Portage on Top 50 Safest Cities in Michigan List

A couple Southwest Michigan cities make the "Top 50 Safest Cities in Michigan" list.  Find out where they fall.

Recently Tess blogged about the 10 Most Dangerous Neighborhoods in Kalamazoo.  Even though, the story was clearly about what neighborhoods in our area, not relative to cities with higher crime rates like Flint or Detroit.  Some people were outraged, feeling that the story was using incorrect info or was meant to be negative to our area.  While I can guarantee that was not the case.  Here is a positive story about our area to even the scales.

BackgroundChecks.org compiled a list of the 50 Safest Cities in Michigan 2016.  According to BackgroundChecks.org,

Our list was compiled based on FBI violent crime stats and propriety BackgroundChecks.org research data.  Rates are normalized per 100,000 residents with the state average being 427 for violent crime and 2,044 for property crime.  This is calculated by taking (# of crimes/population) * 100,000.

Portage came in at #45 on the list.  Portage is currently home to 46,200 people.  This article goes on to say that Portage is a safe place to live by stating,

The violent crime rate here is 162.9, and the chance of being affected by property crime here is 3.5%.

Kudos to the Portage Public Safety Department.  No doubt, there hard work is a large part of why Portage is on this list.

Other nearby areas to make this list include St. Joseph #36, Grand Haven, #46, Muskegon #48 and Grandville impressing us all at #15.

Check out the entire list by clicking below.

BONUS VIDEO: Mayor Bobby Hopewell on the Morning Mayhem with Dana & Tess after the Kalamazoo Shootings back in Feb.