Safety first
These 2 Houston suburbs nab top rankings as safest cities in Texas
Murders, robberies, and sexual assaults plague many big American cities. Fortunately, that isn't the case in Sugar Land or League City.
Sugar Land and League City rank as the No. 7 and No. 10 safest cities in Texas, according to a new study by SafeHome.org, which reviews and rates home security systems. SafeHome.org compared cities with populations of at least 50,000 and based its rankings on 2018 data reported to the FBI regarding about the number and types of crimes in a community, as well as on crime trends and the ratio of law enforcement officers to residents.
Sugar Land, which has a population of more than 88,000, earned a safety score of 84.61 out of 100. Last year, the city recorded 83 violent crimes, 1,470 property crimes, and a 515 citizen-to-officer ratio. Violent crime declined 19.7 percent, while property crime ticked up 0.6 percent. League City (population 97,172) earned a safety score of 83.6, recorded 88 violent crimes and 1,767 property crimes; it also recorded a 14.3 percent decline in violent crime and a 6.6 percent decline in property crime.
NeighorhoodScout.com says a person's chances of falling victim to a violent crime in Sugar Land is 1 in 1,246, while the odds are a worse 1 in 69 for property crime. In League City, the odds of being a victim of violent crime are 1 in 1,060, while there's a 1 in 61 chance of being victim of a property crime.
In all, Sugar Land and League City join five Dallas-Fort Worth suburbs and three of Austin's in the top 10 of SafeHome.org’s ranking of Texas’ safest cities. Here’s the complete top 10:
- Flower Mound (Denton and Tarrant counties) — Safety score of 90.42 out of 100.
- Allen (Collin County) — Safety score of 88.02.
- Georgetown (Austin) — Safety score of 86.49.
- Mansfield (Ellis, Johnson, and Tarrant counties) — Safety score of 85.47.
- Pflugerville (Austin) — Safety score of 85.28.
- Cedar Park (Austin) — Safety score of 85.08.
- Sugar Land (Houston) — Safety score of 84.61.
- Frisco (Collin and Denton counties) — Safety score of 84.6.
- Rowlett (Dallas and Rockwall counties) — Safety score of 84.56.
- League City (Houston) — Safety score of 83.6.
Among the state’s five biggest cities, Dallas ranked first in the SafeHome.org study, with a safety score of 70.85. That put it at No. 45 among the 65 Texas cities included in the study.
Here’s how the state’s other major cities fared:
- Fort Worth, No. 47 — Safety score of 70.5.
- Austin, No. 49 — Safety score of 70.3.
- Houston, No. 61 — Safety score of 63.1.
- San Antonio, No. 64 — Safety score of 60.69.