TAMPA, FL -- Tampa Heights is gritty in some parts, gracious in others. The historic district has more than its fair share of social service agencies, but its proximity to downtown makes it a diverse and desirable place to live.
So imagine the reaction when a real estate ranking service promoted on AOL listed the neighborhood around Amelia and Tampa Streets as the 17th most dangerous neighborhood in America.
Real estate agents across the city could be heard simultaneously issuing a spit-take while police supervisors awaited angry questions from the Chief. Residents of Tampa Heights (this reporter included) weren’t thrilled about the impact this distinction could have on property values. But could it be true?
“It is actually one of the safer neighborhoods in Tampa and it's not even one of the areas on our radar for our top crime fighting efforts.”
Tampa Police spokesperson, Andrea Davis, says the area cited in the “Neighborhood Scout” study isn’t even the 17th most dangerous neighborhood in Tampa -- much less the nation.
Tampa Police, like most law enforcement agencies, break up the map into neighborhood sized grids then track the number of crimes within those boundaries. Here’s what we found looking at TPD’s records for 2008.
One of the roughest neighborhoods tracked by TPD's grid system is Grid 124 in West Tampa near Blake High School.
There were 61 aggravated assaults in Grid 124. By comparison, there were only 7 aggravated assaults in Tampa Heights.
Neighborhood Scout won't divulge all their research methods, but they do count crimes as a percentage of the population, which may explain why this lightly populated inner city neighborhood fared so poorly.
