Police chief doubts Everett’s crime ranking

Published 10:26 pm Monday, November 24, 2008

EVERETT — Everett is the 55th most-dangerous city in the country, according to a controversial annual report released Monday that ranks U.S. cities based on a rough comparison of crime statistics.

Last year, Everett placed 66th on the list, published by CQ Press in Washington, D.C.

Police Chief Jim Scharf said he doesn’t understand the math.

“To be a little frustrated and confused by how CQ Press comes out with their analysis is really an understatement for those of us in Everett police administration,” he said.

City statistics show crime in Everett has decreased in the past year, Scharf said.

In Washington state, only Tacoma ranked higher on the list than Everett, getting cast as the 39th most crime-plagued community in the nation. Seattle was listed at 165, Yakima was 84 and Spokane ranked at 123.

New Orleans topped the list as the most dangerous city in the nation. Ramapo, N.Y., a distant suburb of Manhattan, was the safest city in the country, the report said.

New York and Los Angeles were ranked safer than Everett.

“It leads to kind of a nod of a head and a query, ‘How did they come up with this?’ ” Scharf said.

Critics say the list is misleading and is deeply flawed, in part because it doesn’t distinguish between murders and property crimes.

The ranking is based on total number of crimes drawn from FBI statistics and weighted for population so larger communities can be compared with smaller ones.

The study’s authors attempt to create one scale that summarizes the FBI statistics. They use six of eight data points gathered by the FBI — the total number of reported murders, rapes, robberies, aggravated assaults, burglaries and motor-vehicle thefts — to come up with a community’s ranking.

In Everett during the past year, reported sexual assaults and robberies increased, but there were five fewer homicides, fewer assaults, fewer burglaries, thefts and auto thefts, Scharf said.

“But yet, according to CQ Press, we’re a more dangerous city,” he said.

The rankings tell an interesting and an important story regarding crime in the United States, the publisher said.

“Annual rankings not only allow for comparisons among different states and cities, but also enable leaders to track their communities’ crime trends from one year to the next,” CQ Press spokesman Ben Krasney said.

Reporter Jackson Holtz: 425-339-3437 or jholtz@heraldnet.com.