Atascadero, nation's 28th most dangerous city? No way, police say
Atascadero police are crying foul after an article published by an East Coast website ranking the city 28th among the “Top 100 Most Dangerous Cities in the U.S.” began making the rounds on the Internet this week.
The undated article, posted on NeighborhoodScout.com, which is owned by Massachusetts-based data collection company Location Inc., says that it used an algorithm to reach its conclusions based on crime data from an unspecified year and adjusted for population.
The article claims that “last year,” Atascadero experienced 380 violent crimes, making it safer than only 20 percent of all cities in the U.S. But the Atascadero Police Department says it recorded 64 violent crimes in 2014, which was similar to 2013 figures.
The website claims to receive “raw data” from 17,000 law enforcement agencies via the FBI, which gets its California data from the California Department of Justice.
The website says it uses a “location-centric” method and considers data from agencies within an unspecified area of a city, sometimes including more than one police department, in order to come up with a number and type of crime “that truly occur within any city or town, not just crimes reported by a single municipal agency.”
Specifically, Location Inc. says it takes the number of violent crimes — murder, forcible rape, armed robbery and aggravated assault — and divides it by the population, divided again by 1,000, to reach the number of violent crimes per 1,000 residents.
It is unclear if the site included incidents at Atascadero State Hospital, which resides within the city but has its own police force.
Location Inc. did not respond to requests for comment Thursday.
Cmdr. Joe Allen said Thursday he does not know how the site reached its figures but that local cities have repeatedly been wrongly included in similar lists from various websites in recent years.
Allen said the department’s 2014 data hasn’t been published yet. Each year, agencies across the state submit their crime data to the state Department of Justice, which then releases an annual report including statewide crime in June of each year.
Allen added that, in 2013, the department used a new data collection system and “a computer glitch” incorrectly lumped some violent and nonviolent crimes together when reporting to the Department of Justice.
According to department statistics provided by Allen to The Tribune for the 2014 calendar year, the city actually had 64 violent crimes: 11 forcible rapes, one armed robbery, 52 aggravated assaults and no homicides.
At the time of the U.S. 2010 census, Atascadero had a population of 28,310.
This is not the first time the city has been incorrectly included in a similar list. In 2014, the department’s “glitch” caused another small news website to publish incorrect city crime statistics, Allen said. The city repeatedly tried to contact the website to report the inaccuracy and never received a response.
“This time we’re just letting people in the community know the best we can,” Allen said. “We’re not going to give (the website) the notoriety.”
In response, the department has posted 2014 crime data on its website and Facebook page ahead of the 2014 state Department of Justice report release.
“We are right now feeling like we have to spend our resources and time explaining that we’re not the 28th, or whatever it is, most dangerous city,” Allen said. “We’re not even in the top 1,000, I’m sure.”
Allen warned residents to look closely at public safety information being provided on private websites.
This story was originally published February 19, 2015 at 7:34 PM with the headline "Atascadero, nation's 28th most dangerous city? No way, police say."