Looking at statewide crime rates, Nebraska is just above average in terms of safety. The Cornhusker State’s violent crime rate is around 77% of national levels, yet the state’s property crime rate is near the national rate. The same trend of low violent crime and moderate property crime can be seen in Nebraska’s safest cities.
Nebraska’s safest city is La Vista, a suburb of Omaha in Sarpy County. La Vista’s property crime rate of 15.72, while not spectacular, is well below the national rate. However, the city’s violent crime rate is the best in the state, and the only one under 1 offense per 1,000 people.
The 2nd safest city in Nebraska is Columbus, the county seat of Platte County. Columbus has crime rates similar to the #1 entry on the list, with only the slightest increase in violent crime, and a slightly lower ratio of police officers-to-residents.
#3 Norfolk’s population of 24K makes it one of the top 10 largest cities in Nebraska. The city is quite safe, as well, with a low violent crime rate comparable to the two preceding entries on the list, and a property crime rate about 18% higher than #2 Columbus’s.
There’s a bit of a drop off between the 3rd and 4th safest cities in Nebraska, as #4 Papillion earned a crime rate 67% higher than Norfolk’s. Nevertheless, Papillion’s violent and property crime rates are still below state and national levels.
Nebraska’s 5th safest city, Bellevue, is much larger than preceding entries: its population of 53.7K is over double that of Norfolk’s, the next largest city. However, Bellevue logged a virtually identical property crime rate as the three cities before it, and its rate of violent crime is only marginally higher.
Nebraska’s Safest Cities
NE City Population Violent
crimeProperty
crimeLaw enforcement
employeesTotal crimes Crime rate per 1,000 Violent crimes per 1,000 Property crimes per 1,000 Law enforcement per 1,000
1 La Vista 17177 16 270 43 286 16.65 0.93 15.72 2.50
2 Columbus 23257 26 357 50 383 16.47 1.12 15.35 2.15
3 Norfolk 24458 29 444 52 473 19.34 1.19 18.15 2.13
4 Papillion 19588 39 367 46 406 20.73 1.99 18.74 2.35
5 Bellevue 53683 113 983 108 1096 20.42 2.10 18.31 2.01
6 Beatrice 12244 33 293 36 326 26.63 2.70 23.93 2.94
7 Fremont 26465 59 534 41 593 22.41 2.23 20.18 1.55
8 Kearney 34261 85 801 68 886 25.86 2.48 23.38 1.98
9 South Sioux City 12845 24 389 28 413 32.15 1.87 30.28 2.18
10 Scottsbluff 16029 55 486 36 541 33.75 3.43 30.32 2.25
11 Grand Island 51768 241 1505 102 1746 33.73 4.66 29.07 1.97
12 Hastings 24963 51 830 51 881 35.29 2.04 33.25 2.04
13 Lincoln 288589 1045 8307 479 9352 32.41 3.62 28.78 1.66
14 Omaha 469351 2628 16314 1016 18942 40.36 5.60 34.76 2.16
15 North Platte 23774 97 1006 65 1103 46.40 4.08 42.32 2.73
Methodology
To identify the safest cities, we reviewed the most recent FBI Uniform Crime Report statistics. We eliminated any cities that failed to submit a complete crime report to the FBI and cities with populations under 10,000. This left 3,381 cities (out of a total of 9,251).
There are two broad classifications of crimes: violent crimes and non-violent crimes. According to the FBI, “Violent crime is composed of four offenses: murder and non-negligent manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. Violent crimes are defined in the UCR Program as those offenses that involve force or threat of force. Property crime includes the offenses of burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson. The object of the theft-type offenses is the taking of money or property, but there is no force or threat of force against the victims. ”
We computed the total number of crimes reported by each city by adding violent crimes and property crimes. We then created a crime rate as the number of crimes per 1,000 population. Then we transformed the total crime rate variable so that the skewness was reduced and normalized.
Data from 2,831 law enforcement agencies was then collected to determine police adequacy (TotalCrimes / Number of police employees). We consider that the smaller the police adequacy statistic is, the safer the city is. This variable was also transformed and normalized.
Finally, the two variables were combined to create a safety score for each city.
