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Courtesy Xochitl Mora,

McAllen’s SmartAsset.com ranking moved up one from 2019

(McAllen, Texas)- McAllen has once again received recognition for something many in the community already know: being ranked ninth Safest Cities in the United States by SmartAsset.com, analyzed a core set of common safety factors to identify and rank the safest cities in America. The financial planning website looked at data from 200 of the largest cities across the following five metrics: violent crime, property crime, vehicular mortality rate, drug poisoning mortality rate and the percentage of the population engaging in excessive drinking to determine the 2021 ranking. In 2019, McAllen was ranked #10.

“I am so proud of the brave, hardworking McAllen Police Officers who, not only protect and serve our community and its residents on a daily basis, but also, have kept our crime rate dropping each year to the lowest it has ever been in the past 36 years,” said McAllen Mayor Jim Darling. “This ranking only highlights what those of us in this area have always known: McAllen is safe and secure.”

Safety is one of the top concerns for many families when picking a place to live. Many Americans have usually looked for low crime and other low-risk factors in order to determine whether a new neighborhood, or even a new community or city, is safe for them.

“McAllen’s continued ranking as a safe city by various websites, as well as the F.B.I.’s own Uniform Crime Report of the crime rate in McAllen, is, in sharp contrast to rhetoric painting McAllen as an unsafe, or violent community,” concluded Mayor Darling.

To find the safest cities, SmartAsset compared 200 of the largest U.S. cities across the following metrics:

Violent crime rate. The number of violent crimes per 100,000 residents. Data comes from the FBI’s 2019 Uniform Crime Reporting Database.
Property crime rate. The number of property crimes per 100,000 residents. Data comes from the FBI’s 2019 Uniform Crime Reporting Database.
Vehicular mortality rate. The number of deaths due to traffic accidents per 100,000 residents. Data comes from countyhealthrankings.org and is for 2020.
Drug poisoning mortality rate. The number of drug poisoning deaths per 100,000 residents. Data comes from countyhealthrankings.org and for 2020.
Percentage of the population engaging in excessive drinking. The percentage of adults who consumed more than four drinks of alcohol for women or five drinks of alcohol for men on a single occasion over a 30-day period, or who engage in heavy drinking, which is defined as drinking more than one drink per day for women or two drinks a day for men on average. Data comes from countyhealthrankings.org and is for 2020.

The vehicular mortality rate, drug poisoning mortality rate and percentage of the population engaging in excessive drinking are all measured at the county level. Both violent and property crime rates are at the city level.

To find the final rankings, SmartAsset.com first ranked each city in each metric. Then, they found the average ranking for every city, giving each metric an equal weight. From there, they ranked the cities based on their average ranking, giving an index score of 100 to the top city and an index score of 0 to the bottom city.

According to SmartAsset.com, McAllen, Texas is the only top Texan city on the list that is located outside of Collin County. It has the sixth-lowest violent crime rate, with 97 for every 100,000 residents. McAllen has the lowest drug poisoning mortality rate, with only 3.5 drug deaths for every 100,000 residents. But it ranks in the bottom half of this study for vehicular mortality rate, with 10.6 deaths for every 100,000.

“The McAllen community recognizes that a vibrant city begins with a safe city. Collective public safety efforts, therefore, have been a collective effort,” said McAllen Police Chief Victor Rodriguez. “Our community strives to prevent crime, to promote public safety and to participate in the investigation of crime when it does occur. At the end of 2020, the City of McAllen recorded its 11th consecutive annual crime reduction and its lowest crime rate in 36 years.”

Rodriguez also credited the low crime rate to the unwavering support of the McAllen community and its elected officials, as well as the dedicated work of McAllen Police Officers.

“To this end, the McAllen Police Department expresses sincere appreciation to all members of our community and to the McAllen City Commission for their diligence and dedication to making public safety the top priority. The McAllen Police Department administration expresses special thanks to the men and women of the McAllen Police Department for their hard work and successful outcomes,” added Rodriguez.

Joining McAllen on the list are the border cities of Laredo at #19; Brownsville at #21; and El Paso at #25.