New Providence, Berkeley Heights Among Safest New Jersey Cities

NEW PROVIDENCE/BERKELEY HEIGHTS, NJ — Berkeley Heights was ranked 17th and New Providence ranked 37th among the 100 safest cities in New Jersey on the National Council For Home Safety And Security's list of the 2019 Safest Cities in New Jersey on alarms.org.

Berkeley Heights had three violent crimes and 73 property crimes from 2016 and 2017, giving the town a violent-crime rate of 0.220 and 5.346 property crimes per 1,000 people. Berkeley Heights was ranked the highest for Union County. River Vale in Bergen County was the top ranked city on the list.

New Providence had zero violent crimes and 58 property crimes from 2016 and 2017, giving the town a violent-crime rate of 0.000 and 4.495 property crimes per 1,000 people.

The rankings cite data from the most recent FBI Uniform Crime Report. But they eliminated cities that didn't give the FBI a complete crime report and cities with populations lower than 10,000.

The list accounts for the number of reported violent and property crimes per 1,000 people. Then they compute a variable called Police Adequacy — total crimes divided by the number of police employees. The smaller the Police Adequacy number, the safer the city, according to the methodology.

Here are how other Union County towns ranked:

33. Cranford

56. Springfield

64. Roselle Park

66. Westfield

75. Summit

77. Rahway

82. Scotch Plains

100. Clark

115. Roselle

184. Linden

193. Hillside

209. Plainfield

236. Elizabeth

View the rankings here. You can view up to the top 100 safest cities at once or search for a city to see where it ranks.

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