“Newton outshines other cities when it comes to fighting crime, “said Scott Morgan, President of Morgan Quitno Press. “With no murders, as well as the lowest overall crime and motor vehicle theft rates, it ranks as the clear winner in this year’s survey.”

The Morgan Quitno Safest City Award is based on a city’s rate for six basic crime categories: murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary and motor vehicle theft. All cities of 75,000+ populations that reported crime data to the FBI for the six crime categories were included in the rankings. In this year’s survey, 369 cities were considered for the award. Final 2004 statistics, released by the FBI on October 17, 2005, were used to determine the rankings.

Joining Newton at the top of the Safest City rankings are Clarkstown, NY; Amherst, NY; Mission Viejo, CA and Brick Township, NJ. Newton is located just west of Boston.

At the opposite end of the Morgan Quitno crime scale, Camden, New Jersey ranks as the nation’s most dangerous city for the second consecutive year. Located across the Delaware river from Philadelphia, Camden had the highest violent crime, murder and robbery rates among cities of 75,000 or more population.

“I know that this is not good news for Camden,” said Morgan. “The city and state have taken some important steps to fix its crime problems. Although Camden’s violent crime rate has increased 15% over the past five years, the rate actually declined nearly 6% from 2003 to 2004.”

Trailing Camden on the more dangerous end of the crime rankings (in ascending order) are Detroit, MI; St. Louis, MO, Flint, MI and Richmond, VA.