“Newton outshines other cities when it comes to fighting crime, “said Scott Morgan, President of Morgan Quitno Press. “With no murders, as well as the lowest overall crime and motor vehicle theft rates, it ranks as the clear winner in this year’s survey.”

The Morgan Quitno Safest City Award is based on a city’s rate for six basic crime categories: murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary and motor vehicle theft. All cities of 75,000+ populations that reported crime data to the FBI for the six crime categories were included in the rankings. In this year’s survey, 369 cities were considered for the award. Final 2004 statistics, released by the FBI on October 17, 2005, were used to determine the rankings.

Joining Newton at the top of the Safest City rankings are Clarkstown, NY; Amherst, NY; Mission Viejo, CA and Brick Township, NJ. Newton is located just west of Boston.

At the opposite end of the Morgan Quitno crime scale, Camden, New Jersey ranks as the nation’s most dangerous city for the second consecutive year. Located across the Delaware river from Philadelphia, Camden had the highest violent crime, murder and robbery rates among cities of 75,000 or more population.

“I know that this is not good news for Camden,” said Morgan. “The city and state have taken some important steps to fix its crime problems. Although Camden’s violent crime rate has increased 15% over the past five years, the rate actually declined nearly 6% from 2003 to 2004.”

Trailing Camden on the more dangerous end of the crime rankings (in ascending order) are Detroit, MI; St. Louis, MO, Flint, MI and Richmond, VA.

In addition to ranking the safety of cities, Morgan Quitno Press also examined crime in metropolitan areas. For the first time, Logan, UT-ID tops the rankings as America’s Safest Metropolitan Area. The Detroit-Livonia-Dearborn, MI metropolitan division ranked as the most dangerous.

The findings of the 12th annual Safest City and Metropolitan Area Awards are featured in City Crime Rankings 12th Edition, an annual reference book from Morgan Quitno Press. The newly updated edition of this volume will be available November 22nd. The Safest City and Metropolitan Area rankings are one of six Morgan Quitno Awards announced annually by the company. These other annual announcements designate the nation’s Most Livable State (a state quality of life survey); the Healthiest State (a survey of state health care); the Safest and Most Dangerous States (a state crime survey); the Smartest State (a state education survey) and the Most Improved State (a survey of state trends.)

Additional information regarding the methodology and results of the twelfth annual Safest City and Metropolitan Area Awards through the links at the top of this page.  A full report featuring information for all 369 cities is available online for $4.99.