Community Corner
Palatine Makes Website's Top 10 Safest Large Cities in Illinois List
The village also was ranked 66th overall in the state, according to personal finance website ValuePenguin's crime stats analysis.
Palatine was ranked in the top 10 of the safest large cities in the state with a population of more than 30,000, according to a statistical analysis of crime data by a personal finance website.
The village, with a population of 69,533, took the No. 8 spot among large cities on ValuePenguin's study of the safest places in Illinois in 2016. Overall, Palatine rated 66th in safety among the 291 communities with populations of at least 5,000 that were studied by the website.
Palatine's ranking is a downgrade from last year when it held the No. 5 position in the website's large city category and was rated 44th overall.
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The Chicago suburb of Hawthorn Woods (population 7,861) was named the safest city in Illinois. Bartlett ranked No. 1 in the website's large city category. Other nearby communities that made the top 10 in that grouping included: Buffalo Grove (No. 2), Glenview (No. 4), Northbrook (No. 7), Mount Prospect (No. 9) and Arlington Heights (No. 10).
The 291st safest city in the state was East St. Louis—not Chicago—in southern Illinois on the border with Missouri. In fact, Chicago ranked 285th overall, ahead of Harvey (286th), Springfield (288th) and Rockford (290th).
Find out what's happening in Palatinefor free with the latest updates from Patch.
RELATED: Go to ValuePenguin for Its Complete List of Safest Cities in Illinois
Not surprisingly, suburban Chicago communities with high median household incomes, low poverty levels and high home-ownership rates ranked significantly high.
To come up with its rankings, ValuePenguin used property crime and violent crime data culled from 2014 FBI statistics, the most recent stats available. This is how the website then broke down that data:
"We standardized the data to reflect violent and property crimes per 100,000, to account for population. Then, we aggregated a “crime score” by weighting violent crime at 80% and property crime at 20%. … Then we adjusted the crime score for population size, giving more slack to larger cities. Finally, we ranked the cities based on their crime scores."
The emphasis on violent crime is the reason for Palatine's slipping on the list. Although its property crime score decreased over last year, the village's violent crime score had a slight uptick. Palatine's overall crime score was 534.
How did Palatine compare to neighboring communities? Here's a look at their overall rankings with populations in parentheses:
- Arlington Heights: 76th (76,200)
- Barrington: 35th (10,368)
- Buffalo Grove: 25th (41,840)
- Deerfield: 26th (18,309)
- Evanston: 230th (75,817)
- Glencoe: 48th (8,885)
- Glenview: 46th (45,588)
- Highland Park: 84th (29,920)
- Highwood: 14th (5,328)
- Morton Grove: 120th (23,575)
- Mount Prospect: 75th (54,891)
- Niles: 187th (30,071)
- Northbrook: 57th (33,698)
- Northfield: 116th (5,496)
- Prospect Heights: 87th (16,442)
- Schaumburg: 210th (75,060)
- Wheeling: 136th (38,095)
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