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Study Lists 25 Most Dangerous Cities In America — And Chicago's Not On it

By Alex Nitkin | October 3, 2016 12:54pm | Updated on October 19, 2016 8:27pm
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DNAinfo/Devlin Brown

CHICAGO — Count it as a tiny victory for a for a city whose crime problem keeps making national headlines.

The business news site 24/7 Wall Street tallied crime rates and economic data to compile a list of the "25 Most Dangerous Cities in America," published last week. Chicago did not make the cut.

The authors gleaned most of their numbers from the recently-published 2015 FBI Uniform Crime Report, which folded together records from law enforcement agencies across the country.

Also thrown into the ranking methodology were poverty and unemployment rates, drawn from the U.S. Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics.

St. Louis topped the list of the country's most dangerous cities (only those with a population of at least 100,000 people were considered). Detroit, Memphis and Milwaukee followed close behind.

Although Chicago didn't make the list, other cities in Illinois did earn the dishonorable distinction. The city of Rockford was ranked number six, and Springfield, Ill. was posted at number 23.

Chicago may earn a consistent reputation as the murder capital of the United States, but its huge population pushes its per-capita crime rates well below those of cities like St. Louis and Baltimore.

The city registered about 904 violent crimes per 100,000 residents last year, by the FBI's count. Meanwhile, Springfield's violent crime rate was 1,070 per 100,000.

St. Louis, deemed the most dangerous city in the country, nearly double Chicago's rate, with 1,596 violent crimes per 100,000 people in 2015.

One major caveat: the 24/7 Wall St. ranking doesn't include crime data from 2016, which is shaping up to be Chicago's most violent year since the mid-1990s. Next year's list may well reflect that.

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