Four La Cities ranked as dangerous, N.O. tops.

Four Louisiana cities considered some of the most dangerous in America

BATON ROUGE, LA (WAFB) - A new report ranks four Louisiana cities as some of the most dangerous in the country, classifying one as THE most dangerous in America.

Lafayette comes in at 75 on the list of 385 cities. Shreveport is ranked a little worse at 54. Baton Rouge climbs up the chart to 31. The study considers New Orleans the most dangerous U.S. city.

The report was done by CQ Press. The independent publisher states the number of murders, rapes, robberies, assaults, burglaries, and car thefts were used to rank cities across the country.
When it came down to it, Baton Rouge beat out major cities like Dallas, Houston, and Miami in the number of those crimes per capita. As for New Orleans, one Tulane criminologist blames what he calls "semi-organized, drug-dealing kids with low moral IQs and guns."

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Study: BR 31st most violent city




Baton Rouge ranked as the 31st most violent city in the nation, an improvement of three spots from the previous year, according to a national study released Monday.

Sgt. Don Kelly, a spokesman for the Baton Rouge Police Department, said he couldn’t respond to the study because he had not yet seen it.

Kelly said the department posts all of its crime statistics monthly on its Web site — http://www.brgov.com/dept/brpd/ — and the department also voluntarily reports the information to the FBI.

The city’s ranking comes from a study conducted by CQ Press, a division of Congressional Quarterly Inc., and published annually.
The report ranks 385 cities with populations of 75,000 or more that report crime data to the FBI.

The rankings are calculated by using data from six crime categories: murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary and motor vehicle theft.

Crime rates per 100,000 people for those crimes are plugged into a formula that measures how a city or metropolitan area compares to the national crime rate for a specific crime.

Many law enforcement professionals and academics who study trends in crime have questioned CQ Press’ methodology.

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