Annual dubious city crime rankings by CQ Press aka Morgan Quitno Press

[LVZ]

Morgan Quitno Press aka CQ Press, based in small town Lawrence, Kansas, each year comes out with their state and city rankings, including crime statistics. Their methodology is frequently criticized and yet the national press always seem to want to use their dubious rankings.

Although this year's Nevada crime rankings are not yet available, CQ Press always manages to rank our state as very high crime while paradoxically ranking Las Vegas in the lower half of the over 500,000 population cities. Likewise, CQ Press ranks North Las Vegas in the lower half of the over 100,000 population group. Exactly how does that work, CQ?

Overall, CQ Press's highest city crime rate this time is St. Louis, Missouri, in the 100,000 to 499,999 population group, followed by last year's CQ Press highest ranked city, Camden, New Jersey (75,000 to 99,999 population).

According to CQ Press, below are the top 10 lowest and highest ranked crime cities (34 cities over 500,000 population). Note that all of the top 10 lowest crime cities are located in the western states except New York City. Conversely, all of the top 10 highest crime cities are located in eastern and southern states.

LOWEST CRIME (34 largest cities)

1. El Paso, Texas
2. Honolulu, Hawaii
3. New York City
4. San Jose, California
5. San Diego, California
6. Austin, Texas
7. Portland, Oregon
8. Los Angeles, California
9. Seattle, Washington
10. Fort Worth, Texas

HIGHEST CRIME (34 largest cities)

1. Detroit, Michigan
2. Baltimore, Maryland
3. Memphis, Tennessee
4. Washington, DC
5. Atlanta, Georgia
6. Indianapolis, Indiana
7. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
8. Milwaukee, Wisconsin
9. Houston, Texas
10. Columbus, Ohio

BTW, Las Vegas ranked 76th out of all 449 cities, both big and small.
North Las Vegas ranked 148th.
Reno, Nevada ranked 188th.
Salt Lake City, Utah ranked 105th.
http://www.gooplusplus.com/">

[Tunkamerica]

1. Is Indiana eastern or southern? Wisconsin? And Texas they use as a western

state for lowest crime, but a southern state for highest?

[LVZ]

2. East of the Mississippi River: eastern / Southern Confederacy state Texas is also west -- n/t

[DonCoquixote]

3. No Florida cities

among the high crime ones?

As a citizen of Tampa, I know we deserve to be up there, and MIAMI?

[LVZ]

4. Feeling left out again, eh? :-) n/t

[lpbk2713]

8. Jax usually makes these surveys too.

:shrug:

[slackmaster]

5. What specifically do you not like about their methodology?

And please post a link to your source.

[LVZ]

6. CQ Press source links ...

http://os.cqpress.com/citycrime/2010/City-Crime-Rankings-2010-2011.htm

http://os.cqpress.com/citycrime/2010/City_Crime_Rankings_bypop_2011-2011.pdf

http://os.cqpress.com/citycrime/2010/City_crime_rate_2010-2011_alpha.pdf

[LVZ]

7. CQ Press Statistics criticism (from Wikipedia)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America%27s_Safest_and_Most_Dangerous_Cities --- reference/search http://www.gooplusplus.com

The executive board of the American Society of Criminology (ASC) approved a resolution opposing the development of city crime rankings from FBI Uniform Crime Reports (UCRs). The resolution states the rankings "represent an irresponsible misuse of the data and do groundless harm to many communities" and "work against a key goal of our society, which is a better understanding of crime-related issues by both scientists and the public."

The U.S. Conference of Mayors issued a press releases criticizing the rankings, saying they were "distorted and damaging to cities' reputations."

Also on November 19, 2007 CQ Press publisher John A. Jenkins and Detroit Police Chief Ella Bully-Cummings debated the validity of the rankings on CNN Newsroom with co-anchor Don Lemon. Bully-Cummings raised the arguments of the study's critics, including inappropriate manipulation and misrepresentation of the FBI data. Jenkins countered that CQ Press was simply "reporting the official government, FBI statistics that we have" and suggested CQ Press is "a journalistic organization ... doing what is a time-honored tradition of a journalists ... which is presenting data fairly and factually."

Lemon read a statement from Rob Casey, who heads the FBI section that publishes the Uniform Crime Report that the rankings are based upon, who said "You're not comparing apples and oranges, you are comparing watermelons and grapes. These rough rankings provide no insight into the many variables that mold crime in a particular town, city, county, state or region. Consequently they lead to simplistic and/or incomplete analyses that often create misleading perceptions adversely affecting communities and their residents."

In an op-ed on November 29 2007, Richard Rosenfeld, Curators Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, challenged the validity of the rankings. One of Rosenfeld's points is that "in all cities, serious crime is disproportionately concentrated in a handful of high-risk neighborhoods. Differences in crime rates are far greater within cities than between them. And the rankings give equal weight to crimes of vastly different seriousness and measurement error."

[Las Vegas Mixx]

9. For Nevada, CQ Press's rankings are nonsense - state is high while cities are low-to-mid?

Each year CQ Press ranks the state of Nevada very high in crime, while the four largest Nevada cities are ranked low-to-mid in their respective population categories. What kind of crap statistics are those?

CQ Press's habit equally weighting auto theft (Nevada is often #1) with violent crimes rape, murder, and assault defies common sense.

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Ne-va-da - a western state - http://inogolo.com/pronunciation/Nevada

http://www.gooplusplus.com/audio/nevada.html
http://www.gooplusplus.com/audio/oregon.html
http://www.gooplusplus.com/audio/colorado.html

[Las Vegas Mixx]

10. CQ Press is the Rasmussen Reports of Crime Statistics - widely quoted, always biased and misleading

Last year Morgan Quitno/CQ Press had the "state" of Nevada ranked as #1 in crime. Surprised? We were too.

Take a look at the CQ Press's own "city" crime data (a score of 100 is the mid point).

http://os.cqpress.com/citycrime/2010/City_crime_rate_2010-2011_alpha.pdf

Las Vegas, NV - 95.6
North Las Vegas, NV - 47.7
Henderson, NV - 35.4
Reno, NV - 28.2

So, CQ Press's own "city" crime statistics show that every Nevada city over 200,000 population is below the national crime midpoint for small and large cities. How can that possibly lead to Nevada being ranked anywhere near #1 in crime?

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Ne-va-da - a western state - http://inogolo.com/pronunciation/Nevada

http://www.gooplusplus.com/audio/nevada.html
http://www.gooplusplus.com/audio/oregon.html
http://www.gooplusplus.com/audio/colorado.html

[LVZ]

11. "faulty methodology ... inappropriate use" - FBI, ACS, US Mayors

Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgan_Quitno_Press

Their ranking of jurisdictions in terms of "safety" has been criticized for faulty methodology and inappropriate use of data by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the American Society of Criminology, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, and other bodies.

[LVZ]

12. I am disappointed to see how many newspapers buy into these rankings

I just checked Google to see 44 newspaper stories about how this or that city ranked even though these statistics are clearly flawed.

http://news.google.com/news/story?lr=lang_en&q=cq+press+crime&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ncl=dsi79urTLhml9NMuej0L8c-Em-YlM&hl=en&ei=ekHrTIjyEYWCsQPPzvnODw&sa=X&oi=news_result&ct=more-results&resnum=1&ved=0CCoQqgIwAA

Even The Huffington Post has posted stories based on the CQ Press rankings. But, at least they have a footnote about questioning the validity of these CQ Press's reports.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/22/most-dangerous-cities-in-_n_787010.html#s188593