when looking at cities above 500,000 in population
• San Jose, Austin, Portland and Seattle rank in the top 10 safest big cities
• In a sure sign of measurement weirdness, Memphis did not make any of the 281 spots on the most dangerous metro area list. Strange! In 2002 the metro area was #1 on the list of the most dangerous.