Florida isn’t exactly at the bottom of the list of the safest states in the country, but it certainly isn’t at the top, either. The Sunshine State logged violent and property crime rates just a notch above national levels in both categories.
Elevated levels of crime in Florida’s many large cities, including Jacksonville, Miami, and Tampa, no doubt raise statewide crime rates, though the state is home to many smaller communities with impressive safety records.
Satellite Beach is the safest city in Florida. The coastal city of 11K experienced a remarkably low amount of crime in 2018, including a violent crime rate less than 10% of the national rate, and a property crime rate six times less than statewide levels.
Florida’s 2nd safest community is Key Biscayne, a small island town east of Miami in Miami-Dade County. While Key Biscayne is often one of the first areas to be evacuated in the case of a hurricane, due to its exposed location, residents need not add crime to their list of potential threats: the city recorded just 5 violent crimes in 2018 for a low rate of 0.38 offenses per 1,000 people.
#3 Marco Island has a lot in common with Key Biscayne: both are tourist-frequented island communities where crime is scarce. Marco Island’s violent and property crime rates are even lower than those of the prior entry’s, yet the city falls slightly due its lower law enforcement-to-residents ratio.
North Palm Beach, the 4th safest municipality in Florida, is another sun-soaked community known for its beaches and golf courses, rather than a high level of crime. Like the preceding entries on the list, North Palm Beach earned a violent crime rate below 1 offense per 1,000 and a property crime rate below 10 per 1,000 in 2018.
#5 Parkland is the only non-oceanside community in Florida’s top 5 safest cities, though it’s just a short drive from the coast. While the city gained national attention for the tragedy occurring in the city in February, 2018, Parkland is generally exceedingly safe, boasting violent and property crime rates several times below statewide levels.
Florida’s Safest Cities
Methodology
To identify the safest cities, we reviewed the most recent FBI Uniform Crime Report statistics. We eliminated any cities that failed to submit a complete crime report to the FBI and cities with populations under 10,000. This left 3,381 cities (out of a total of 9,251).
There are two broad classifications of crimes: violent crimes and non-violent crimes. According to the FBI, “Violent crime is composed of four offenses: murder and non-negligent manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. Violent crimes are defined in the UCR Program as those offenses that involve force or threat of force. Property crime includes the offenses of burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson. The object of the theft-type offenses is the taking of money or property, but there is no force or threat of force against the victims. ”
We computed the total number of crimes reported by each city by adding violent crimes and property crimes. We then created a crime rate as the number of crimes per 1,000 population. Then we transformed the total crime rate variable so that the skewness was reduced and normalized.
Data from 2,831 law enforcement agencies was then collected to determine police adequacy (TotalCrimes / Number of police employees). We consider that the smaller the police adequacy statistic is, the safer the city is. This variable was also transformed and normalized.
Finally, the two variables were combined to create a safety score for each city.
