According to Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) data, the City of Baltimore had the worst murder rate of all U.S. big cities in 2017.
Chicago gets a lot of press for its high murder rate and the city did, indeed, have far more murders than Baltimore in 2017. But Chicago is also far larger than Baltimore (about 3 million for Chicago versus 615,000 for Baltimore), so on a per capita basis, Maryland’s largest metropolis was far more dangerous for its citizens than even the blood-soaked Windy City.
CBS Baltimore noted that Baltimore’s 342 homicides resulted in a homicide rate of 56 per 100,000 people of cities with more than 500,000 citizens.
The FBI statistics show that Detroit was the second most dangerous city per capita. Memphis and then Chicago filled out the top four most dangerous cities.
Detroit has a population of 673,000 citizens, while Memphis has 653,000 citizens.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston.