SAFE CITY

At a time when all you hear in the burbs is “The City is dangerous, unsafe, dirty, uncivil, a must avoid, especially at night, along comes a report that is surprising, even a bit dubious, perhaps.

A new ranking has revealed the safest state for a night out in the town, with New York crowned the best for after-dark partygoers.

In a new study, Criminal Defense Firm Suzuki Law Offices used data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation Crime Data Explorer and WorldPopulationReview to assign each state a score out of 100 based on factors that determine safety within a state.

The categories examined were the number of police officers per 100,000 residents, the infrequency of victim-related crime, which includes crimes such as purse snatching or harm, and the infrequency of society-related crime, which includes crimes such as drink driving or drug abuse.

The safest state for night-out drinking is New York; the data revealed that New York scored 90.68 out of 100 on the index. Apart from boasting the lowest frequency of both victim and society-related crimes, it also had the third highest number of police officers per 100,000 residents.

New Jersey is the second safest state for partygoers, scoring 80.46 out of 100. It has the second lowest number of society-related crimes after New York. New Jersey also has the eighth-highest density of police officers, with 221 officers per 100,000 residents.

Florida is the third safest state after dark. The state scored 76.65 out of 100 in the study and had the second-lowest victim-related crimes after New York. The state also had the fifth least frequent number of society-related crimes. However, Florida had the 14th highest number of police officers per 100,000 residents, having just 208 officers per 100,000 residents.

 Scoring 66.33 out of 100 in the index, Illinois is the seventh-best state for spending a night out in town. The data shows that Illinois has the fourth least frequent number of society-related crimes, such as drug or narcotic abuse. However, the state does have the 20th highest frequency of victim-related crimes. Illinois has the seventh-highest number of police officers per resident.

  On the other end of the scale, Tennessee has been revealed as the least safe state to go out in after dark; the state ranks at just 37.67 points out of 100 in the index. With only 177 police officers per 100,000 residents, Tennessee ranked 30th in terms of the number of police officers in the state. It was the second worst state for victim-related crime and the 11th worst state for society-related crime.

Nevada is the second most unsafe state for partiers, scoring just 38.25 out of 100. Nevada was ranked the worst state for victim-related crimes and the 18th worst state for the number of officers it had. However, it came just 24th in the ranking for the number of society-related crimes that occurred in Nevada.

Delaware is the third most unsafe state, scoring 39.12 out of 100. It has the highest frequency of society-related crimes and is the second worst state for victim-related crimes. However, to tackle this ongoing crime, Delaware boasts the second-highest number of police officers per 100,000 residents: 274 police officers per 100,000 residents.

Richard Suzuki, from Suzuki Law Offices commented on the findings:

“The data highlights that some of the major tourist destinations in the United States, such as Florida and New York, have enough resources to ensure safety for both residents and tourists. However, Nevada, which is also a popular tourist spot due to Las Vegas, is not a very safe place.

“Although Delaware is considered unsafe, it has the second-highest number of police officers, indicating that the state is aware of the problem. It will be interesting to see if these crime rates decrease due to the increased police presence.

“Moreover, the data suggests that many states located on the East Coast are comparatively safer in the evenings than some states on the West Coast.”

Nine factors were used to create this index. The different factors for each state were the number of police officers, the number of aggravated assault offences, the number of pick pocketing offences, purse snatching offences, number of simple assault offences, intimidation offences, drug narcotic violations offences, fatal crashes caused by drugs or alcohol and fatal crashes caused by the driver being asleep or tired. This data was then cleaned, checked, and standardized from a scale from zero to ten, where zero and ten represented the worst and best standards in the data.

A weighting was assigned to each factor to reflect its importance within the analysis. Once these weightings were assigned, the total score for the factors were calculated, producing an overall index score out of 100 for each entry, upon which the final ranking is based.

but then comes the question, who ya gonna believe, me or your own eyes?……..

………Wishing long time friend and Top Gun in insurance law, Vince Vitkowsky has established Vitkowsky Law.  Based in NYC, it focuses  on cyber risks, liability, litigation, and insurance.  It is also  engaged in the public policy aspects of cyber risks, as well as pubic  safety issues such as terrorism and civil unrest.  He was previously a  partner at Gfeller Laurie LLP.  He can be reached at  VJV@Vitkowskylaw.com.

SA.