Despite crime, Valley is still safe
Looking at this headline, it’s a snore fiesta. Forget “safe.” Give us crime, homicides, agg assaults, armed robberies, a story about a “Karen” off her meds, upset with police.
Some city official popped for a DWI right before an election. Not once, but twice.
A school board trustee, driving drunk, rear ends a parked car, speeds away, stops at a red light while a cop car rolls up beside, spots the dented front end and steaming radiator, and busts the trustee less than a month before the school board election.
That’s the kind of news that sells; not “safe.” Still… A recent headline linked to NewsBreak, originally published at 101.9, The Bull, read like this — “Want to live in a safe Texas city? Stay away from these cities.”
If you’ve seen the other stories go by about national surveys ranking Valley cities high on the list of “safe cities,” then the headline attached to this story should be of no surprise.
The crime stories that use up all the headlines probably gives us a false sense of crime as it relates to the RGV. In other words, it’s a lot better on the streets, so to speak, than the crime stories suggest.
For example, consider these recent headlines from only the past week, and for those people old enough to remember life here in the early 1980s, this wasn’t how it used to be, when crime was still a relatively rare occurrence:
# Edinburg man dies after crashing into canal # SJ murder suspect arrested – case tied to stash house
# Female ICE contract worker caught at check point trying to smuggle illegal immigrants past border guards
# Drugged-out mother (alleged) arrested; two children (2 and 1) taken into child-protection custody
# County deputy shot in leg following pursuit
# Woman charged with drunk driving and intoxicated manslaughter
# Former Progreso School Board president pleads guilty to drug trafficking
The Good News
If you get past that bit of bad news, which really isn’t all that bad in a county with a population of approximately 1 million, there is good news to be had.
Ironically, it stands in stark opposition to what many Texas residents might say if asked: what area of the state do you consider to be the most dangerous? Or put another way, the least safe.
Anecdotally speaking, what would that number be? Sixty to 70 percent, more, would say, “The border region.”
Now, whether they mean the area around El Paso or the RGV, who knows, but somewhere in their reply, the word “border” would probably be mentioned.
Unfortunately, the cartel- related violence in Mexico spills over onto this side of the border, but only in terms of bad PR. No public official on this side of the border, for example, has to be in fear of his or her own life, which is too often the case south of the border, where the cartels dictate everyday life.
From that safe-border story published at 101.9, The Bull, which was really ranking unsafe cities:
“When it comes to ranking Texas cities based on violent crimes, PopulationU has ranked the most violent cities in Texas based on the number of violent crimes per 1,000 people. PopulationU defines a violent crime as rape, robbery, aggravated assault, and/or murder. The site analyzed FBI Crime data and came up with a listing of the 39 most dangerous cities in Texas.
If you scroll through the story, you see a photo of the top 20 unsafe cities (most dangerous) listed in order, and it doesn’t include one Valley city in either of the four counties that comprise the RGV.
Yes, one border city makes the list, Laredo, but it’s still not the RGV.
As ranked, from # 20 to # 1:
Odessa, Abilene, Laredo, Tyler, Midland, Killeen, Arlington, Ft. Worth, Austin, Waco, Mesquite, Pasadena, Wichita Falls, Amarillo, Dallas, San Antonio, Corpus Christi, Lubbock, Houston, and Beaumont.