We Call This 'Patchy': Grosse Ile Among Safest Places in Michigan

Several metro Detroit suburbs are among the safest places to live in Michigan, according to a recent study by that looked at FBI crime data in 200 cities and towns in the state.

Value Penguin, a personal finance research and analysis firm, found that several “Patch” towns near Detroit are among the safest neighborhoods in the state. Crime scores ranged from the safest at 28 to a whopping 7,156 among the most dangerous cities with high incidences of violent crime – Detroit, Benton Harbor and Flint. The scores don’t reflect actual crime rates, but offer a snapshot to compare towns to one another.

Among cities of more than 25,000, Bloomfield Township, Plymouth Township, West Bloomfield Township, Northville Township and White Lake Township were the top 5 safest cities.

Farmington Hills, Novi, Canton Township, Troy and Brownstown Township rounded out the top 10.

Related:

• What City Tops FBI’s ‘Most Dangerous’ List?

Bloomfield Township, with a population of 41,791, had an adjusted crime score of 355 – which is 87 percent more favorable than the average city in Michigan, Value Penguin said. The median income is significantly higher than the state average. Among the amenities cited by Value Penguin include the Detroit Skating Club, where many world-class figure skaters train.

Among mid-size cities with populations of 10,000-25,000, Grosse Ile Township was the safest and New Baltimore was the third safest. Rochester, Clawson, Berkley and Birmingham also made it into the Top 10.

The adjusted crime score in Grosse Ile Township – named one of Money magazine’s “Top 100 Best Places to Live” in 2009 – is 157.2. Located in Wayne County, it’s home to the Grosse Ile Land & Nature Conservancy. Grosse Ile Township is smaller than many cities in the mid-size category, with a population of 10,194.

In the small cities class (less than 10,000) Huntington Woods and Northville were ranked No. 9 and No. 10, respectively.

The graphic below shows the rankings.

To arrive at the crime score, analysts collected data from the 2013 FBI crime statistics by city (the most recent data available. Towns with populations of less than 5,000 were excluded because with fewer crimes reported, they’re more sensitive to crime-score fluctuations.

The raw data report included violent crimes (murder/manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault) and property crimes (burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson) from all law enforcement agencies that participate in the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting program.

Where does your city rank?

• Find out how other Michigan cities and towns ranked here.

The analysts standardized the data to reflect violent and property crimes per 100,000, to account for population, and then then aggregated a “crime score.” Violent crime was weighted at 90 percent and property crime at 10 percent.

“Though property crime is far more prevalent, we figured that the violent crime data points are more relevant when calculating the relative safety of these cities,” Value Penguin said. “To account for the fact that smaller cities with very slight upticks in crime are penalized more severely, we then applied a logarithm to the population and multiplied it by that number to arrive at our ‘crime score.’ We then ranked the cities relative to each other based on their crime scores.”

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Graphics: Value Penguin