Las Vegas ranked 10th-safest large city in America

Judy Odierna

Thursday, Dec. 5, 2002 | 11:29 a.m.

* Not including deaths from Sept. 11 terrorist attacks

Source: Morgan Quitno Press 9th annual Safest City Award

Morgan Quitno Press, a Kansas research and publishing firm, recently released its ninth annual report on the safest and most dangerous places in the United States, and Las Vegas was ranked the 10th-safest among 30 cities with populations of a half-million or more. The rankings were based on data for 2001.

"It doesn't surprise me," Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman said. "I know we are the coolest city, so it doesn't get much better than that."

But Goodman and Las Vegans might want to hold off on a toast to the city's safety because other sections of the report indicate the Las Vegas metropolitan area is one of the more dangerous in the nation.

Officials said quirks in the ranking system might have skewed the numbers.

"Although the (10th-safest large city ranking) sounds good for us I don't know that it truly reflects our crime rate," said David Roger, the incoming district attorney. "It's encouraging to hear we do a good job, but our local (crime) numbers continue to increase."

Roger said that the number of gross misdemeanors and felonies that went to prosecution was up by 10 percent last year. Roger said he expects to see another 10 percent increase in those numbers this year.

The number of killings in Clark County this year is also expected to surpass last year's total. There have been 138 homicides for the year through this morning compared with 138 homicides in all of the previous year, according to Metro Police.

Some of the increases in raw crime numbers are probably attributable to the population growth of Clark County, about 6.5 percent annually.

Morgan Quitno determines the rankings by starting with the annual FBI Uniform Crime Reports for for murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary and motor vehicle theft. Those statistics are then plugged into a formula that measures how a city or metropolitan area compares to the national average for each crime.

For Las Vegas, those crime statistics come from Metro Police, which has a jurisdiction of the city of Las Vegas and unincorporated areas of Clark County.

"I guess the technical name should be the 'Safest Police Jurisdiction,'th " said Scott Morgan, president of Morgan Quitno Press. "Vegas is one of the cities where this distinction really comes out. It's one of the oddities that's out there."

Another thing that skews analysis of Las Vegas' crime statistics is that the numbers reflect only the resident population and not the tourists that can swell the city's population by about 100,000 on any given day, Clark County Sheriff Jerry Keller said.

Adding tourists would drive down the crime rate, he said.

Las Vegas could have used the help for Morgan Quitno's overall comparison of 342 cities of all sizes. On that list, Las Vegas was only the 233rd-safest city. Henderson was ranked the 130th safest city, while North Las Vegas was the 285th safest city or 58th most dangerous.

"In the six years that I have been mayor this comes up over and over again," said North Las Vegas Mayor Michael Montandon. "Anytime there are those big national databases they are just wrong."

The study ranked the metropolitan areas using the Census Bureau's Metropolitan Statistical Area, which is a population grouping that often includes neighboring communities and counties. Las Vegas' metropolitan's area includes Henderson, North Las Vegas as well as all of Clark County, Nye County and Mohave County in Arizona.

On the list of metropolitan areas, Las Vegas was ranked as the 249th-safest out of 271 areas. In other words, Las Vegas was the 23rd most dangerous metropolitan area.