San Jose safer than Sacramento, despite being twice the size

Feeling visual today. Here’s something to ponder, especially for those wearing rose-tinted contacts. I thought it would be interesting to take a city like San Jose and compare crime rates with safe ol’ Sacramento.

I created the accompanying chart using the FBI’s crime stats for California. It’s important to keep in mind that San Jose’s population is twice the size as Sac. Sacramento has a population around 500,000 and San Jose comes in at around 1,000,000.

Before I plotted the numbers I figured since San Jose was twice as big as Sac, they would logically have twice the crime… right? Wrong. Sacramento has 100% more robberies, twice as many murders, and 25% more violent crime overall—and Sac is only half the size! Wow! It turns out our central California neighbor San Jose, CA is now one of the safest cities in the entire United States!

Why didn’t KJ share this stat? Another missed opportunity? Guess we’ll see next week.

Anyways, we’re all in this together, friends. Stop letting the city dictate to us what is acceptable in terms of crime. If we have a zero tolerance policy, our officials will be forced to as well. Start telling your local councilperson you want Sac sac to be a “model” for public safety, not Better Homes and Gardens.

So how do we start? ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT. We need to start comparing our crime to cities like San Jose that are safer, not cities like Oakland that are more dangerous. Same thing for our neighborhoods. Stop letting our officials off the hook when they say “it could be worse.” Let’s tell them “yes it could be worse, but we want it to be BETTER.

Click here to see the numbers

Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation

Tags: burglary, City, City Hall, comparison, crime rate, fbi, murder, police, property theft, rape, Sacramento, sacramento vs. san jose, san jose, statistics, violence