A recent Atlanta Journal Constitution article cites crime rankings on the political blog, “Real Clear Politics”, that claims Atlanta is the second most dangerous city in the country. The blog’s rankings are based on incorrect data; they are contrary to the findings of reputable authorities on crime data; and they ignore Atlanta’s 7 year track record of crime reduction.
Real Clear Politics claims that the City of Atlanta’s crime rate is over 16%. According to the actual FBI data, the crime rate in Atlanta is only 8.7%. (The FBI shows total crimes in 2008 of 46,381 and a population of 533,016. This translates to a crime rate of 8.7%.) In other words, the political blog’s Atlanta crime rate is double the actual rate. Also, in the most recent issue of CQ Press’s crime rankings - which is considered the authoritative source for comparative crime data - the City of Atlanta ranked 16th in overall crime rate. Just last week Forbes magazine issued a list of the 15th most dangerous cities in the country. Atlanta was not on it.
Finally, the real story is the steady and dramatic improvement in Atlanta’s crime rate over the past 7 years. In 2002 the City of Atlanta was ranked 3rd in the CQ Press rankings and we are now 16th. In that time the city’s crime rate has dropped from 11.2% to 8.7%, which is nearly a 25% improvement. Perhaps more importantly, our rate of violent crime is down nearly 40% over this period.
In 2003, at the recommendation of the Atlanta Police Foundation, Atlanta established Command Operation Briefing to Revitalize Atlanta (COBRA) as a daily crime tracking system. These numbers are available to the public on the Atlanta Police website www.atlantapd.org. The COBRA year to date crime numbers indicate that overall crime is down 10% in 2009 alone.
By any measure, the City of Atlanta is safer now than it has been in decades.
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