"Across the board, Amherst boasts some of the lowest crime rates in the country," said Scott Morgan, President of Morgan Quitno. "The city had no murders, the lowest burglary rate and the second lowest aggravated assault rate in the nation. These consistently low scores made Amherst an easy winner of our annual Safest City Award."

The Morgan Quitno Safest City Award is given based on a city’s rate for six basic crime categories: murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary and motor vehicle theft. (Explanation of methodology and full details at www.morganquitno.com/safecity.) In a change from previous years, each of the six crimes were given equal weight and all cities of 75,000+ populations that reported crime data to the FBI for the six crime categories were included in the rankings (previously the population cut-off was 100,000+ population.) Rounding out the top five behind Amherst are Newton, MA; Greece, NY; Thousand Oaks, CA and Clarkstown, NY. Joining Gary, IN at the more dangerous end of the Morgan Quitno crime scale are Camden, NJ; Detroit, MI; Atlanta, GA and St. Louis, MO

"Crime is down across the country, but it is still one of Americans' greatest concerns." Morgan said.  "Some areas are just plain better, or at least luckier, at staying ahead of the country in dealing with crime.  Amherst clearly is one of these places."

In addition to ranking the safety of cities, Morgan Quitno also examines the overall safety of metropolitan areas. In those rankings, Appleton-Oshkosh-Neenah, WI beat out 254 other metropolitan areas and is the winner of the Safest Metropolitan Area Award. Bringing up the rear of the metro area rankings is Pine Bluff, AR, which earns the dubious distinction as America’s Most Dangerous Metropolitan Area for the second year in a row.

The fifth annual Safest City and Metropolitan Area rankings are announced in the upcoming, revised edition of City Crime Rankings, an annual reference book from Morgan Quitno Press which will be published next week. The Safest City and Metropolitan Area rankings are one of four Morgan Quitno Awards announced annually by the publishing company. These other annual announcements designate the nation’s Most Livable State; the Healthiest State; and the Safest and Most Dangerous State. Additional information on these awards, plus rankings for each of the 300 cities and 255 metropolitan areas considered for the Safest City and Metropolitan Area Awards, are available from Morgan Quitno Press via the Internet at www.morganquitno.com or by calling 785-841-3534.