Waukee ranked #2 on ValuePenguin’s list of 2016 Safest Places in Iowa in the “mid-sized city” category and sixth safest overall. Last year, the City ranked fourth.
To rank these places, finance and insurance company ValuePenguin analyzed collected data from the FBI. The raw data included property crimes and violent crimes from all law enforcement agencies that chose to partake in the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting program.
The data was then standardized to reflect violent and property crimes per 100,000, to account for population, after which they aggregated a “crime score” by weighting violent crime at 80% and property crime at 20%. Though property crime is more prevalent, ValuePenguin analysts gave violent crime more significant weightage since violent crime tends to be more concerning to citizens. The crime score was finally adjusted for population size, giving more slack to larger cities, and ranked.
ValuePenguin representatives wrote: “Waukee's ranking in the ValuePenguin study is a cause for celebration for their hard-working police department for a job well done, and should serve as a barometer for residents, visitors and businesses who wish to understand the safety level of their community.”