Gabriel Tovar for Unsplash
Dallas has more uninsured citizens than almost any other metro in the nation, which is one reason our city comes in at a sad No. 166 (of 180) on WalletHub’s latest survey of ‘2022’s safest cities in America.’
The financial advice website’s researchers looked at factors including shootings, traffic accidents and natural disasters as well as the number of folks forgoing health insurance, taking out risky loans and visiting unsecured websites, to name a few, in order to analyze a wide range of hazards that could contribute to security or a lack thereof.
“Some cities are simply better at protecting their residents from harm,” the authors report. “To determine where Americans are most secure — in more than one sense” — WalletHub compared 180 cities across 42 indicators of safety, from vaccination numbers and assaults per capita to unemployment and road quality.
At 166 overall, Dallas ranked a miserable 172 for “home and community safety,” 104 for “natural disaster risk” and 121 for “financial safety.”
The safest city in America, according to the data analysts, is Columbia, MD. The only Texas city in the top 5 safest is border-town Laredo. St. Louis, MO is the least safe area, they say.
Most of the experts who contributed suggestions for improving safety in an area focused largely on local police departments gaining public trust.
“The idea of community policing, where police are in the neighborhoods, viewed less as crime responders and more as a community resource,” said Keith Boeckelman, professor of political science at Western Illinois University. “Representation is important as well, was community policing will work better when the police look like the neighborhoods they are patrolling.
The full study including methodology is available here.
