The FBI’s message is focused on how different circumstances, such as economy, transience, demographics and other things beyond the control of a law enforcement agency can cause higher rates of crime, and therefore, the main focus of the message is that it is not fair to judge or rank the effectiveness of law enforcement agencies by the rates of crime in the communities they serve. We completely agree. 

But our data is not about ranking or rating the effectiveness of law enforcement agencies. It is about places. It ranks the relative safety of a location using rates of crime per 1,000 residents. This is like rating the safety of automobiles. Comparatively, the public has a right to know how safe a car is, just like they have the right to know how the safety of any city compares to others. It is not a judgement of law enforcement as circumstances are different in each locality and law enforcement does they be they can. Rather, it is an assessment of the safety of a city that should be publicly available.