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Many Bay Area cities among safest, Oakland is not one
An independent publishing house has declared Sunnyvale the seventh safest city in the nation based on a comparison of crime rates as of 2000, and ranked 10 other Bay Area cities in the top 100 of the 327 cities surveyed.
On the down side, however, the "Morgan Quitno 8th Annual America's Safest Cities'' survey, released last week, rated one Bay Area city, Oakland, as the 28th most dangerous in the nation, and Salinas as the 98th. The only California city with a higher rate of crime than Oakland, according to the survey, is Compton.
The annual survey by the Lawrence, Kan.-based company ranks cities with populations of 75,000 or more from safest to most dangerous by comparing their rates for six basic crimes to the national average. By this measure, mthe publishing house found that Livermore is the 15th safest city in the country, Santa Clara the 22nd, Fremont 24th, Redwood City 36th, San Mateo 39th, Daly City 51st, Alameda 72nd, Vacaville 73rd, San Jose 90th and Santa Rosa 97th.
While many cities remained within a few places of their rankings in last year's survey, a few showed a considerable change. San Mateo dropped 10 places from last year's ranking as 29th safest, and Alameda fell nearly 30 places. Antioch and San Leandro also showed sizable drops in their safety ranking.
Daly City, on the other hand, improved its safety ranking by nearly 20 places.
