Posted: June 11, 2008 03:40 PM
NASHVILLE, Tenn.- Two Tennessee cities made national news Wednesday for their crime rates.
The FBI has named Memphis the second worst city for crime despite a drop in the number of violent crimes reported last year. Only Detroit ranked higher, coming in at number one.
The FBI said Nashville ranks 4th in a category of worst cities for crime.
Other cities on the list include Baltimore, Philadelphia and Dallas.
Preliminary figures indicate that, as a whole, law enforcement agencies throughout the nation reported a decrease of 1.4 percent in the number of violent crimes brought to their attention in 2007 when compared with figures reported for 2006. The violent crime category includes murder, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault.
Click here to see the FBI's Preliminary Annual Uniform Crime Report. And the City Paper provides us with Metro's response.... Metro Police dispute analysis of FBI crime report Updated: Thursday, June 12, 2008 1:19 am Metro Police this week vehemently disputed a Memphis Commercial Appeal report that ranked Nashville as the fourth most dangerous large U.S. city. The Commercial Appeal calculation, which listed Memphis at No. 2, was compiled from preliminary numbers released Monday by the FBI. The report indicated that reported violent crimes such as murders and rapes fell 1.4 percent in 2007, and that crime nationally was down across the board. However, the Memphis daily apparently ignored the report’s disclaimer not to use the preliminary data to compile rankings. “They did what FBI says don’t do,” said Metro Police spokesman Don Aaron, adding that the raw numbers used in the Commercial Appeal story don’t add in other factors that affect crime rates in a given city. Aaron said that many other things ranging from graduation rates to economic factors can affect how safe a city is. The FBI’s preliminary annual uniform crime report for January through December 2007 states that overall violent crime for Nashville followed an overall national trend dropping from 8,565 to 8,513 incidents. The number of homicides dropped from 80 to 73 and forcible rape from 320 to 290. Nashville’s only reported increase from 2006-2007 was robbery, which rose from 2,425 to 2,516 incidents. “If the intent is to say that Nashville is the fourth most dangerous city, that’s crap,” Aaron said. “The comparisons are very complicated.” The Memphis newspaper without explanation or methodology listed Nashville ahead of Philadelphia, for example, when the FBI report showed the City of Brotherly had more than 13,000 more reports of violent crime than Nashville. All four violent crime categories declined nationwide in 2007 from prior-year levels, the FBI reported. Rape decreased by 4.3 percent, murder and manslaughter dropped by 2.7 percent while robberies and aggravated assaults fell by 1.2 percent. The FBI also reported property crimes, such as burglary, larceny, theft and motor vehicle theft, were down by 2.1 percent last year. The latest numbers appear to show that the two years of increases in violent crimes — 1.9 percent in 2006 and 2.3 percent in 2005 — represented just a temporary upswing rather than the start of a long-term trend of more crime. Criminal justice experts had blamed the increases on gangs, youth violence, more gun crimes and fewer police on the beat. Justice Department spokesman Peter Carr called the latest FBI numbers “very encouraging” but said they were preliminary and could change when the FBI releases final figures later this year. “The report suggests that violent crime is decreasing and remains near historic low levels,” he said. “Some communities, however, continue to face localized violent crime challenges.”
