Gentry ranked fifth safest city in Arkansas

GENTRY -- The city of Gentry was ranked fifth in the state of Arkansas in a listing of safe cities within the state. The study, prepared and published by SafeWise on Monday, lists the 30 safest cities to live in Arkansas.

According to the SafeWise Report published on the SafeWise website, the rating was done based on crime data reported to the Federal Bureau of Investigation by city police departments.

"By consulting the FBI's most recent crime data, from 2012, and employing strict reporting and population standards, we've identified the 30 safest places to live in Arkansas," the website states.

Explaining how it calculated its results, the site states: "First, we removed any city that didn't report every element of their crime data in 2012. From there, we compared 146 cities and narrowed it down to 90 with populations over 2,500. The cities that made our list were selected after considering the number of property crimes reported, which include burglary, vehicle theft, larceny-theft, and arson, as well as the number of violent crimes reported. Violent crimes include aggravated assault, murder, forcible rape and robbery. Our last step was to level the playing field by determining the chance you'd have of falling victim to either violent or property crime out of 1,000 in each city."

Gentry ranked fifth -- behind Pocahontas, Elkins, Bella Vista and Greenwood -- with 1.53 violent crimes per thousand people and 10.12 property crimes per thousand people.

Gentry police chief Keith Smith credits this to the residents of Gentry and to his officers who regularly patrol and respond to calls in Gentry.

Prairie Grove ranked 12th on the list, Farmington 17th, Bentonville 18th, Pea Ridge 20th, Lowell 22nd and Siloam Springs 26th.

2010 census numbers for Gravette and Decatur would put them under the 2,500 number used in the study to identify the safest cities, though Gravette's current population numbers after the annexation of Hiwasse are more than 3,200. Decatur's current population numbers are between 1,700 and 1,800.