Is Oro Valley One Of The Safest Communities?

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Is Oro Valley one of the safest communities?  We've been told this is so.  We want to believe it is so.  But, we can't find any published "lists' that say it.

On one list of the top 13 Gilbert is #5. Surpise is #13.  On another list, Scottsdale is #7.   On yet another list, Florence is listed as #17.  Three lists. No Oro Valley.

Of course, in fairness to our community, if you put all of these lists "side by side" you would probably find few towns that appeared on more than one list.  Really, not being on one of these lists doesn't really mean anything.  So much for the published lists.

Still, we wonder, how can we measure Oro Valley's "safeness?"

Perplexed, we emailed Oro Valley Police Department information officer Kara Riley.  Our message to Kara: "We've been told that Oro Valley is one of the safest cities. Do you know if this is so? If so, how do we measure it? Do you have any statistics or info on this that I could review?"  Lieut. Riley's response:

"The Oro Valley Police Department has been reported to be one of the safest communities in the state relating to comparisons of Part 1 crime utilizing the Federal Bureau of Investigation Uniform Crime Reports from time to time. "

So, we tracked down the UCR statistics for Arizona for the latest reporting year, which was 2011.  There we found that Oro Valley experienced the 4th lowest violent crime rate per 1000 residents, at .58; and the 13th lowest property crime rate per 1000 residents at 17.89.  By comparison, during  the same time period, Marana, our next door neighbor, was ranked 16th and 44th in terms of violent crime and property crime.

If you believe these statistics, one would conclude that Oro Valley is a safer town than most in Arizona.  Why might this be the case?

• Is it because of excellent work by our Oro Valley Police?
• Is it because of Oro Valley's land-locked geography, where there is only 1 road that goes north of the Tortolitas and only two that go south to Tucson?
• Is it because there is no "escape" to the east, because there are no routes over the Catalinas?
• Is it because so many residents are older. Older people are less likely than younger people to create mayhem?

Or is it because of all these things?

We don't know; but we have noticed that there are those who always point to Oro Valley's "safeness" as a reason to approve ever increasing Oro Valley police department budgets.  They seem to feel that dollars spent equate one-to-on with safety.   We disagree. "There are many factors that cause the nature and type of crime to vary from place to place." (Source: FBI UCR Website).  We have noted several of these.  

We agree that a strong police presence is required in today's dangerous world.  We don't agree, because it yet to be proven, that ever increasing spending on pubic safety is the only way to achieve that goal.
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