Community Corner
Winnetka Among Top 25 Safest Cities in Illinois: Study
The village was ranked 23rd in the state, according to personal finance website ValuePenguin's crime stats analysis.
Winnetka was ranked in the top 25 of the safest cities in the state, according to a statistical analysis of crime data by a personal finance website.
The village, with a population of 12,477, took the No. 23 spot among cities on ValuePenguin's study of the safest places in Illinois in 2016. The website looked at 291 communities with populations of at least 5,000 in the state who reported their criminal data to the FBI.
Winnetka's ranking is a huge improvement from last year's list. In 2015 the village was ranked 63rd.
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The Chicago suburb of Hawthorn Woods (population 7,861) was named the safest city in Illinois (it also was the safest small city in the state). Bartlett ranked No. 1 in the website's large city category (cities with populations greater than 30,000), while Lake in the Hills topped the mid-size city grouping (cities with populations between 15,000 and 30,000).
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).
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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."
Winnetka's overall crime score was 358.
How did Winnetka compare to neighboring communities? Here's a look at their overall rankings with populations in parentheses:
- Deerfield: 26th (18,309)
- Des Plaines: 121st (59,041)
- Evanston: 230th (75,817)
- Glencoe: 48th (8,885)
- Glenview: 46th (45,588)
- Highland Park: 84th (29,920)
- Highwood: 14th (5,328)
- Lake Forest: 20th (19,343)
- Morton Grove: 120th (23,575)
- Mount Prospect: 75th (54,891)
- Niles: 187th (30,071)
- Northbrook: 57th (33,698)
- Northfield: 116th (5,496)
- Skokie: 218th (65,263)
- Wilmette: 90th (27,427
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