ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Thursday, November 25 2010

Counting our blessings, St. Louis style
By Colleen Carroll Campbell

Just in time for Thanksgiving, St. Louis has been named America's most dangerous city. We wrested this badge of dishonor away from last year's winner, Camden, N.J., thanks to a violent crime rate four times the national average.

Anyone who has followed the crime rankings released annually by CQ Press knows that our fair city has been inching toward this dubious distinction for years. We ranked second in 2006 and 2007, our ignominy eclipsed only by Detroit. In 2008, we drifted to fourth place. We were back in the running in 2009, ranking behind only Camden. This year, our criminals took a back seat to no one.

Of course, the rankings are unfair. I explained this to my father-in-law when he e-mailed me from Peoria to ask about them. More than 2,000 violent crimes per 100,000 residents? What's going on down there?

I responded by rattling off reasons our rank does not matter. For starters, the city-county split in St. Louis skews our metro area's crime and population statistics. St. Louis is surrounded by the sort of safe, suburban neighborhoods that are incorporated into the city limits of other, more geographically sprawling cities. If you consider our metro area's crime rate as a whole - including satellite communities like O'Fallon, Mo., which ranked as America's second safest city - we fare much better.

Even in the city, things are looking up. A spokesperson for St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay said crime has been dropping since 2007 - and that's without using Chicago-style counting methods. Al Capone's adopted hometown did not even make CQ Press' list this year, despite a 2009 murder rate that eclipsed New York's, because Chicago does not conform to FBI crime-counting standards.

Such caveats cannot completely numb the sting of living somewhere others consider scary. It did not help that Monday brought another black eye when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released national data on sexually transmitted diseases. St. Louis no longer reigns as number one in America for gonorrhea rates - we're down to 12 - but our city still ranks second for chlamydia infections. Not exactly the sort of stat you want to tout while defending the Lou to out-of-town guests between mouthfuls of turkey.

Still, we have a lot to be thankful for here in St. Louis. Sure, we fare poorly on national ranking lists, unless you count that award for best-tasting tap water we won in 2007. Better than nothing, I guess, but not a top selling point in an age when even poodles drink Evian.

Lists aren't everything, though. When Money magazine announced its list of the best places to live, number one was Eden Prairie, Minn., a city with 64,000 people, 17 lakes and 5 percent unemployment. Sounds idyllic, until you consider that the average high temperature in this little slice of heaven hovers beneath 40 degrees nearly half the year. Our summers can be miserable, but better a miserable summer plus three decent seasons than one long winter with only a brief breather between blizzards.

Same goes for Colonie, N.Y., the city CQ Press ranked as America's safest. Colonie's weather makes Eden Prairie look tropical. Of course, there's no crime happening in Colonie. There's probably nothing happening in Colonie. Everyone is frozen stiff.

Weather is not everything. If it was, our smug friends in California would have us humidity-suffering, mosquito-swatting, ice-scraping St. Louisans beat. Quality of life also lies in the little things: Pulling up to a downtown event 10 minutes late and still finding a free parking spot, getting anywhere you want to go in less time than it takes to locate the freeway in L.A., cruising into our world-class zoo for free whenever the kids want to go, while the poor stiffs in San Diego are paying $27 per kid to get into theirs.

Lest I be accused of petty provincialism, I should note that I am not a true St. Louis native. Although my father was born and raised here and I have lived here longer than I have anywhere else, a peripatetic childhood and early career moves led me to nine different cities before this one - several of them the trendier spots that routinely trump my adopted hometown in city rankings.

Each had its charms, but when it comes to settling somewhere, you tend to look more to loved ones and the indefinable perks of a place - including the friendliness and good character of its people - to choose your home.

I'm thankful I chose St. Louis, and I'd do it again, even if our city never masters the ranking game.

 Colleen Carroll Campbell is a St. Louis-based author, former presidential speechwriter and television and radio host of "Faith & Culture" on EWTN. Her website is www.colleen-campbell.com.