Scotch Plains Among 100 Safest New Jersey Cities

SCOTCH PLAINS, NJ — Scotch Plains was ranked 84th 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.

Scotch Plains had 10 violent crimes and 203 property crimes from 2016 and 2017, giving the town a violent-crime rate of 0.410 and 8.328 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.

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:

17. Berkeley Heights

33. Cranford

37. New Providence

56. Springfield

64. Roselle Park

66. Westfield

75. Summit

77. Rahway

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.

Have a news tip? Email alexis.tarrazi@patch.com.

Get Patch breaking news alerts sent right to your phone with our new app. Download here.