The Tri-Cities are pretty safe. Here’s why

Kennewick, Pasco and Richland are some of the safest places to live in Washington.

A recent national survey proves it.

Safehome.org, which bills itself as a home security systems organization, rated all cities across the U.S. with populations of 50,000 or more.

While the Tri-Cities didn’t make the top 100 nationally, they were in the top 10 for the state and swept the east side.

The methodology it uses boils down to a formula of FBI crime data and U.S. Census statistics.

Safehome didn’t publish the formula for each city, but the data it pulled from 2015 is public.

Crime data is weighted at the top, with violent crime valued above property crime. Safehome then considers factors such as citizen-to-officer ratio, crime trends, population density and migration, income and education.

Pasco was rated at 79, giving it third place in the state. Richland, with a score of nearly 78, was fifth. Kennewick was seventh at 75.5.

Pasco had downward trends in violent and property crime from 2014-15, and a higher population density.

Those facts pushed it past Richland, according to Safehome’s formula.

Kennewick in 2015 had only about 8,000 more people than Pasco — 78,214 to 70,458 — but had almost 800 more property crimes.

The Pasco Police Department happily noted the occasion with a reminder that Pasco’s crime rate has dropped almost 80 percent in 25 years, a trend roughly matched by the other cities.

No other city from the east side cracked the top 15. Spokane Valley was closest at 17th, followed by Yakima at 21st and Spokane at 25th.

Sammamish, a suburb of Redmond, was first with 86. Seattle placed 20th.

The safest city in the U.S. was Greenwich, Conn., which scored 92.7.

This story was originally published December 11, 2017 at 12:25 PM with the headline "The Tri-Cities are pretty safe. Here’s why."