The 10 Least Safe US Cities Over Holidays Named by Security Firm

St. Louis, Missouri, was the most dangerous city for Americans over the holiday season, according to a new study.

Analysis by a security firm looked at the volume of property crime, Google Trends and numbers from the FBI's National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) to rank the most unsafe cities in the United States during the holidays.

At the top of the list compiled by security firm Vivint with the highest "risk score" was St. Louis. Newark, Delaware, was next, followed by Salt Lake City, Utah, Denver, Colorado, and Seattle, Washington.

"Among the 182 U.S. cities we analyzed, St. Louis, Salt Lake City and Denver topped the list of the riskiest cities for crime during the holiday season. Focusing on the specific risk factors contributing to these rankings shows that different cities present unique security challenges," Vivint said.

The top 10 cities are as follows:

St. Louis, Missouri
Newark, Delaware
Salt Lake City, Utah
Denver, Colorado
Seattle, Washington
Burlington, Vermont
Rutland, Vermont
Atlanta, Georgia
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Portland, Oregon

This week, an initiative was recommended by a group of criminologists, law enforcement officials, and elected officials after a meeting at the Washington University School of Medicine campus that aims to reduce the homicide rate in St. Louis by 20 percent. The initiative involves giving people "involved in violence" a choice of using specialist programs including ones for addiction and other mental health problems, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.

The research method cited in the report used "Google Trends search data, measuring keyword searches related to holiday security from November 2022 to January 2023" and "Airbnb listings available from November 2023 to January 2024 to evaluate the properties' security features."

Data manually collected from Neighborhood Watches for "insights into community-based security measures" were also factored in, along with the NIBRS' "city-level data on 2022 property crimes" and two surveys of 500 American homeowners and 150 people who had committed crimes respectively.

The overall score was more heavily weighted to the use of Google Trends and Airbnb, Vivint explained.

"We weighted the Google Search Trends and Airbnb features at 30 percent, NIRBS and vehicle theft data at 15 percent, and neighborhood watches at 10 percent," Vivint said.

The remaining 5 percent was from the surveys.

As a result, the "crime report ranking" listed Tacoma, Washington, as having the highest volume of crimes reported during the holiday period per 100,000 people.

Tacoma was followed by St. Louis, then Las Vegas, Nevada, and Memphis, Tennessee.