Mobile Mayor Stimpson issues statement on updated ‘Safest Cities Study’

MOBILE, Ala. (WALA) - Mobile Mayor Stimpson today issued a statement on the updated Forbes “Safest Cities Study.”

To address inaccurate and significantly-inflated crime statistics about our community, MoneyGeek.com has updated a 2023 study that listed Mobile as one of the most dangerous U.S. cities, a news release from the mayor’s office states. As the FBI and City of Mobile were transitioning to the new reporting system in 2022, a software glitch caused inaccurate crime data to be reported for Mobile, according to the city.

Since then, the release states, the city has worked with the FBI to correct inflated 2021 crime data for Mobile that was included in the FBI’s NBIRS database and available through its Crime Data Explorer Tool — the only source of crime data used in MoneyGeek’s study.

Now that MoneyGeek has recalculated its rankings using accurate data, Mobile is no longer listed as the “2nd Most Dangerous City in the U.S.” and is no longer among the most “dangerous cities” in the study.

Stimpson’s statement:

“Like most Mobilians, we knew immediately there was no possible way Mobile could be considered one of the most dangerous cities in the United States. Like communities across the country, crime is one of the challenges Mobile faces. However, we have seen positive trends in our crime rates over the last year thanks to investments in public safety and the continued hard work of the Mobile Police Department and our state, federal and judicial partners in the criminal justice system.

“Being labeled one of the country’s most dangerous communities based on erroneous data has no doubt done damage to Mobile’s reputation, but we are working to correct that and highlight the many, many good things happening in the City of Mobile. I want to thank the members of our staff and the FBI who spent months identifying and correcting the error that led to inaccurate data about Mobile being reported.

“We are confident this will not happen again, and future federal data will reflect the positive trends in crime that we’ve seen locally over the last several months.”