CQ Press released it's report "City Crime Rankings" over the weekend and two cities in Michigan made the top five. Detroit was ranked third, and Flint was ranked fourth. The city with the highest rate of crime was St. Louis.
The AP reports this as a list of "most dangerous cities," but the CQ Press says it no longer uses the phrase "most dangerous" because the data used to make the list doesn't necessarily reflect danger.
They report using the "Crime Index" which includes crimes of larceny and theft. These numbers apparently inflate the findings. Authors of the CQ Press report say,
The FBI discontinued use of this measure in 2004 because the agency’s officials and advisory board of criminologists concluded that the index was no longer a true indicator of crime. The primary concern was that the Crime Index was inflated by a high number of larceny-thefts, which account for nearly 60 percent of reported crime, thereby diminishing the focus on more serious but less frequently reported offenses, such as aggravated assault and rape.
Here's the list in pdf form (you can search for your city).
And here's the list in widget form:
