I was watching a news report of a homicide that included an interview with a guy who said he came to Florida with his family to escape the violence. The reporter didn't say from whence the interviewee came, so I wonder if I can figure it out based on statistics.
US News and World Report lists the following states as having a higher violent crime rate than Florida: Texas, Illinois, California, Oklahoma, Michigan, Arizona, Maryland, South Carolina, Delaware, Missouri, Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Nevada, New Mexico, and Alaska. The man in the interview could have come from any of these states, assuming he researched crime rates by state when deciding to move to Florida.
Now let's assume he's from a big city in one of those states, presumably one with a higher violent crime rate than Jacksonville. These would include the green highlighted cities:
St. Louis,
Detroit,
Memphis,
Milwaukee,
Baltimore,
Oakland ,
Kansas City,
Stockton,
Cleveland ,
Indianapolis,
Washington DC,
Toledo,
Atlanta,
Buffalo,
Nashville,
Newark,
Anchorage,
Minneapolis,
Philadelphia,
Miami,
Wichita,
Houston,
Albuquerque,
New Orleans,
Orlando,
Cincinnati,
Las Vegas,
Chicago,
Tulsa,
Durham,
San Francisco,
Oklahoma City,
St. Petersburg,
Sacramento,
Boston,
Pittsburgh,
St. Paul,
Dallas,
Charlotte-Mecklenburg,
Denver, and
Tucson.
I put the Florida cities with higher violent crime rates in red. Keep in mind that I'm looking at ALL violent crime from Wikipedia's list, not murder, since the man used the term violence, not murder. Also, the Wikipedia stats are older than the state ones. Does it matter? I don't know.
Based on the likely cities, we can eliminate the following states:
South Carolina, Delaware, Alabama, and Arkansas.
He also did not mention weather, which is the reason someone from Anchorage might move here, so I'm going to go ahead and assume he made a move from an area with similar weather. Let's eliminate states with totally different winter weather:
Illinois, Michigan, DC, Maryland, and Alaska.
I got the impression this man also didn't move all the way across the country to escape crime. I mean, if you lived out West and wanted to escape violent crime, you'd move to Idaho. So let's eliminate states too far away:
California, Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico.
OK, so based on my own brand of data analysis, I have come to the conclusion that this man moved to Jacksonville, Florida, to escape crime from one of the following states:
Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Louisiana,
or Tennessee.
I may very well be completely wrong here, but it's certainly encouraging to see that Florida and Jacksonville aren't the most violent places on earth, even if a violent crime did lead to the initial story.
And my last two cities of Milwaukee and KC made the top 10, so I guess Jax can be seen as an upgrade that way...except crime is way more spread out across this city than in those two, so I don't actually feel safer here. But at least it's not St. Louis.
Since stats are fun, let's look at the top city for each category of violent crime.
Total violent crime: St. Louis
Murder: St. Louis
Rape: Anchorage
Robbery: Oakland
Congrats, worse cities than Jacksonville.
