Over the past year, Mayor Michelle Wu has delivered bold assertions regarding public safety in Boston.
Those claims may sound familiar, as they mirror remarks made by then-Mayor Marty Walsh during his reelection campaign in 2017 — until data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation suggested a more nuanced reality.
This raises an important question: Is the assertion that Boston is the nation’s safest city, or its safest major city, backed by data today in a way it wasn’t during Walsh’s administration?
The answer is: not necessarily.
Data on violent crime at the national level indicates that Boston is indeed safer than many similar communities — and, at least at one point this year, it may have been defensible to call it ‘the safest.’
However, those same reports, which include various cross-sections of communities and constantly evolving data, imply that categorizing Boston as ‘the safest major city in the country’ is, at best, an oversimplification.
Wu has reiterated her characterization in a recent interview with GBH News, again describing Boston as ‘the safest major city in the country.’
To back up this claim, Wu cited one specific piece of evidence: homicide rates from a mid-2024 violent crime report by the Major Cities Chiefs Association (MCCA).
“If you look across all [the cities] they track — not just the ones that are sort of close in size to us — Boston homicides, as of the midpoint through the year, as an absolute number, were the lowest of any city on that list,” Wu stated.
She noted that when scaled per capita, Boston had the lowest homicide rates in comparison to its peers.
In the report covering data up to June 30, Boston recorded just four homicides — significantly lower than the tally of 18 at this same point last year.
Mesa, Arizona, followed with six homicides, but due to its smaller population size, its homicide rate per 100,000 residents was 1.16, while Boston’s was just 0.62.
Nonetheless, crime statistics can vary dramatically over time, and drawing broad conclusions from one metric at a specific moment poses inherent risks.
Since the MCCA’s midyear report was published, police data revealed a changing landscape.
While Boston’s homicide count remains lower than last year’s 30, it has surged since the report was released and now sits at 16.
This translates to a homicide rate of 2.49 per 100,000 residents.
Mesa has seen an increase as well, though at a slower rate, with the city reporting 11 homicides in 2024, resulting in a homicide rate of 2.13 — slightly lower than Boston’s.
It is worth noting that Mesa’s figures exclude four fatalities due to police action this year, as Boston has not recorded any officer-involved fatalities since 2022.
When queried if the changing statistics affected her assessment of Boston as the safest major city, a spokesperson for Wu stated: ‘The mayor goes off of the most recent official numbers we have in Boston.’
Last year’s data complicates the picture considerably.
As per newly released FBI statistics, Boston’s murder rate per 100,000 residents was 5.29 in 2023, placing it lower than most of the nation’s 50 largest cities.
Nevertheless, eight other cities recorded even lower rates, including New York City at 4.22 and Honolulu at an impressively low 0.61.
Evaluating Boston’s public safety solely through the lens of homicide presents a narrow view.
Murder isn’t the only metric necessary for assessing safety.
A Gallup poll last year, which surveyed public perception across 16 different cities, ranked Boston second among the cities people felt were “safe to live in or visit.”
In response, Wu dove deeper into the data, comparing Boston’s overall violent crime incidents rate in 2022 — including homicide, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault — to those cities mentioned in the survey.
She concluded that Boston’s rate of violent crime incidents was the lowest among the group, a finding that GBH News verified.
However, both the Gallup poll and Wu’s analysis excluded many major cities across the United States.
When examining the FBI’s latest 2023 crime data, Boston ranks as the 16th safest of the nation’s 50 largest cities regarding total violent crime, with a rate higher than Chicago and considerably above cities like Honolulu and Mesa.
“If you’re talking about murder specifically, Boston tends to be on the lower end concerning murder rates,” explained Jeff Asher, cofounder of the crime analysis firm AH Datalytics.
“But if you’re talking violent crime, Boston still tends to be on the lower end, but maybe more in the middle.
If you define big cities as those with populations of 250,000 or more, Boston does not fall at the bottom of the list.”
When The Economist recently published an article describing Boston as America’s safest big city, this characterization relied, in part, on data and analyses from Asher’s firm.
Yet Asher expressed reservations about relying solely on quick snapshots of crime data to make definitive claims as The Economist did.
“I would argue that it’s sufficiently good to say, ‘Hey, a city is … safe relative to national averages, safe relative to other big cities,’” Asher claimed.
“[But the question of] ‘Is it the safest or is it the 20th safest based on murder rates?’ is almost arbitrary, I would argue.”
Other criminologists echo that hesitation.
Ernesto Lopez, a senior research specialist at the Council on Criminal Justice, authored a recent report showing Boston’s aggravated assault rate in June was lower than twelve other communities but still higher than cities like Austin, Omaha, and St. Paul.
“Safety can mean a lot of different things,” he noted.
Lopez pointed out that residents’ perception of safety is not always grounded in statistics.
Recent research from the MacArthur Foundation indicates that various factors influence whether people feel safe in their environment, ranging from trust in law enforcement to visible drug use.
“It’s not just homicide, and it’s not necessarily even just crime or violent crime as well,” Lopez emphasized.
“Personally, I’m not a huge fan of language like, ‘[This is] the safest city, or ‘This is the worst city.’”
Clearly, Wu takes a different viewpoint.
She believes that framing Boston’s safety record as a success sends a crucial message — specifically, that her administration’s comprehensive approach to violence prevention and response is effective.
“This isn’t about patting anyone on the back or giving out trophies,” Wu said.
“This is a recognition that this is among the most important work that the city could be doing, and our intentional, sustained efforts have resulted in progress across the entire community.
“We have seen remarkable declines in some of the most important metrics that we track,” Wu continued.
“And especially when put up against our peer cities, that has been a sustained trend.
We are never going to be satisfied and won’t let up when we know that there’s still trauma and intensive violence across the city to be addressed, prevented.
And we are working hard at that every single day.”
Yet, discussing progress using superlatives carries inherent risks.
At any moment, specific data points may indicate Boston is the safest big city in the country — or that it falls short of that title.
image source from：https://www.wgbh.org/news/politics/2024-10-07/is-boston-really-americas-safest-major-city-wu-says-yes-but-the-numbers-arent-so-clear
