PoliceScannerBlog.com:: October 2011

October 31, 2011

100 Safest Cities in America

A couple of weeks ago, I posted the blog entry "100 Most Dangerous Cities in Amercia".

In this post, I thought I would give you the flip side of the coin...or the Top 100 Safest Cities in America.

NeighborhoodScout.com has compiled exclusive crime data for individual neighborhoods with a population of 25,000 residents or more resulting in a list of the Top 100 Safest Cities in America.

About the Compilation

As with the 100 Most Dangerous Cities in America post, the list is derived from municipal crime statistics from the FBI and the U.S. Justice Department. According to NeighborhoodScout, data was gathered from all 17,000 local law enforcement agencies in the United States.

A relational database from the data was used to associate crime incidences from all of these law enforcement agencies to the specific local communities the agency covers, and hence in which community the crimes have occurred.

The data was then researched and a mathematical algorithm was developed to statistically estimate the incidences of both violent and property crimes for each neighborhood in America.

The project took nearly 6-months to complete and the resultant formulae produced numbers of crimes and crime rates for neighborhoods with upwards of 87% accuracy in most cases.

Types of Crimes Included in Data

Offenses included in the data:

Willful Homicide
Forcible Rape
Robbery
Burglary
Aggravated Assault
Larceny (over $50)
Motor Vehicle Theft
Arson

NeighborhoodScout's 100 Safest Cities

Below is a list of the Top 10 Safest Cities in America in order according to NeighborhoodScout’s Top 100.

If you live in one of the cities below and are reading this then you most likely have a police scanner and are already well aware of the low crime in your city because you hardly ever hear anything going on in your city.

I know, I live in Canyon Lake, one, if not, the safest city in Riverside County, CA. (it does help that were are a guard-gated community with just under 11,000 residents).

Point being, monitoring just my city is pretty boring. This is where monitoring the surrounding area comes in handy, a topic for an upcomming post.

Anyway, on with the top 10 Safest Cities (w/pop. of 25,000 or more):

10. Long Beach, NY
9. Plum, PA
8. Santa Cruz, CA
7. Franklin, MA
6. Manhattan, KS
5. Shaker Heights, OH
4. Parma, OH
3. Bowie, MD
2. Edina, MN
1. Pikesville, MD

A link to the complete list of 100 safest cities with detailed information on crimes for all 100 cities is included in the “Related Links of Interest” section below.

Related Links of Interest

If you live in one of the safest cities and monitor a scanner, tell us about it in the comment section. Please no profanity, vulgarity, or racial slurs.

That's it for now, till next time, stay safe and happy scanning!

-RF

October 19, 2011

Another Satellite Crashing to Earth This Week

ROSAT Satellite

Okay, here we go again! Another decommissioned satellite will come crashing down to Earth this week.

If you recall it was just over 3 weeks ago that we had a U.S. decommissioned satellite, "UARS" (Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite), crash to Earth.

UARS fell harmlessly into the southern Pacific Ocean last month despite a 1 in 3,200 chance of someone being struck.

"ROSAT" (short for "Röntgensatellit")

This time it's a German Satellite called "ROSAT" (short for "Röntgensatellit") that is expected to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere between 21-23 October 2011.

With ROSAT, there is a 1 in 2,000 chance estimate that it could hit someone. This is a slightly higher level of risk than was calculated for the NASA UARS satellite, however any one individual’s odds of being struck are 1-in-14 trillion, given there are 7 billion people on the planet.

ROSAT orbits the earth every 90 minutes and according to the German Aerospace Centre, parts of the satellite, which is the size of a van, will burn up during re-entry but up to 30 fragments weighing a total of 1.87 tons could hit the ground sometime between Friday and Monday.

Impact Zone Unknown

The German Aerospace Centre says that even though they do not know where it will crash down, all countries around the globe between 53-degrees north and 53-degrees south could possibly be affected. That pretty much includes much of the earth outside the poles.

As it nears the re-entry dates, scientists will be able to more accurately estimate exactly when it will land to a window of about 10 hours. Check out the links in the "Related Links of Interest" section below for continued coverage.

What to Listen For On Your Scanner

Monitoring your local police and fire channels in your area as you normally do would be the best bet.

Should the impact zone be determined to be over the U.S., there will most likely be advisories put out over police and fire channels in the impact zone alerting public safety personnel about the estimated debris and debris recovery procedure.

If you missed my UARS blog post, what you would hear over the scanner would be something similar to what was heard when the Space Shuttle Columbia broke apart on re-entry back in February 1, 2003.

That said, check out Google's News Coverage on ROSAT for updated info on impact locations and keep your eyes on the sky and your ear on the scanner!

Related Links of Interest

That's it for now, till next time stay safe and happy scanning!

-RF

October 13, 2011

100 Most Dangerous Cities in America

PoliceAndFirePhotos.com

NeighborhoodScout.com has compiled exclusive crime data for individual neighborhoods with a population of 25,000 residents or more resulting in a list of the 100 Most Dangerous Cities in America.

About the Compilation

The list is derived from municipal crime statistics from the FBI and the U.S. Justice Department. According to NeighborhoodScout, data was gathered from all 17,000 local law enforcement agencies in the United States.

A relational database from the data was used to associate crime incidences from all of these law enforcement agencies to the specific local communities the agency covers, and hence in which community the crimes have occurred.

The data was then researched and a mathematical algorithm was developed to statistically estimate the incidences of both violent and property crimes for each neighborhood in America.

The project took nearly 6-months to complete and the resultant formulae produced numbers of crimes and crime rates for neighborhoods with upwards of 87% accuracy in most cases.

Types of Crimes Included in Data

Offenses included in the data:

Willful Homicide
Forcible Rape
Robbery
Burglary
Aggravated Assault
Larceny (over $50)
Motor Vehicle Theft
Arson

NeighborhoodScout’s Most Dangerous Cities

Below is a list of the Top 10 Most Dangerous Cities in America in order according to NeighborhoodScout’s Top 100.

If you live in one of the cities below and are reading this then you most likely have a police scanner and are already well aware of the crime in your city.

10. Oakland, CA
9. Wilmington, DE
8. Spartanburg, SC
7. St. Louis, MO
6. Camden, NJ
5. West Memphis, AR
4. Salisbury, MD
3. Las Vegas, NV
2. Chester, PA
1. Saginaw, MI

A link to the complete list with detailed information on crimes for all 100 cities is included in the “Related Links of Interest” section below.

Forbes’ Most Dangerous Cities

Forbes Magazine recently put out its own list of America’s Top 10 Most Dangerous Cities with a population of 200,000 residents or more. Here is their list:

10 Rockford, IL
9 Las Vegas, NV
8 Tallahassee, FL
7 Stockton, CA
6 Lubbock TX
5 Anchorage, AK
4 Flint, MI
3 Springfield, IL
2 Memphis, TN
1 Detroit, MI

A link to the Forbes article is included in the “Related Links of Interest” section below.

Related Links of Interest

If you live in one of the most dangerous cities, tell us about it in the comment section. Please no profanity, vulgarity, or racial slurs.

That's it for now, till next time, stay safe and happy scanning!

-RF