The Village of Floral Park recently received the distinction of being ranked as the third safest city in New York State for 2019.
According to Backgroundchecks.org’s annual report, New York fares very well in terms of safety compared to the rest of the nation. The state’s violent crime rate is 24th lowest in the country while it places fifth in property crime. A combination of FBI crime statistics and law enforcement employee to resident ratio was used to measure the safety of a given community. While 61 New York cities score a 0.3 or higher on the safety index, which indicates a very high level of safety, Floral Park logged a 0.98 safety index score based on a 0.56 per 1,000 violent and property crime rate—below the national violent crime rate—a considerable feat.
“Floral Park is the true meaning of community policing,” said Floral Park Police Commissioner Stephen McAllister. “The department has strong familial ties to the community with more than two-thirds of the department living within the village or having grown up within the village. The community truly cares about their neighbors and our village, and apprise the police when things seem amiss so that we can quickly address it.”
The Floral Park Police Department also makes tremendous efforts to reach out to the village’s schools and connect with students, teachers and administrators helping to steer many students onto the right path.
“In my nine years as police commissioner, we have experienced a downward trend in all categories of crime because we have invested countless hours in training our department members and professionalized our efforts in responding to our community’s needs,” McAllister said.
A total of 2,929 cities were audited in BackgroundCheck.org’s report, including 119 in New York. The report automatically filters out any city with a population under 10,000, and all crime rates were determined on a per-capita basis.
New York State’s safest community is East Hampton Town, the state’s second-safest community is Port Washington while Southold came in fourth. Rounding out New York’s top five safest cities is the first non-Long Island community, Mamaroneck in Westchester County.
