How Safe Is Rancho Palos Verdes? MoneyGeek Shares Findings

Nicole Charky
·4 min read

RANCHO PALOS VERDES, CA — MoneyGeek, a personal finance technology company, has released its ranking of the safest — and most dangerous — small cities and towns in the U.S. The study found that in 2020, many Americans fled large cities in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis, searching for a sense of security in small-town America. While many smaller cities and towns do have fewer crime incidents than big cities, small cities and towns are not universally safer than their larger counterparts.

Summary Findings:

  • The safest American town is Franklin, Massachusetts. A majority of the safest small cities and towns are located in the Northeast. Small cities and towns get less safe the further west they are.

  • Small cities and towns really are safer than big cities — twice as safe. MoneyGeek's analysis found that the median cost of crime in cities and towns with populations between 30,000 and 100,000 was $500, compared to cities with populations over 100,000, where the median cost of crime was $1,029.

  • Despite the general safety patterns, a small city or town can be just as dangerous as a large city. The cost of crime per capita in Gary, Indiana, is $8,786, nearly as high as St. Louis, Missouri — the most dangerous city in America — where the per capita cost of crime is $9,334. Westerville, Ohio (pop. 40,903) has a cost of crime per capita of $1,123, comparable to New York, NY ($1,120).

  • Rare, catastrophic events can make a bigger dent in the safety of small cities and towns. Despite the tragic mass school shooting that killed 17 people and gripped the nation in 2018, Parkland, Florida, appears on MoneyGeek's top-10 list of safest small cities and towns this year. One catastrophic event can shake a local community's sense of security, but it does not necessarily reflect underlying or persistent crime trends.

Safest Small Cities and Towns in America

  1. Franklin, MA

  2. Shrewsbury, MA

  3. Carmel, NY

  4. Northampton Township, PA

  5. Yorktown, NY

  6. Marlboro Township, NJ

  7. Bridgewater Township, NJ

  8. Fair Lawn, NJ

  9. Parkland, FL

  10. Monroe Township, NJ

Rancho Palos Verdes came in at 520 with a per capita crime cost rate at $636 and violent crime 69.1.

The property crime rate is at 745.9. The cost of crime in Rancho Palos Verdes is at $26,681. RPV has a population listed at 41,961.

Rancho Santa Margarita was ranked as the safest city in California, with a per capita crime cost of $102.

  • Santa Monica at 808

  • Beverly Hills at 608

  • Culver City at 492

  • Gardena at 774

  • Carson 784

  • Hawthorne 790

  • Redondo Beach at 419

  • Lawndale 610

  • Yorba Linda 41

  • Los Gatos 49

  • Saratoga 58

  • Moorpark 63

  • Lincoln 71

  • Los Altos 84

  • San Ramon 92

  • Laguna Hills 113

  • Camarillo 125

  • Fountain Valley 143

  • Dana Point 150

  • Mission Viejo 177

  • Goleta 189

  • Lake Forest 200

  • Claremont 205

  • Santee 207

  • Dublin 209

  • La Mirada 221

  • Laguna Niguel 224.

The Most Dangerous Small Cities and Towns in America

  1. Gary, IN

  2. Pine Bluff, AR

  3. Petersburg, VA

  4. Chester, PA

  5. Camden, NJ

  6. Wilmington, DE

  7. Danville, IL

  8. Meridian, MS

  9. Monroe, LA

  10. Flint, MI

To rank the safest small cities and towns in the United States, MoneyGeek started with standardized crime statistics reported to the FBI. To determine crime rates per 100,000 people, population data accessed from the FBI was added to the analysis. For purposes of this analysis, MoneyGeek focused on cities with a population between 30,000 and 100,000 residents.

MoneyGeek relied on research by professors Kathryn McCollister and Michael French of the University of Miami and Hai Fang of the University of Colorado Denver to determine the cost of crime to society. Their findings were integrated into the broader data set to better understand the societal cost of crime within individual cities.

MoneyGeek is a personal finance technology company founded in 2016 as an inclusive resource to help people make healthy and wise financial decisions. MoneyGeek does the hard work of pulling together know-how, data and analysis to provide the financial information consumers need. MoneyGeek has sourced 400+ experts across various topics and has been referenced by and featured in Forbes, the Guardian, U.S. News & World Report, Yale University, University of Pennsylvania and hundreds of other news, government and educational institutions.

Check out the website for the full interactive analysis, including a searchable listing of 989 small cities and towns in America, expert commentary and detailed methodology.

- Patch Editor Liz Spear contributed to this report.

This article originally appeared on the Palos Verdes Patch