Rio Rancho named one of top 20 safest cities in New Mexico

by | Mar 17, 2016 | Media, RRObserver | 0 comments

The City of Vision has been recognized as one of the safest cities in New Mexico.

Safe Wise, a safety and security review website, ranked Rio Rancho in a list of the top 20 safest cities in the state.

Rio Rancho is listed as the 18th safest city, between Bosque Farms at 17 and Bloomfield at 19. Lovington topped the list.

Safe Wise reviewed the most recent FBI crime report statistics from 2014. Any city with less than 1,500 residents or failed to submit a complete crime report to the FBI was eliminated.

Also were considered the number of reported violent crimes and property crimes in each city. Safe Wise calculated the likelihood of those crimes occurring out of 1,000 people in the city. For example, for every 1,000 people in Rio Rancho, 1.88 was likely to be the victim of a violent crime and 18.9 were likely to be victim of a property crime.

It is Safe Wise’s second “Safest Cities in New Mexico” list and the first time Rio Rancho has placed on the top 20.

Mayor Gregg Hull said in an emailed statement he wanted to recognize the city employees who help keep Rio Rancho’s community safe.

“It is impressive to see a city of our size continue to make these lists and, because of that, I would like to acknowledge and all of our public servants, from our public works crews to our parks and recreation employees to our police officers and firefighters, who are dedicated to keeping Rio Rancho beautiful, safe, and a great place to live,” he said.

Corrales was ranked eighth of the list with a violent crime rate of 1.06 per 1,000 population and property crime rate of 13.21.

Bernalillo was 39th and Albuquerque 44th on the list.

Lovington, which is in the southeast corner of the state with a population of just over 11,000, had a violent crime rate of 0.86 per 1,000 population and 3.42 property crimes rate, according to Safe Wise.