After Vegas, Here's 100 Safest American Cities, Home Security Firm Says

DES MOINES, IA. — Late Sunday night, Stephen Paddock perched on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, just across the street from a concert where Jason Aldean was performing, and — armed with nearly two dozen firearms — rained bullets down upon about 22,000 people. The mass shooting, the deadliest in modern U.S. history, left at least 59 people dead and more than 500 others hurt.

As Patch has previously reported, violent crime in the United States went up for the second consecutive year in 2016, rising 3.4 percent, the latest FBI crime data show. There were an estimated 17,250 murders last year — an 8.6 percent increase from 2015 — and an estimated 1.2 million violent crimes. The five-year trend shows an increase of 2.6 percent from 2012, and the 10-year trend shows a decrease in violent crimes of 12.3 percent from 2007.

According to the home security company SafeWise, which ranks the 100 safest cities in the country every year using the latest FBI data, not a single city in Iowa made its 2017 list. (For more information on this and other neighborhood stories, subscribe to Des Moines Patch to receive daily newsletters and breaking news alerts, or find your local Iowa Patch. If you have an iPhone, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app.)

New Jersey had the most cities on the list with 25, followed by Massachusetts with 15 and Pennsylvania with 12. To see the 20 safest cities in Iowa, click here to get to the SafeWise home page and scroll down until you reach "Discover the Safest Cities By State." Then select Iowa.

"If you don’t see your city represented, it’s possible that they reported incomplete data to the [FBI Uniform Crime Reporting program] or did not report data at all," SafeWise said on its website.

It also said the listing determined "an appropriate threshold for each state and only report on cities with populations above this number," SafeWise said. That number is based on the state’s whole population and the number of cities to be included in the list.

Among Iowa's 20 safest cities, only one is in the Des Moines metro area, and that is Johnston. It was among seven of the 20 that had been on previous lists but dropped in position. Johnston ranked 13th on last year's list.

SafeWise said Iowa ranks in the top 20 states for low violent and property crime rates, coming in at 18 for both. It cited an "active slate of violent crime prevention measures" in the state, including the Student Pledge Against Gun Violence, which in 2015, rallied 16,000 middle and high schoolers to promise never to bring a gun to school or use one in an argument, could be among the reasons.

Of the Iowa top 20, only two communities had murders reported to the FBI and 90 percent reported zero counts of murder or non-negligent manslaughter. In addition, 45 percent saw no incidents of rape, and eight cities were free of both murder and rape during the most recent reporting period. Regarding robberies, every city that made this year’s cut reported fewer than ten incidents, and 60 percent had no robberies at all.

Property crime also was low among the top Iowa cities, with 80 percent reporting fewer than 100 total property crimes and none having more than 20 auto theft incidents. Burglaries were held to fewer than twenty in 75 percent of the cities, and none reported more than five counts of arson.

SafeWise has an Iowa Safety Directory to provide local safety resources, home security tips, and disaster and emergency preparedness strategies.

The company said it reached each city’s safety score by calculating information on violent crimes and property crimes using the following formula: (Violent Crimes/(Population/1,000)) + (Property Crimes/(Population/1,000))/2 = Safety Score

"With these reports, we have put ourselves into our reader’s shoes in order to understand what makes us all feel safe or unsafe in a city. We feel that these rankings help get to the heart of the issue: What are the chances of crime happening to you or your loved ones?” SafeWise said.

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