The city of Kenmore was voted the seventh safest place to live in Washington state by Movoto Real Estate Blog.
Movoto started determining the ranking with a list of places in the state with populations of more than 10,000 based on 2010 U.S. Census data. They then gathered crime data on each place from the FBI’s 2012 Uniform Crime Report, omitting any that do not report crime data to the bureau. This left a total of 74 places, which they looked at in terms of murder, rape, robbery, assault, burglary, theft and vehicle theft.
Movoto then calculated crime rates for each place based on crimes per 100,000 residents, a standard analytical practice used to make comparisons between locations with different population sizes fair. Each place was given a ranking of 1 to 74 in murders, violent crimes, property crimes, and total crimes per 100,000 with one being safest.
These four rankings were then weighted so that murders, violent crimes, and property crimes each accounted for 30 percent of the overall score, while total crimes made up 10 percent. The weighted rankings were averaged into one overall Big Deal Score, with the lower the score, the safer the place.
