CQ Press has released “City Crime Rankings 2010-2011: Crime in Metropolitan America” and Tucson ranks at 127 of 400 cities for the most violent crime. See the KOLD Channel 11 news report from yesterday saying that “Tucson rated as Arizona’s most violent city” :

http://www.fox11az.com/news/local/Tucson-rated-as-Arizonas-most-violent-city-110171094.html

Per the press release from CQ:

The crime rate rankings of the cities and metropolitan areas are calculated using six crime
categories: murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, and motor vehicle theft. These
categories have been used for determining city crime rate ratings since 1999. The rankings include
all cities of at least 75,000 residents that reported crime data to the FBI in the categories noted for
calendar year 2009. In the most recent survey, 347 metropolitan areas and 400 cities were
considered using statistics released by the Uniform Crime Reporting Program of the FBI in
September, 2010. More information on methodology is available on the CQ Press Web site.

If you’re interested in how other Arizona cities ranked: 135 Phoenix; 182 Avondale; 204 Yuma; 205 Tempe; 254 Mesa; 276 Peoria; 343 Scottsdale; most of those cities are in the Phoenix metropolitan area.

The City of Tucson has about 547,981 people, and this study included only cities over 75,000 people. Perception of whether a place is “violent” is relative. Recently I read a crime novel about Arizona’s 1st mass murder in 1991 of nine people (Thai Buddhist temple monks and members) in a little town of Waddell, Arizona, an unincorporated community in Maricopa County (couldn’t find population statistics). For the people of Waddell at that time, they probably ranked very high in perception of violent crime.

Incidentally author Gary Stuart of “Innocent Until Interrogated” noted how the mismanagement/false forced confessions of that mass murder case lead to the election of Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Maricopa County (to replace Sheriff Tom Agnos).

For more info about this report: contact Ben Krasney, Marketing Communications
E-mail: bkrasney@cqpress.com,Tel: 202-729-1846.

Readers, do you think of Tucson as a “violent city”? Keep in mind that it depends where you live, and also that the criteria used by CQ Press was “murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, and motor vehicle theft”.