“Brick Township always has fared well in our Safest City rankings. For the last six years of our study, it has ranked as one of the top five safest cities in the U.S., “said Scott Morgan, President of Morgan Quitno Press. “It’s safety record is impressive, with no murders or rapes reported. Brick also boasts the lowest overall violent crime and robbery rates among cities across the nation.”

The Morgan Quitno Safest City Award is based on a city’s rate for six basic crime categories: murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary and motor vehicle theft. All cities of 75,000+ populations that reported crime data to the FBI for the six crime categories were included in the rankings. In this year’s survey, 371 cities were considered for the award. Final 2005 statistics, released by the FBI on September 18, 2006, were used to determine the rankings.

Joining Brick at the top of the Safest City rankings are Amherst NY, Mission Viejo CA; Newton MA and Troy MI.

At the opposite end of the Morgan Quitno crime scale, St. Louis, Missouri not only came out ahead of Detroit in the World Series, it also beat out Detroit to rank as the nation’s most dangerous city. St. Louis reported the highest violent crime and property crime rates among cities of 75,000 or more population.

“St. Louis last ranked as the Most Dangerous City in 2002,” said Morgan. “While the city clearly struggles with crime, there is some good news: St. Louis’ property crime rate has fallen 14 percent since 2001.”

Trailing St. Louis on the more dangerous end of the crime rankings (in ascending order) are Detroit MI, Flint MI, Compton CA and Camden NJ.

In addition to ranking the safety of cities, Morgan Quitno Press also examined crime in metropolitan areas. For the first time, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin tops the rankings as America’s Safest Metropolitan Area. The Detroit-Livonia-Dearborn, MI metropolitan division ranked as the most dangerous for the third consecutive year.

The findings of the 13th annual Safest City and Metropolitan Area Awards are featured in City Crime Rankings 13th Edition, an annual reference book from Morgan Quitno Press. The newly updated edition of this volume will be available November 9th. The Safest City and Metropolitan Area rankings are one of six Morgan Quitno Awards announced annually by the company. These other annual announcements designate the nation’s Most Livable State (a state quality of life survey); the Healthiest State (a survey of state health care); the Safest and Most Dangerous States (a state crime survey); the Smartest State (a state education survey) and the Most Improved State (a survey of state trends.)

Additional information regarding the methodology and results of the thirteenth annual Safest City and Metropolitan Area Awards through the links at the top of this page.  A full report featuring information for all 371 cities is available online for $4.99.