This Is The Safest City In Ohio: Analysis

NORTH RIDGEVILLE, OH — A new analysis has ranked the 100 safest cities in America and four cities in Ohio made the list. North Ridgeville was ranked as the 13th safest city in the nation and the safest city in the state.

NeighborhoodScout, a web-based platform from Location, Inc., compared the safety of cities with at least 25,000 people based on the total number of property and violent crimes per 1,000 residents.

Their analysis, released on Monday, found that 37 percent of the nation’s safest cities reside in just two states: Massachusetts and Illinois, which had 19 and 18 cities on the list, respectively. Ohio, for comparison, had four cities make the list.

North Ridgeville was the 13th safest city in the nation with a crime index of 85 out of 100. In this case, 100 is the safest possible score.

North Ridgeville is safer than 85 percent of cities. There were 12 violent crimes in the city in 2016, the most recent year that complete data was available. That's a rate of 0.36 per 1,000 residents. There was one murder and four rapes in the city in 2016.

The chances of becoming a victim of violent crime as a resident of North Ridgeville are one in 2,749. For comparison, the average Ohio resident has a one in 333 chance of becoming a victim of violent crime.

There were also 193 property crimes in North Ridgeville in 2016. That's a rate of 5.85 per 1,000 residents.

The other Ohio cities that made the list were Brunswick, Hilliard and Mason.

The safest city in America, NeighborhoodScout says, is Ridgefield, Connecticut, with a crime index of 95. The city, which has just over 25,000 people, saw no murders, rapes or robberies in 2016.

Andrew Schiller, CEO and founder of Location, Inc. and NeighborhoodScout, said bedroom communities within large metro areas and near major urban centers such as Boston, Chicago, and New York continue to make their list.

"These safe communities within the urban/suburban fabric of America's largest metropolitan areas often combine access to high-paying jobs in the urban center, decent schools, and a high quality of life,” Schiller said in a release. “This access to opportunity increases home values, with the result often being lower crime."
The safest cities rankings list differs from NeighborhoodScout's list of the most dangerous cities because it comprises both violent and property crimes. The group says the general public tends to equate a “dangerous" city with "violent" crime and a "safe" city with safety from both property crime and violence.

NeighborhoodScout says its analysis includes all reported crimes from all 18,000 local law enforcement agencies across the country from the most recent final data available. For this 2018 report, the figures are based on 2016 statistics.

Patch reporter Dan Hampton contributed to this report.

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