The recent rankings of the nation’s cities as the “safest” and the “most dangerous” stirred up hard feelings across the country.
The annual survey conducted by Morgan Quitno Press, a private research and publishing company, was rightly bad-mouthed by police and mayors who made the list.
No city denied being one of the safest. The protests were from cities on the other list. The bad list. The list that ranked Everett 283 out of 371 cities in terms of danger.
That word, “danger,” is the problem.
Morgan Quitno Press achieves its rankings by compiling six types of crime: murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary and auto theft. The violent crimes carry the same weight as the property crimes, which doesn’t make sense when trying to rank “danger.”
Scott Morgan, president of Morgan Quinto Press, said that property crime was included in the study because more people are concerned about burglary and auto theft than any other crime. That would be fine in a study about what crimes concern most people, not which U.S. cities are the most dangerous.
“Just because you’re not there, doesn’t make the crime less dangerous,” Morgan said.
Well, in fact, it does. “Dangerous” implies harm to a human being, not a stolen car. Lack of danger doesn’t make the crime any less invasive, violating, shocking, hard to take, wrong and unfair. But no one got hurt.
The study found that Everett was above the national average in every type of crime except murder. Scary, but statistics are funny. Tacoma, Seattle, Spokane and Vancouver all have more violent crime than Everett. But all those cities ranked ahead of Everett in terms of safety. Yes, Everett has crime. But Morgan hit on the problem: People are most concerned about burglary and auto theft. Many crime victims believe the police don’t do enough, or anything, to prevent or solve property crimes. They are notoriously hard crimes to solve, unless someone is caught in the act. Which should mean they warrant more attention, not less.
Everett police didn’t help matters when the department announced, a few days after the Morgan study, that for the second time this year, police went online to meet up with, and then bust, prostitutes who had advertised their wares online on Craigslist.
Seems having prostitutes online is preferable to having them on the streets, but we’ll leave that for another day.
Not to condone prostitution, of course. It’s just that more people are worried about pedophiles online. And their house being broken into. Or their car stolen.
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