Forbes published a list Tuesday of the most dangerous cities in the country. Mobile ranked second most dangerous city behind St. Louis. Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson says it's a black eye for Mobile.
"It's not something that any mayor wants to be on a list like that," said Stimpson.
The list is based on analysis MoneyGeek performed using 2021 crime statistics reported to the FBI and academic research on the cost of crime. Mobile is second in the ranking. Birmingham is third. Birmingham had 132 homicides in 2021, while Mobile had 51. Baltimore is ranked fourth most dangerous city followed by Memphis, Detroit, Cleveland and New Orleans. Stimpson says he can't help but question the methodology.
"If you just look at some of the other cities and see where they are and your gut tells you gollee, is Mobile really worse than that? And you just kind of intuitively know that no, we're not," said Stimpson.
"What the purpose of the study was, is to find what the societal cost of crime is," said MoneyGeek Director of Communications Melody Kasulis.
MoneyGeek reviewed data for 263 cities with a population greater than 100,000 but excluded dozens of cities in nine states including California and Florida that did not report their murder or rape rates to the FBI.
"Doesn't that skew the data when you don't, when you exclude 40 to 50 cities? Doesn't that elevate us (Mobile)? What would you say to some of the critics of the methodology?" asked NBC 15's Andrea Ramey.
"I think anyone trying to do this type of study will face a lot of the same obstacles that we did. So what we try to do is try to present something in a really fair way that considers population, the most robust and complete data, which is fair to every city," replied Kasulis.
Stimpson also notes that the rankings look at cost of crime per capita, and Mobile's police jurisdiction goes beyond the city limit lines, which would also impact the outcome.
"That's 70,000 additional citizens that we are policing for, and that number would make a difference in this," said Stimpson.
The city says violent crime is actually trending downward, and the numbers for several categories including homicide, robbery, burglary, and sexual assault decreased by double digits in 2022 compared to 2021.
"Most cities the size of Mobile have seen double digit increases in violent crime we've seen double digit decreases," said Mobile Police Chief Paul Prine.
Mobile Mayor Sandy Stimpson included this note in his nightly email:
Unfortunately, you may have recently seen reports of Mobile being featured on a list of "dangerous cities" in the U.S. While it's embarrassing for our community to be included in something like this, putting things in proper context is essential. It's important to know that the study this list was created from used some questionable methodology. It was based on crime data from two years ago and excluded dozens of cities that did not report the same data to federal authorities. It also ranked cities based on the estimated cost of crime without adjusting for the cost of living. But regardless of how the list was compiled, it does not represent where Mobile is today.
Since 2021, the City of Mobile has taken multiple steps to improve public safety, and we've seen promising results. We have provided better incentives to help recruit and retain police officers and invested millions of dollars into new technology and prevention strategies to reduce gun violence and youth violence. We saw the fruits of these efforts in the latter half of 2022 after Operation Echo Stop came fully online. Mobile's homicide rate dropped 20 percent from 2021 to 2022 and fell by nearly 40 percent when you compare the last six months of 2022 to the same period in 2021. We also saw similar positive trends in other categories of violent and non-violent crimes.
We'll dive deeper into some of these numbers when the Mobile Police Department releases its annual report this spring. While the report will show us trending in a positive direction when it comes to crime in Mobile, our entire staff realizes we still have work to do. Working with our law enforcement and judicial partners, we remain committed to holding dangerous criminals accountable and ensuring that Mobile is a safe place for families, businesses, and visitors.