Port Washington has been ranked on multiple “Safest City” listings since the beginning of 2019. Recently, Port Washington was named second safest city in New York by BackgroundChecks.org.
“Not far behind is No. 2 Port Washington, another wealthy Long Island community known for its myriad parks, marinas and golf courses,” reads the website. “The well-to-do community of 19,000 recorded a scant five violent crimes in 2017 for a rate of violent crime over 14 times lower than the national average.”
BackgroundChecks.org utilized the most recent FBI crime statistics to create the rankings. While there were originally 7,430 cities in the data set, the site filtered out cities with populations less than 10,000, leaving 2,929 cities. BackgroundChecks.org calculated the violent crime rates and property crime rates by dividing the crime numbers by population to get rates per 1,000 and calculated the ratio of law enforcement workers per 1,000. After the results were weighted, the final number gave the website the safety index score; the higher the score, the safer the city. Port Washington’s safety index score is 1.13.
“We’re very lucky we’ve got a great collection of men and women who do an outstanding job, they care about the job,” said Port Washington Police District Commissioner David Franklin about the ranking. “They’re the ones who make a difference. They have the latest training. As we’ve been interviewing new candidates, it’s the same people they fit into community policing, they look out for each other. Another thing that makes a difference is many of the people who live here, they grew up here and look out for each other.”
Earlier this year, Port Washington was ranked the 25th safest city in New York by SafeWise.com, which utilized 2017 FBI crime report statistics.
“The rankings are based on the number of reported violent crimes (aggravated assault, murder, rape, and robbery) in each city,” reads the website. “If there was a tie, we also factored in the number of property crimes (burglary, arson, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft). To level the playing field, we calculated the rate of crimes per 1,000 people in each city.”
Safewise.com reports that Port Washington had 0.26 violent crimes per 1,000 people and 5.11 property crimes per 1,000 people in a population of more than 19,000.
“What’s nice is our officers offer suggestions to make it better, they don’t just show up,” said Franklin. “When they’re there, they care, they’re always looking to improve. We always do new training, get new equipment. We have state-of-the-art radios, computer terminals in the cars, so the officers are basically driving in their own personal office. If there’s anything new, we get it right away. We give them what they need to do the best job they can and we’re doing it at the best price. We’re in the middle of completing our budget and we’re coming in under the cap. It’s a team effort from Chief DelMuro down to the newest officer.”
What do you think of Port being named a safe city? Email me at cclaus@antonmediagroup.com.
