Halloween is right around the corner and parents will soon be dressing up their little ones and asking neighbors for sweet treats. But where are the safest places to take your kids for tricks or treats? According to a new study by the Chamber of Commerce, three California cities are among the top ten.
Irvine came in at 6th with an overall score of 78. The city fared well when it comes to pedestrian fatalities, scoring just 1.06 fatalities per 100,000 residents. The city had lower law enforcement personnel than some of its counterparts, registering only 115 officers per 100,000 residents.
Carlsbad secured eighth place. The low number of pedestrian fatalities in the city gave it a little boost. Carlsbad has recorded just 0.22 pedestrian deaths per 100,000 people. However, the city’s violent crime rate is higher than other California cities on the list, with 191 recorded violent crimes per 100,000 residents.
Los Angeles suburb Glendale came in strong at No. 9. The city also had an overall score of 78, but the number of registered sex offenders in the area dragged it down the list a bit. Glendale has 32 registered sex offenders per 100,000 city residents, double what Irvine has.
Although they did not make the top ten list, a few other California cities deserved mention. Sunnyvale came in strong at number 20 on the list with an overall safety score of 75. The city of South Bay has a high law enforcement rate at 191 per 100,000, but that couldn’t make up for the rate of City’s highest violent crime. Sunnyvale reported 121 violent crimes and 75 registered sex offenders per 100,000 people.
Torrance and Murrieta rounded out the list of the 25 safest cities to cheat or deal with with scores of 74 and 73, respectively.
According to the Chamber of Commerce, the safest city to embark on a cheat-or-treat trip is Gilbert, Arizona, with an overall safety score of 82. The city’s low pedestrian fatality count has certainly helped. ; the city records only one pedestrian fatality per year on average.
The rankings were determined by analyzing more than 300 census-defined spaces that each had a population of 100,000 or more. Since the study only considered small towns, it likely omitted dozens of small California towns that were very safe, safe for pedestrians, and had low crime rates.
Each city analyzed was compared using five equally weighted variables: violent crimes, pedestrian deaths, property crimes, number of law enforcement personnel and number of registered sex offenders. For more details on the methodology, see the study site.
