Despite the FBI’s warning against using its crime statistics for ranking cities, the 24/7 Wall St. website came out with rankings of the 25 most dangerous and 25 safest U.S. cities, also taking into account data on unemployment, poverty rates, education, and household income, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports. St. Louis, with a violent crime rate of 1,817, was ranked the most dangerous of the 300 largest cities, followed by Detroit, with a rate of 1,760. In contrast, Cary, N.C., was ranked the safest city with only 51 violent crimes reported for every 100,000 residents. Minneapolis is the 25th most dangerous city, the report said.
The report is “not the sort of thing that as a criminologist … we take terribly seriously because it’s not a good way to learn about crime trends or what particular places are dangerous,” said Christopher Uggen, sociology and law professor at the University of Minnesota. “These rankings are great click bait in many ways because we all want to know how we’re doing.” Chicago, which had the most homicides of all U.S. cities last year, didn’t crack the top 25 most dangerous cities on the list. When all the categories of violent crime were taken into account, Chicago’s violent crime rate was 903, the 24/7 Wall St. compilation found