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This article is an opinion based on facts and is meant as infotainment. It is our seventh time ranking the most places with the most murders per capita in California and is updated for 2021.
Do you live in one of the murder capitals of California?
We all watch the news with horror when we hear about a homicide that happens not that far away from us. While a murder just blocks or even a couple of towns away from your house would make anyone uneasy, in the long run, most likely, where you live is relatively safe.
So we wanted to get the facts straight and dug into the FBI crime data in order to identify the places with the most murders and the highest murder rates per capita in California.
The result is the Murder Capitals of the Golden State for 2021:
The city with highest murder rate in California? That would be Orinda with 24.9 murders per 100,000 people.
While the city with highest number of murders period? Los Angeles with 258.
Read on below to see how we crunched the numbers and how your town ranked. There were 'only' 216 cities in California where a city reported a murder to the FBI, meaning 199 places had no murder.
Population: 48,846 Rank Last Year: 29 Murders: 7 (30th Most) Murders Per 100k: 14.3 (16th Most) More on Palm Springs:Data | Photos
How we calculated the murder capitals of California
While there are surveys and public polls on what cities in a state are the most dangerous, we didn't want to rely on speculation and opinion. Instead, we looked at the hard numbers from the FBI's last year of reporting. Specifically, we analyzed the FBI's Uniform Crime Report which summarizes the number of murders that may happen in each city per year.
We only looked every single city in California for which FBI data was available for the most recent FBI Crime In The United States. That left us with 216 cities to rank.
Finally, we averaged the two scores into an index:
The raw number of murders in each city
The murders per person
We felt as if a small place with 2,500 people and two murders makes it a lot more dangerous than a city of 25,000 people with three murders. Any ties went to the larger city. You can download the data here.
We must note that this report is not an analysis of the effectiveness of local police departments. It simply states where murders occurred most frequently on an absolute and rate basis.
There You Have It - The Places With The Most Murders In California For 2021
If you're looking at the places in California with the most murders, and where residents have the highest chances of being killed themselves, this is an accurate list. Again, these statistics are an indication of where crimes occur, not a statement about the effectiveness of the law enforcement in the areas they serve.
Chris Kolmar has been in the real estate business for almost ten years now. He originally worked for Movoto Real Estate as the director of marketing before founding HomeSnacks.
He believes the key to finding the right place to live comes down to looking at the data, reading about things to do, and, most importantly, checking it out yourself before you move.
If you've been looking for a place to live in the past several years, you've probably stumbled upon his writing already.
