Most Fall River, New Bedford, Taunton area cities and towns fare poorly in safest cities report

Massachusetts has possibly the highest concentration of very safe cities/towns in the United States. That didn’t, however, represent our local area according to a new report.

According to Backgroundchecks.org, 35 Massachusetts cities/towns would be considered the safest city in a large number of states in the country. Out of those 35, however, only one was from this area.

Rehoboth had the top spot in the area, coming in at number 12 with an 0.72 score. Fall River came in at 159 with a -0.7 score. New Bedford received a -0.37 score to rank 148. Wareham slid in just on top of New Bedford at 145. Taunton didn’t fare much better at 126 with a score of 0.1. Acushnet, Fairhaven and Middleboro came in at 118, 121, and 130 respectively.

Some local locations did rank better than Fall River, New Bedford, and Taunton however.

Seekonk came in at 54, Westport 57, Swansea 63, and Somerset 79. Raynham got inside the top 100 at 96. Dartmouth placed right at number 100.

Backgroundchecks.org got their results using the most recent FBI crime statistics to create state rankings. To be ranked, the city/town had to have a population of at least 10,000. The group calculated violent crime rates and property crime rates by dividing the crime numbers by the population to get rates per 1,000. They also calculated the ratio of law enforcement workers to per 1,000. These were weighted with -50% for the violent crime rate, -25% for the property crime rate, and +25% for the law enforcement rate. The resulting metric gave the safety index score. The higher the number, the more safe the city is.

To see the full list, click here.