A list I'm surprised Baltimore didn't make...

The annual ranking of the most dangerous and safest cities that CQ Press/ Morgan Quinto compiles every year are out. Detoit is the worst. Baltimore, surprisingly, did not make the top 10.

The rankings have been taking a bunch of heat - they are based on FBI stats that even the FBI doesn't think should be used for this, and the methodology that CQ uses is not made public, so it's hard to verify. Still, it does seem like it would at least be useful for comparing cities to each other, and a city that does badly would have to have a lot of crime to make the list.

But how useful the stats are is anyone's guess. As I said, I was surprised Baltimore didn't make the list, since it usually has one of the highest per-capita murder rates in the country (which makes me think that the CQ methodology gives a lot of weight to other crimes). But even with it's high murder rate, you have a fairly small chance of being murdered in Baltimore if you aren't involved in the illegal drug trade - most of the murders in Baltimore are drug related. Not selling or buying drugs in Baltimore sharply cuts down on the chance that you will be murdered in Baltimore.

As far as the other crimes, there are quite a few property crimes in Baltimore - hey, that's where the wheels got stolen off my previous car. But stuff like that happens everywhere - I had two windows smashed on my first car while it was parked in small-town NJ, in front of my parent's house.