Underscoring why so-called "safe" cities can't rest on their laurels, Thanksgiving weekend murders and suspected arson fires cast San Jose, CA in a role more like Baghdad rather than the nation's safest big city.

Five people were killed over the Thanksgiving weekend in San Jose. On Friday, a husband and wife were found stabbed in their home; on Saturday, a 25-year-old male and on Sunday a 17-year old were shot to death in separate incidents; and on Sunday a 41-year-old was fatally stabbed at a new downtown nightclub.

On Sunday, a second fire in a San Jose public school in the past week became the sixth public school fire in the San Francisco Bay Area in recent weeks.

A few days before Thanksgiving, Morgan Quitno Press, a Lawrence, KS-based publishing and research company gave San Jose the nod as America's safest big city in its 10th Annual America's Safest City Survey.

To determine each city or state's level of safety, Morgan Quitno examined Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) statistics for murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary and motor vehicle theft and measured how a particular city or metro area compared to the national average for a given crime category.

San Jose (population 500,000 or more) was joined by Amherst, NY (population 100,000 to 499,999) and Brick Township, NJ (population 75,000 TO 99,999) as the nation's safest cities by size. All three were repeats from last year.

Amherst was named the nation's overall safest city for the fourth consecutive year.

"Amherst’s record speaks for itself," said Scott Morgan, president of the press. "With crime rates that are among the lowest in the nation, it is no wonder that this community shines year after year in our annual competition."

At the bottom end of the crime scale, Detroit, MI returned as the nation's most dangerous city. The Motor City anchored the crime rankings in 1999, 2000 and 2001 before it was ousted last year by St. Louis, MO. Detroit (500,000 or more); St. Louis (100,000 to 499,999) and Camden (75,000 to 99,000) all repeated their position at the low end of the scale as the nation's most dangerous cities by size.

In addition to ranking the safety of cities, Morgan Quitno also examined crime in metropolitan areas. Bangor, ME was tops. Pine Bluff, AR came in at the bottom.

Published: December 4, 2003

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Broderick Perkins parlayed a career in old-school journalism into a contemporary digital news service that really hits home. The award-winning consumer journalist, originally from Wilmington, DE, is founder, publisher and executive editor of the bootstrap DeadlineNews Group, a Silicon Valley-based editorial content and consulting service specializing in residential real estate, consumer news and related editorial consulting services. The DeadlineNews Group includes the website, DeadlineNews.com, offering real estate editorial content and consulting services, and its back shop, the Deadline Newsroom, an open house on news that really hits home. Perkins obtained his formal journalism education from University of Delaware and a journalism boot camp, the Institute of Journalism Education at the University of California-Berkeley. He went on to 20 years of service as a daily newspaper journalist at the Wilmington, DE News Journal and San Jose, CA Mercury News. Perkins covered housing on the San Jose Mercury News reporting team which earned a General News Reporting Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake. He has also produced real estate, consumer and small business content for the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, RealtyTimes.com, Nolo.com, Better Homes and Gardens, the National Association of Realtors, Homestore/Move and Intuit/Quicken among more than three dozen publications. In addition to managing the DeadlineNews Group, Perkins most recently served as chief editorial consultant for Nolo's Essential Guide To Buying Your First Home, Nolo, and writes real estate television scripts for RealtyTimes.com.