COMMENTARY

Urban crime, suburban bliss in a new report

By YAEL T. ABOUHALKAH

The Kansas City Star

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A new report on crime in America has some upbeat news for Overland Park, Lee’s Summit and Olathe: They are some of the nation’s safest big cities.

Kansas City and Kansas City, Kan., however, are in the same dire spot as usual, among the country’s most crime-infested large cities.

This information is contained in the “City Crime Rankings 2011-2012: Crime in Metropolitan America,” a controversial annual compilation from CQ Press. The authors develop their rankings by using crime data reported to the FBI in cities of more than 75,000.

Overland Park’s crime ranking is 38th lowest of the 405 cities reviewed. Lee’s Summit is 42nd and Olathe is 66th.

These are some of the most affluent suburbs in Kansas and Missouri. All have median household incomes of more than $70,000 a year, according to the latest U.S. Census Bureau information. The median housing values in all three cities were above $180,000.

On the other end of the spectrum in the CQ Press report, Kansas City, Kan., ranked 356th and Kansas City 384th of the 405 cities reviewed. That put Kansas City in the bottom 5 percent of all U.S. cities in the report, an ugly statistic.

Both cities had far lower median household incomes — $37,000 in Kansas City, Kan., and $44,000 in Kansas City. Median housing values were lower, too, at $93,000 in Kansas City, Kan., and $133,000 in Kansas City.

Finally, both of those cities as well as most of the others bringing up the rear of the CQ Press rankings — Detroit, St. Louis, Cleveland, Baltimore, New Orleans, Cincinnati, Memphis and Washington, D.C. — have dilapidated urban cores, older housing stock, and lots of poverty and the problems that accompany it.

In short, there’s nothing really odd or surprising about much of the crime rankings.

The CQ Press study, though, has been opposed for years by the U.S. Conference of Mayors and indirectly criticized by the FBI.

The mayoral group in late 2010 blasted the CQ Press rankings as a “premeditated statistical mugging of America’s cities.” The mayors said many factors affect crime rates and that people face different risks of being a victim based on where they live or work, how old they are and the lifestyle they live.

The FBI says any rankings developed using its annual crime database “lead to simplistic and/or incomplete analyses that often create misleading perceptions adversely affecting cities and counties, along with their residents.”

The rankings do have their limitations and aren’t infallible. However, the mayors and FBI doth protest too much.

The rankings are based on data reported by local police forces to the FBI, so nothing’s made up there. They offer a snapshot of what’s happening in a city when it comes to crime.

If the FBI didn’t want anyone to use its data to develop these kind of rankings, it could simply stop collecting the information.

The CQ Press authors even acknowledge some of the shortcomings of the FBI-reported data, but correctly add they “should not preclude researchers, practitioners, and others from using the data to understand crime and guide policy decisions.”

For example, real estate agents in Overland Park, Lee’s Summit and Olathe have long used the “we’re-safer-out-here” mantra to sell homeowners on living in those suburbs. Other boosters in those cities often boast about their lower levels of crime.

In Kansas City, the Police Department each month reports on how many of a wide variety of offenses occurred, including homicides, rapes and aggravated assaults.

The department offers maps and other information to show crime patterns. All of this can be used by businesses and residents to decide where they want to open up shops, for instance, or own a home.

The more information available about all aspects of crime, the better.

Besides, Kansas City residents don’t need CQ Press to tell them they live in a city that’s more dangerous than it should be.