NEVADA, Mo. — A small town in Missouri disputes the claim that it’s one of the most dangerous cities in the Show Me State.
“Once we received that article or information about that article we knew that there was an error in the reporting,” said Mark Mitchell, Nevada City Manager.
A publication called “The Southwest Journal” used 2020 FBI crime data that put Nevada number three on a list of the 10 Most Dangerous Cities in Missouri.
“I have emailed him. I have not gotten a response back from him yet,” said Mitchell.
Lieutenant Amber Williamson with the Nevada Police Department says the FBI changed the way crimes are categorized in 2020. For example, anytime an assault report was entered, she says it would automatically categorize it as an aggravated assault.
“A lot of those could have been simple assaults or intimidation by assault so they didn’t necessarily fall under aggravated assault which caused our numbers to go up,” said Williamson.
That led to a small town with a population of just over 8,000, reporting 149 aggravated assaults and 9 sexual assaults in the report. City officials say once they saw the article — they knew they had to respond.
“We had a slight uptick in 2020 but still those numbers are not a hundred percent accurate. Like I said we are going back and going through all those reports and making sure they are accurate now,” said Williamson.
Mitchell tells us officers are almost done with those updates.
“That could have been detrimental to our community. It can hamper growth, can hurt tourism opportunities and just overall view of our community,” he said.
