Sammamish One of America's Safest Cities? So Says Data Mining Company

Perhaps revealing what many residents already know, the website neighborhoodscout.com is listing Sammamish as the 11th safest city in America, based on 2012 data for property and violent crime in cities of 25,000 residents or more.

Furthermore, the site lists Sammamish as the eighth safest city so far this year.

Operated by the data mining company Location, Inc., neighborhoodscout.com developed the list of the 100 safest cities in the United States “based on the total number of property and violent crimes per 1,000 residents." Crimes include burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, murder, forcible rape, armed robbery, and aggravated assault.

The data are based on the total number of crimes reported to the FBI and population size. And right there ahead of many cities in California, as well as some in Washington, Colorado, Arizona and all over the country for 2012, is Sammamish at No. 11. The site also provides a hyperlink to a crime map of Sammamish neighborhood by neighborhood, designed primarily for real estate agents.

Interestingly, the data show the fifth safest city in America (2012) is Newtown, Conn., scene of the recent tragic school shooting.

Of course, crime does occur in Sammamish like anywhere - and what was it some famous person once said about “lies, damned lies, and statistics?”

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So what do you think? Is Sammamish one of the safest places in America? Or do the statistics fail to tell the real story?