Sugar Land Ranked 5th Safest City In America

[ProHouston]

Let's wait for the Sugar Land "haters" to spin this one.

In another blow to the Motor City's tarnished image, Detroit pushed past St. Louis to become the nation's most dangerous city, according to a private research group's controversial analysis, released today, of annual FBI crime statistics.

The study ranked Mission Viejo, Calif., as the safest U.S. city, followed by Clarkstown, N.Y.; Brick Township, N.J.; Amherst, N.Y.; and Sugar Land.

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"Sugar Land 5th Safest"

[KatieDidIt]

Let's wait for the Sugar Land "haters" to spin this one.

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"Sugar Land 5th Safest"

HA! I just saw this and came over here to post. Oughtta end the whole arguement of what suburb is safer. Good for them. I think it helps that they are actually a city, not an unincorporated blob without city police.

[cla]

HA! I just saw this and came over here to post. Oughtta end the whole arguement of what suburb is safer. Good for them. I think it helps that they are actually a city, not an unincorporated blob without city police.

Only actual cities with a population of over 75K were included in the survey. In fact, only 3 cities in the metro area were included in the report - Houston, Pasadena and Sugarland. See full list of cities included in the link below.

www.cqpress.com/docs/Public%202%20-%20Cities%20Included_14E.pdf

I think it speaks well of many suburbs of Houston if one suburb is ranked one of the safest.

And if you read the story, you will see that groups like the American Society of Criminology and the FBI itself said these reports are misleading.

"The study drew harsh criticism even before it came out. The American Society of Criminology launched a pre-emptive strike Friday, issuing a statement attacking it as "an irresponsible misuse" of crime data."

Critics also complain that numbers don't tell the whole story because of differences among cities.

"You're not comparing apples and oranges; you're comparing watermelons and grapes," said Rob Casey, who heads the FBI section that puts out the Uniform Crime Report that provides the data for the Quitno report.

The FBI posted a statement on its Web site criticizing such use of its statistics.

"These rough rankings provide no insight into the numerous variables that mold crime in a particular town, city, county, state, or region," the FBI said. "Consequently, they lead to simplistic and/or incomplete analyses that often create misleading perceptions adversely affecting communities and their residents."

So, again, as with everything else these days, don't take everything you hear or read as gospel. I'm not disputing that Sugarland is a safer place to live than some others. But it can't be called the safest in the area when it was only compared with Houston and Pasadena.

[sifuwong]

I guess the Sugarland ranking factored in the driveway robberies occurring over the past 2 yrs. Pretty good ranking!