Oro Valley, Buckeye, and Florence have topped a list of the safest Arizona cities. The list is compiled by SafeWise, which is a home security company.
The company looked at 2017 FBI crime reports, and the violent crimes — murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault — that happened in each city. The rankings included 31 cities in Arizona. However, the cities had to have a population larger than 16,400. Property crime was only included if it acted as a tiebreaker.
“Oro Valley is the No. 1 city this year, and they jumped up from No. 2 last year, so they are just improving every year,” said Rebecca Edwards, a SafeWise security and safety expert.
“Buckeye made the No. 2 spot. Last year, they were No. 1, so they moved down.”
Gilbert (No. 4), Surprise (No. 6), Scottsdale (No. 9), Peoria (No. 17), and Chandler (No. 18) were also included in the top 20 safest cities. Mesa was No. 22, Tempe was 26th, and Glendale was 27th.
Yuma, Phoenix, and Tucson were ranked as the bottom three.
“The thing that stood out to me, No. 1, is that 90% of cities in our top 20 are repeats for the second year, so the same cities are staying in that range,” said Edwards. Douglas and Goodyear made the top 20 this year, and Apache Junction and Nogales saw the largest improvement in crime.
While 35% of the state’s cities didn’t report counts of murder, Arizona’s crime rate is still higher than the national average. The national average is 4.49. Arizona is just above the national average a rate of 4.91. Arizona’s property crime rate is 32.18, which is also higher than the national average of 27.11.
“Arizona was most afraid of property crime, and that made a lot of sense because the property crime rate across the state is higher than the national average by about five points,” she said. “And so the experiences that people are having in Arizona do seem to line up with their safety concerns.”
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