La Jolla Communities are Safe For Your Kids 
La Jolla communities and the surrounding area is the second-safest major city in the United States, sandwiched-surprisingly-between New York at No. 1 and Los Angeles at No. 3. According to uniform crime statistics compiled by the FBI for 2003 for cities with populations exceeding 1 million, San Diego County had 42.15 crimes per 1,000 residents, compared to 29.22 for New York and 48.19 for L.A. While San Diego County had a lower rate for homicides and other violent crimes, the local property-crime rate was higher than in the Big Apple and the Big Orange.
Even as we hold rank as the second-safest city, our local crime rate has been creeping up in recent years. Reports from the San Diego Police Department show the crime rate per 1,000 residents was 39.91 in 2002, 40.32 in 2001 and 36.29 in 2000. The latter was a banner year for the city's crime rate. It was the lowest since 1966, when San Diego's population was 645,100 and the crime rate was 33.47 per 1,000. (Crime reports list San Diego's population as 1.275 million for 2003.) Comparatively bleaker times include the years between 1966 and 2000, with 1989 registering the highest crime rate per 1,000 residents at 94.78.
As is standard across the country, San Diego reports crimes each month in the categories of violent and property. Violent crimes include murder, rape, armed robbery, strong-armed robbery and aggravated assault. Property crimes are residential burglary, commercial burglary, theft and vehicle theft. With the exception of murder, the categories also include attempted crimes.
San Diego Magazine looked at the numbers and decided to rank the city's neighborhoods to see which are "safest." In sum: We took averages of the crimes per thousand in both violent and nonviolent categories in each neighborhood, added them together and ranked cities with the lowest numbers as safest. (Our exact methodology accompanies the chart in which we rank the cities. Note: Rankings apply only to city neighborhoods, not San Diego County.) "Safest" and "least safe" are not adjectives in the San Diego Police Department vocabulary -at least not when it comes to describing the 120 neighborhoods into which the department has divided the city. Our magazine's rankings are not endorsed by SDPD. Police crime analyst Fiona Greenhalgh says averaging rates and adding violent and property crimes together is inconsistent with SDPD procedure. But Greenhalgh concedes our list provides a "reasonable overview" of crime rates in the city.
A note about the nature of crime rates: They skew upward in predominantly commercial, industrial and recreational areas. The crime numbers are averaged against residential populations. Only people who live there are factored in the average-not visitors to the area.
That might account for some surprises on the list. La Jolla, for example, is listed as the 66th safest neighborhood for the average of total crimes, barely edging out Barrio Logan in the 67th spot. La Jolla has a large residential area but also a high concentration of businesses, in addition to popular beaches that attract crowds.
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