By Karolyn Gephart
City Manager Morad Kabiri shared with Friendswood City Council good news about the city. At the regularly scheduled meeting March 1, Kabiri told the group that Alarms.org has named Friendswood one of the Safest Cities in Texas for 2021.
The city was ranked 15th out of 154 cities surveyed.
To determine the ranking, Alarms.org reviewed the 2018 FBI Uniform Crime Report statistics. Cities that did not submit a complete crime report to the FBI as well as cities with populations under 10,000 were not ranked.
Kabiri shared the definitions from the FBI for two broad classifications of crimes: violent crimes and non-violent crimes. According to the FBI, violent crime is composed of four offenses: murder and non-negligent manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. Violent crimes are defined in the UCR Program as those offenses that involve force or threat of force. Property crime includes the offenses of burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson. The object of the theft-type offenses is the taking of money or property, but there is no force or threat of force against the victims.
Alarms.org added the total number of violent crimes and property crimes for each city. A crime rate was determined by the number of crimes per 1,000 population.
Alarms.org collected information from 2,831 law enforcement agencies to determine police adequacy which involved total crimes compared to the number of police employees. The smaller the police adequacy statistic is, the safer the city is.
The two variables combined created a safety score for each city.
The 14 cities above Friendswood include Hutto, Fulshear, Trophy Club, Colleyville, Murphy, Fate, Roma, Manvel, Highland Village, Keller, Melissa, Sachse, Celina and Lakeway.
The highest populated cities in the Top 15 group are Keller with a population of 48,439 and Friendswood with 40,419.
In other Council news, the first and final reading of an ordinance declared the unopposed candidates for Mayor, Mike Foreman; City Council Position 1, Steve Rockey; and City Council Position 3, Trish Hanks, elected and the general election cancelled on May 1, 2021 for such positions.
Only the incumbents, Mayor Mike Foreman, Council members Steve Rockey and Trish Hanks, filed for the positions. No other individual filed either during the regular filing period or for the write-in period. Because of this, Council can authorize cancelling the election. The City Secretary provided a certification for the Council that there were no contested races.
