What to Know
- BackgroundChecks.org conducted a study on New York State's safest communities
- Safety indexes were measured based on violent crime rate, property crime rate, and law enforcement staffing
- East Hampton was named the safest city in NY, with four Long Island communities registering in the top five
Safety is the number one priority for East Hampton, as the Long Island community was named New York State’s safest community, according to BackgroundChecks.org on Tuesday.
The annual report releases the safest cities in the U.S. and broke down the rankings based on a safety index that combines FBI crime statistics and law enforcement employee to resident ratios to create a score and measure the overall safety of a specific community. Sixty-one New York cities received a score of 0.3 or higher, which indicates a very high safety level. Four Long Island towns were among the top-five when it came to the 2019 rankings.
East Hampton notched the state’s highest score at 1.29 due to low crime rates across the board. The Long Island community has a crime rate of 0.85 per 1,000 residents and a property crime rate of 11.34 per 1,000.
Coming in at second on the list is Port Washington, another Long Island community, which holds a score of 1.13. The community of 19,000 recorded a mere five violent crimes in all of 2017 to make for a rate over 14 times lower than the national average.
Floral Park is third with a score of 0.98 due to a violent crime rate of just 0.56 per 1,000 residents, and Southold is right behind at number four with a safety index of 0.96. Rounding out the top-five is Mamaroneck, located in Westchester County. The only non-Long Island town in the top-five has a violent crime rate of just 1 per 1,000 residents.
A total of 2,929 cities were audited in BackgroundCheck.org’s report, including 119 in New York State. The report automatically filters out any city with a population under 10,000, and all crime rates were determined on a per-capita basis.
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Click here for the full list of 2019’s safest New York cities.