I remember a time when Amarillo was considered a safe place to live.  We didn't have a huge crime rate and it was rare to hear about a murder or a robbery.  Now it is an everyday occurrence, and frankly that is a scary thing.

It has become commonplace in our city.

The FBI recently released their List of Most Dangerous Cities.  This list was derived from statistics from 2013  even though this was for the entire country, Texas Monthly broke it down for Texas.  The findings were shocking.

It seems that West Texas, including Odessa, Lubbock and Amarillo are some of the main cities for crime.  That's beating out the big cities like Dallas/Ft. Worth and Houston.

Odessa comes in at #1 in Texas for Violent Crime

Lubbock comes in at #2, but theirs is more for robbery.

Eventhough Amarillo didn't make the top 5 it came in at #6.

According to the FBI report and Texas Monthly:

Amarillo has the distinction of having the highest rate of reported rapes in Texas, at 84.9 per 100,000.

In all the news reports or releases or stories, you very rarely hear about someone being raped.  Maybe it is because that is more of a discretionary topic.  Since we haven't heard a ton of reports on rape in Amarillo, I find this shocking.

I really hope that sooner rather than later, our city can get control of the crime.  I love our city, I love living in our city, I just don't want to be afraid to live in our city.

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