Indy ranked 22nd most dangerous city

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) - According to numbers put together by the FBI based on 2011 statistics, Indianapolis is the 22nd most dangerous city in the US, when it comes to violent crime.

That makes Indy only slightly safer than Washington D.C. and Newark, New Jersey.  "Do we have some crime issues?  Absolutely. But I don't want people to be overly alarmed by that. They have to take the numbers for what they are,"  says Marion County Public Safety Director Troy Riggs. 

He says the city is safe.  "When you go out to other cities, they look at Indianapolis as being a safe city. I've always looked at Indianapolis as being a safe city. And I've worked in other cities considered safer on paper  than Indianapolis I'm here to tell you they're not," he says. 

Riggs says the stats used for the rankings are gathered by local police departments and then reported to the FBI.   "But you have no idea  how much effort a city puts in, tabulating those statistics. You have no idea the inputs they used. You have no idea what type of formula they used to run the crime numbers," he says.

Only cities of 100,000 population or more, are ranked in the study.  And only violent crimes per 100,000, including murder, certain manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault are counted.  

Indianapolis reported just over 1,100 violent crimes per 100,000 people. Most disturbing according to the report, a rate of forcible rapes that is about double the national average.

Too high Riggs says, but there may be a reason it's so high.  "Some cities do a better job of getting sexual assault victims to report crimes.  So therefore their crime rate is going to go higher.  But it's higher because they're doing a better job of dealing with those crimes," he says.

Riggs says while the stats are sobering, knowing the numbers is the first step in making a city safer.  Numbers he says that are often under reported.  "So in January we're putting a team together to look at all our crime numbers.  How we put those together.  How we report those. And we also want to look and see what our percentage of under reported crime is in our community," he says. 

Ironically, improving the way the city reports crime might actually result in an even worse ranking down the road. But Riggs says that would be a sign of progress.  As long, he says, as arrests and prosecutions go up as well.