One Website Study Says Manchester 10th Most Dangerous Community in CT

The Movoto real-estate website says Manchester is one of the 10 least safe cities or towns in Connecticut, primarily because of a high amount of property crime.

“In 2012, Manchester had the sixth most property crimes per person in the state. Most of these were thefts, followed by burglaries, followed by vehicle thefts [...],” according to the website. “Residents here had a 1 in 31 chance of being the victim of a crime.”

Movoto came up with this list of the most dangerous municipalities in Connecticut:

1. New Haven
2. Hartford
3. Bridgeport
4. New London
5. Waterbury
6. New Britain
7. East Hartford
8. Meriden
9. Derby
10. Manchester

Communities that came after Manchester on their list (in order): West Haven, Bristol, East Haven, Stratford and Norwich. (The table published with this article is part of a larger table on the Movoto website, here.)

How they calculated the rankings

The website took 2012 FBI crime statistics (which are not the most recent — the FBI recently published crime statistics for Manchester and 89 other communities in Connecticut with their own police departments). The website narrowed its focus by looking only at communities with 10,000 or more residents. Then it assigned more weight to violent crime:

“In our analysis, we weighted murders, violent crimes, and property crimes so that they each comprised 30 percent of the overall score, whereas the total number of crimes comprised 10 percent. The final step was to average each place’s rankings into one Big Deal Score [...]”

Movoto states on its website that the comparisons among communities are not meant to assess the effectiveness of police departments. The FBI also cautions against simple comparisons between police departments, since crime rates can vary due to various factors, such as demographics (for instance, a college town may have more of certain types of crime) and geography (for example, a community on a highway near high-crime cities may experience more crime).

Another Ranking of Crime Rates in Connecticut Communities

Manchester’s ranking was a bit different for ValuePenguin.com, another website that put out a ranking of cities’ and towns’ crime rates. Manchester was ranked 76th out of 90 towns, 14th from the bottom and tied with Norwalk on that list. Both lists relied on the same FBI statistics gathered from police departments, but they weighted crimes differently to come up with “safety” rankings based on reported crimes.

(ValuePenguin describes itself as a website that conducts research, largely on consumer topics, to help people make decisions about automobile insurance, health insurance, credit cards and similar products and services.)

The FBI’s Manchester Crime Statistics for 2013

The FBI recently released crime statistics for 90 cities and towns in Connecticut (along with others across the nation). They show most crimes going down in Manchester from 2012 to 2013, although some of the most serious crimes — homicide, rape and robbery — were up:

In 2012

Violent Crime: 111 total, comprised of:

Murder or nonnegligent manslaughter: 1

Forcible rape: 12

Robbery: 46

Aggravated assault: 52

Property Crime: 1,797 total, comprised of:

Burglaries: 288

Larcenies/thefts: 1,417

Motor vehicle thefts: 92

Arson: 7

In 2013

Violent Crime: 101 total, comprised of:

Murder or nonnegligent manslaughter: 3

Forcible rape: 16

Robbery: 50

Aggravated assault: 32

Property Crime: 1,505 total, comprised of:

Burglaries: 221

Larcenies/thefts: 1,231

Motor vehicle thefts: 53

Arson: 3