It’s Official: Niagara Falls Now Most Dangerous City in State

This photo - courtesy wkbw.com - was used in the MYLife report naming Niagara Falls the most dangerous city in New York State.

Niagara Falls is the most dangerous city in the state of New York according to a study released Monday by the popular internet site MyLife.

Researchers examined five sets of data, including the number of law enforcement officers per capita, violent crimes per capita, property crimes per capita, the number of registered sex offenders per capita and the percentage of the population enrolled in health care.

In two of those categories, property crimes and registered sex offenders, Niagara Falls ranked highest in the state. The city was also close to the top in other categories except for the number of people enrolled in health care, where it ranked near the bottom.

"After establishing a ranking for each of those categories, researchers assigned a score to each city for those categories as well. Once those were added up, we divided the sum into an average; the lower that average was the higher a city ranked," Mylife wrote explaining the study's methodology.

The city’s reputation as a lawless place going back to the days of Prohibition is noted in the report, along with its lopsided incidence of property crime and unusually high population of registered sex offenders. The report notes that the number of sex offenders living in a municipality is often a deciding factor for people in choosing a place to live.

The number of sexual predators, nearly all of whom target children, has grown exponentially in Niagara Falls, since Mayor Paul Dyster took office.? In 2007, the year he was sworn in, there were just 82 registered sex offenders living in the city. Two years later and halfway into his first term, that number had jumped to 133.

By July 2010, Dyster’s official “They’ve got to live somewhere” policies toward violent sexual predators resulted in a population explosion, and 178 convicted and registered sex offenders were reported.

And a look at the police blotter for any given week shows that property crime -- from the copper pipe burglaries in the city’s worst slums to the automobile break ins in the downtown tourist district being so out of control that signs warning visitors not to leave valuables in their cars are being posted – has skyrocketed.

Other New York cities making the Most Dangerous list are, in descending order, Schenectady, Newburgh, Rochester, Gloversville, Buffalo, Jamestown, Albany, Binghamton and Auburn.

For more info-- http://www.mylife.com/blog/the-10-most-dangerous-cities-in-new-york-state/

MyLife (or MyLife.com) is an American Internet company founded by Jeffrey Tinsley in 2002. It provides a subscription based, personal search service.