Mayor Annise Parker lashed out at an controversial annual study released Monday that placed Houston among the most dangerous cities in the United States with a population of 500,000 or higher.
“Crime Rankings 2010-2011,” published by CQ Press, ranks Houston’s crime as ninth-highest for big cities nationwide, placing it on a list with the likes of Detroit and Columbus, Ohio., although the city has less than half the crimes per capita of those atop the rankings. Violent crime in Houston fell 8 percent during the first half of this year and was on a pace to reach the lowest rate since 2000, records show.
Parker said the data released by CQ Press are flawed because the publisher allows different cities to avoid counting certain crimes. New York does not count any robberies of property less than $1,000, she said, and Chicago frequently is not included in the list because it does not follow the standards requested by the FBI, which compiles the statistics.
“Everybody likes to do rankings of cities, and when we like the results of the rankings, we put them on our websites and when we don’t like the results, we critique them,” Parker said. “It can create a false sense of security or an impression that a particular city has a bad crime situation, and it can have real consequences in terms of economic impact on that city.”
Hey, at least they didn’t say that we’re number one on the list of Cities With The Fattest Criminals. I don’t see any reason to take this sort of thing any more seriously than that.
All I have to say is that Crime can be reported like an Enron financial statement. You can try to get the desired results but reality is reality. Houston has some of the HIGHEST insurance rates in the country, Those guys (insurance actuaries) know what is real, no?
Hire Houston 1st shouldn’t have been one of her campaign motto’s, at least for police commissioner!
That went out the window with the appointment of the buildings manager guy,lol