Lake in the Hills third safest, website claims
When it comes to safety, how high do the suburbs rank?
Several Northwest suburban towns made NeighborhoodScout.com's recent list of the 100 Safest Cities in America with 25,000 or more people based on the number of property and violent crimes per 1,000 residents.
Near the top of the list is Lake in the Hills, which ranked third — after Glen Cove, New York, and Zionsville, Indiana.
The website used the latest FBI crime statistics on burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, murder, rape, armed robbery, and aggravated assault to come up with towns' ranking.
Lake in the Hills scored 96 on the website's crime index with 17 violent crimes and 93 property crimes reported in 2013. For details, visit neighborhoodscout.com/il/lake-in-the-hills/crime/.
Village President Paul Mulcahy said the survey was unsolicited, yet the result wasn't unexpected.
“I'm not all that surprised we ranked that high,” Mulcahy said. “I know that the crime rate here is very low. It's absolutely a testimony to the excellence of our police department and just the quality of the town across the board. It's a very nice residential community. It's a nice place to live.”
The village's crime rate is 4 per 1,000 people — meaning a person has a one in 263 chance of becoming a victim of any crime, and for violent crimes that number is one in 1,702. NeighborhoodScout analyzed cities and towns nationwide with a similar population size to Lake in the Hills — more than 28,900 — and found the crime rate in Lake in the Hills is one of the lowest in the nation for its size.
Also high up on the Safe Cities list were Bartlett at No. 11 and Huntley at No. 17.
“Our exclusive analysis includes crimes reported by all agencies,” according to the website. “We accomplish this by collecting raw crime data from all 17,000 law enforcement agencies in America.”
Other suburbs that made the top 100: Buffalo Grove, 23rd; Wheaton, 33rd; Hanover Park, 41st; Mundelein, 42nd; Palatine, 50th; Glen Ellyn, 57th; Arlington Heights, 62nd; Mount Prospect, 74th; Hoffman Estates, 77th; Carol Stream, 84th; and Elmhurst, 94th.
For more information on the 100 Safest Cities, visit neighborhoodscout.com.