It's sometimes hard to fathom that Detroit could get such a ranking when you read all about the city's comeback and the infusion of new restaurants and the popularity of downtown, Midtown, Corktown and some other neighborhoods like Palmer Woods and Indian Village.
But really, there is still far too much violent crime in Detroit, often in neighborhoods not associated with the city's comeback, neighborhoods we only hear about on the local nightly news when there's a gas station or drive-by shooting or sexual assault or some other horrific incident.
Law Street, a two-year-old site based in New York City, analyzes FBI stats for violent crimes for 2014 and compiles a list of the Top 10 most dangerous cities in America with more than 200,000 people.
Detroit unfortunately was listed as #1, followed by Memphis and then Oakland, Calif.
The site writes this about Detroit:
Although Detroit remains at the top of the list, it did experience another decrease in crime, with its violent crime rate going down by 4 percent in 2014. The city saw a decrease in three of the four categories of violent crime, with drops in the number of murders, rapes and robberies. Detroit had 18 fewer murders in 2014 than it did in the previous year, putting its total at the lowest point in 47 years.
Over half of the city's violent crimes were aggravated assaults, which went up by about 4.5 percent from the previous year. Detroit's downward trending crime is a good sign for the city, which has been plagued by challenges after it declared bankruptcy in the summer of 2013.
-- Allan Lengel
