Over the last few years, I’ve seen a lot of Internet chatter, repeated on several networks, about how New York City and Atlanta among the most violent places in America.
But are they really? I looked at the data, for the most dangerous cities as well as the safest, to see if this is the case,—as well as whether there is a partisan link to either.
To determine which is the most violent cities in America, I looked at Neighborhood Scout, which relies on official crime rate data. You can follow along too, right here: NeighborhoodScout’s Most Dangerous Cities – 2021.
I discovered that neither New York City, nor Atlanta, Georgia, make the top 10, or even top 100, for crime rates for American cities over 25,000.
Now Florida Governor Ron DeSantis flew up to New York City, on either the campaign trail, or book tour, or both, to denounce New York City’s Mayor and criticize the city’s crime rate. I would have advised DeSantis not to bring it up, since Florida actually has six cities in the top 100 for crime rates: Daytona Beach, Lake Worth, Homestead, Riviera Beach, Miami Beach and Lauderdale Lakes, Florida.
New York officials correctly pointed this out — that perhaps DeSantis should focus on crime in his state first, before lecturing other states. Or, in Biblical terms, “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?”
So why might we “think” New York City and Atlanta are the most dangerous cities?
Well, an N.Y. District Attorney oversaw the indictment of former president Donald Trump over alleged illegal hush payments to a mistress, while an Atlanta-area District Attorney seems poised to indict Trump for allegedly demanding the Georgia Secretary of State “find thousands of votes” so he could win the state’s Electoral College votes in 2020.
So hard-core Trump supporters have been beating the drum, claiming these prosecutors are ignoring crime in their cities. And others are just repeating their claims without fact-checking them, or running the numbers.
This isn’t some anti-Republican research of mine, by the way. Remember how when Barack Obama was President and Chicago was the one everyone claimed was the most crime-infested? Chicago made the list, at #73. Moreover, I looked at all 100 cities, and they are roughly split 50%-50% between being located in blue states and in red states. Looking at the top 30 U.S. cities that are safest, I found that 21 of those 30 are in blue states, and 62 of the top 100.
Colin Woodard gets a little more into the details, focusing on rural, urban and suburban areas and gun violence… and here is what he found.
“The region the Big Apple comprises most of is far and away the safest part of the U.S. mainland when it comes to gun violence, while the regions Florida and Texas belong to have per capita firearm death rates (homicides and suicides) three to four times higher than New York’s. On a regional basis it’s the southern swath of the country — in cities and rural areas alike — where the rate of deadly gun violence is most acute, regions where Republicans have dominated state governments for decades.
Even in rural areas, there is a crime disparity. Woodard adds “If you grew up in the coal mining region of eastern Pennsylvania your chance of dying of a gunshot is about half that if you grew up in the coalfields of West Virginia, three hundred miles to the southwest. Someone living in the most rural counties of South Carolina is more than three times as likely to be killed by gunshot than someone living in the equally rural counties of New York’s Adirondacks or the impoverished rural counties facing Mexico across the lower reaches of the Rio Grande.”
Clearly, it’s not rural poverty alone that is the problem.