State’s Safest Cities List Has Only One From West Michigan

Alarms.org has released a list of the 25 safest cities in Michigan for 2019. Only one is from West Michigan. Does that mean it's unsafe here? Hardly.

The list was compiled to show the cities with the lowest violent and non-violent crime as compiled by the FBI. 

While compiling the list, the web site came up with this nugget: Michigan lists low in property crime, but high in violent crime. Maybe we need to learn how to smash our X-Box instead of our friend's face.

The methodology seemed to favor cities with rates of crime that could be compared, and cities that reported to the FBI. If cities didn't enter their reports to the FBI data base, they weren't included, which may have eliminated a lot of West Michigan cities.

To identify the safest cities in Michigan, we reviewed the most recent FBI Uniform Crime Report statistics. A total of 7,639 cities were factored into this ranking with populations ranging from 7,639 to 4,007,147. However, we eliminated any cities that failed to submit a complete crime report to the FBI and removed cities with populations under 10,000.

25 safest cities in Michigan

1. Grosse Ile Township
2. Beverly Hills
3. Rochester
4. Berkley
5. South Lyon
6. Farmington
7. Milford
8. Bloomfield Township
9. Trenton
10. Clawson
11. Birmingham
12. Hamburg Township
13. Grosse Pointe Park
14. Plymouth Township
15. West Bloomfield Township
16. Royal Oak
17. New Baltimore
18. Grand Haven
19. Grosse Pointe Woods
20. Riverview
21. Farmington Hills
22. Shelby Township
23. Flushing Township
24. Fraser
25. Novi

Grand Haven, at number 18, was the only West Michigan city in the top 25. But dissecting the list down to number 100 provided some interesting local insights.

* Ionia is the next highest West Michigan city on the list at 46. Holland checks in at 65.

* Detroit, at number 80, actually is "safer" than Grand Rapids, which enters the chart at number 82.

* Kentwood is at 87, while Wyoming is at 95.

ClickonDetroit also pulled these facts from the data:

• (Michigan) is the 11^th safest state for property crime (where 1^st = lowest crime)

• The violent crime rate is, by contrast, above US average (ratio 1.18) with 4.08 crimes per 1,000 versus a national average of 3.47 making it the 34^th safest state for violent crime

• Property crime levels are considerably below the national average at 20.72 per 1,000 compared to the national average of 40.43 – giving a ratio of 0.51.