Search Google right now for the most dangerous cities in America and the results include three Palm Beach County communities: Belle Glade, Lake Worth and Riviera Beach.
But a closer look at the report shows the analysis is based on 2010 – 2014 data.
We decided to break down violent crime stats for our five-county area, and let you explore the data to see how your area compares.
We used Uniform Crime Reports (UCR), offense reports.
These are crime statistics agencies annually report to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the FBI.
We focused on violent crimes, namely, murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault.
Not only did we look at how many crimes were reported for each of the agencies, we also calculated a rate per 100,000 people, to correct for population differences between agencies.
Take a look at the graphic below: It lets you compare agencies on crime and crime rates over the years.
Note: In Palm Beach County several cities contract police services through the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office, yet they show up in our graphic as being their own agencies.
The reason for this is that PBSO reports these numbers to FDLE and FBI as if the town has its own agency.
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