St. Louis Named "Most Dangerous City" By Study

St. Louis is number one! Yes, it's happened again, and St. Louis' mayor and other officials are not happy about it.

A yearly study has once-again ranked St. Louis as the "most dangerous city" in the United States of America. That study, by CQ Press, has been controversial for its methodology and the subject of much scrutiny by the FBI and police agencies around the country for several years. St. Louis edged out Camden, New Jersey, as the study found St. Louis had 2,070.1 violent crimes per 100,000 residents, compared with a national average of 429.4. Citing those statistics CQ Press claims St. Louis edged Camden, which was atop last year's "most dangerous cities" list and was bestowed that distinction in 2003 and 2004 - and remains in the top five along with Detroit and Flint in Michigan, as well as Oakland, California.

The city of St. Louis maintains that it has become safer each year since 2007 and that crime is down in the past year.

The CQ Press statistics uses FBI data and population combined as basis for the statistics cited by the study, which does not take into account economic conditions and geography --- such as a city/county line as exists between the city of St. Louis and St. Louis County or a boundary area such as the Mississippi River which divides the city of St. Louis from East St. Louis, East Carondelet, Sauget, Madison, and other areas in southwest Illinois which would normally border a big city.

Criminologists have been critical of the way the statistics are used because of the minimal data versus population which many say does not take all factors into account.

The City of St. Louis last year was ranked second in the study and was atop this study in 2006.