The U.S. Conference of Mayors denounced the expected release of city-by-city crime rankings by CQ Press as “an annual misuse of FBI
crime data at the expense of the reputations and economies of this nation's cities” before the publisher delayed release of the volume until Dec. 8. The mayors accused CQ Press, a division of SAGE Publications, of defying “the FBI's own warnings against using its data to rank U.S. cities by crime rate, and again this year mayors across the country are compelled to point out the damage that these inappropriate rankings can inflict on our cities,” said
Houston Mayor Annise Parker, who chairs the U.S. Conference of Mayors Criminal and Social Justice Committee.
“Everyone with the slightest knowledge of this issue knows the rankings are not credible, but the publication persists with them, presumably
because rankings are popular and sell books,” Parker said. Unfortunately, they also do real harm to the cities that come out on the losing end. We're encouraged that the nation's news media have become more skeptical about the CQ rankings, and that in recent years have either ignored them altogether or noted that the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, and the American Society of Criminology all consider them bogus and damaging,” Parker said.