east-lake.net

Minneapolis releases their crime statistics on the web, which is something that I’ve always found interesting. I wanted to look at the stats for 2006 to see where the crime is being committed and what is the safest neighborhood in Minneapolis.

The statistics were only released in a quarterly report, so I started out by combining these reports into one report for the year. Then I combined the small neighborhoods into their larger communities to keep things even more generalized. For example, the Hiawatha neighborhood is part of the larger Longfellow community, etc.

The crimes accounted for in the report are the following: Total, Homicide, Rape, Robbery, Aggravated Assault, Burglary, Theft, Motor Vehicle Theft, and Arson. Unfortunately a lot of crimes go unreported, but this is the best we have.

I ranked each community for each crime and then calculated the average ranking for an overall order.

1. Nokomis
2. Calhoun-Isles
3. Southwest
4. Longfellow
5. Phillips
6. University
7. Northeast
8. Camden
9. Central
10. Powderhorn
11. Near North

I was a little surprised by a few things in this list. I was very surprised that Nokomis was the safest, as I always thought that Morris Park had a high crime rate. And props to Phillips for being in the safe end of the city after years of being one of the most dangerous. Unfortunately both North Minneapolis neighborhoods were in the top 4 most dangerous, and not surprisingly, both areas of southwest Mpls were in the top 3 safest. Central would have ranked even more dangerous, but they had low numbers of arson and burglary (probably due to the lack of homes downtown), which kept up their average.

Homicide is obviously the main crime reported, and like I expected, most of the murders have been in the north side and also Powderhorn, which together had more then three times that of the rest of Minneapolis.

I’m not sure what the point of ranking communities like this is, but I did find in interesting to put together. Near North and Powderhorn know what their problems are, and don’t need more bad press, but the numbers are what they are. I still don’t find any area of Minneapolis to be unsafe, and I think improvements can and will be made to keep Minneapolis as being a great place to live.

Here is a link to the official map of Minneapolis with neighborhood boundaries, and my spreadsheet is also available here.

UPDATE: I should also add that I just realized that this is basically completely worthless without taking into consideration the population of each community. Because while Nokomis is ranked the safest, they are also probably quite small, with mainly single family homes throughout. While Central is very dense with a lot of rental properties and condos. Oh well, it was still fun to put together.