OCEAN CITY — Ocean City officials this week again defended the resort’s reputation as one of the most dangerous places in Maryland after a California-based real estate brokerage firm released its rather dubious semi-annual list for the state.
Movoto, known for its data-based research into trend and conditions in different areas around the country, on Tuesday released its 10 Most Dangerous Places in Maryland, and Ocean City again found itself near the top of the heap. In April, Movoto released a similar listing of the 10 most dangerous places in the state in terms of crime statistics, causing an uproar locally about the obvious flaws in the research.
Ocean City was ranked the most dangerous place in Maryland in Movoto’s spring list, but had dropped to fourth on the new list released this week. Topping the list was Elkton, followed by Baltimore, Bladensburg and Ocean City. On the Eastern Shore, Cambridge ranked fifth on Movoto’s list released on Tuesday, while Salisbury came in sixth. The rest of the Top 10 were jurisdictions on the western side of the Chesapeake Bay.
As with the Movoto’s spring list, Ocean City officials this week are questioning the validity of the research. Because Movoto examined FBI data based on the number of crimes per 100,000 people, resort officials continue to believe the number of crimes committed in the resort is based largely on a population that swells to nearly 300,000 throughout much of the summer to just over 7,700 year-round. Naturally, it stands to reason if the number of crimes is extrapolated over the much larger summer population, the percentages would drop significantly.
“Their list is inaccurate and highly misrepresentative,” said Ocean City Communications Director Jessica Waters this week. “Instead of factoring in our nearly eight million visitors, it based the crime to our resident ratio on a year-round population of just 7,719. It actually refers to Ocean City as the ‘smallest place’ in its Top 10, however, our population rises to about 300,000 people from May to September, making us the second largest city in the state. Had those statistics been considered, the results would prove the safety and low crime rate of Ocean City.”
Ocean City Police Department spokesperson Lindsay Richard said the town’s crime statistics showed most categories trending down in 2014 and agreed with Waters’ assessment of the Movoto list.
“It’s likely that it is inaccurate and doesn’t truly represent our town and the dynamics of our population,” she said. “If these statistics were to take into account our population in the summer months, I can assure you that it would show that Ocean City is a very safe place.”
Movoto explained is methodology for the culminating the list, pointing out it turned to the FBI unified crime report for its data. The organization started with a list of all places in Maryland with at least 5,000 people and collected data in several major categories including murder, rape, robbery, assault, burglary, theft and vehicle theft. Movoto then compared the statistical data for each location based on 100,000 people. After that, Movoto split the crimes into four major categories including murder, violent crimes, property crimes and total crimes.
Movoto then took into account the severity of certain crimes over others and weighted murders, violent crimes and property crimes so they each comprised 30 percent, whereas the total number of crimes comprised only 10 percent. Finally, Movoto averaged each location’s weighted rankings into one overall score and the places with the lowest numbers were deemed the least safe spots to call home. Movoto was quick to point out the report and associated list was nearly a statistical analysis and not necessarily an indictment of a location’s law enforcement or safety efforts.
“This ranking is not meant as a critique of lax enforcement effectiveness and is based on crimes committed within city limits irregardless of whether they were the act of residents or non-residents,” the report reads. “It’s simply an analysis of where crimes occurred.”
In terms of data specific to Ocean City, the Movoto report does state the resort is the smallest place on its list with just 7,179 residents and had no murders during the analysis range.
“Unfortunately, Ocean City easily had the most thefts at 16,437 per 100,000 people, which is a full 10,000 more than anywhere else in the state,” the report reads. “It had the most rapes per 100,000 people and it even had a high number of assaults, In fact, this city had the most total crime out of any place we looked at. The chance of being the victim of a crime for locals of Ocean City was only one in 5 in 2012.”
Ocean City officials summarily dismissed the Movoto report, just as it did in April when the organization had the resort ranked as the most dangerous place in Maryland. At that time, Movoto recognized the numbers were somewhat skewed by the population spike, but apparently did not address the anomalies further.
“We are a safe family-friendly resort and we take tremendous pride in our public safety,” said Waters this week. “It’s unfortunate that the ‘hitch’ or ‘hangup’ that Movoto mentioned this spring was not properly addressed, because they continue to release information that is inaccurate and carelessly misleading.”