Are Texas border cities actually safer than other cities?

SAN ANTONIO (KTSA News) — There has been a lot of political chatter about whether cities on the U.S.-Mexico border are actually “safe” or “among the safest in the nation.”

But is that statement statistically true?

Earlier this week, Laredo Rep. Henry Cuellar’s office released figures stating that all of the border cities have lower crime rates than big cities like Washington and Houston.

KTSA News decided to compare the border cities to cities in Texas of a similar size to see if they were truly safer than cities located in other parts of the state.

We focused only on South Texas cities, since they are easier to compare statistically to other cities in the state — El Paso has 150,000 fewer people than the city it is behind (Fort Worth) and 200,000 more people than it is ahead of (Arlington), meaning there was no city to compare it to.

Comparison

Let’s start with three cities that are directly on the border with Mexico: Laredo, Brownsville and Hidalgo.

These numbers are the 2016 crime statistics compiled by the FBI and Texas Department of Public Safety.

City	Population	Homicide	Sex offense	Robbery	Agg Assault	Violent Crime	Violent Crime per 100,000
Laredo	259,325	12	148	160	620	940	362.48
Plano	288,242	5	77	109	208	399	138.43
Lubbock	252,900	6	177	471	2087	2741	1,083.83
Garland	238,859	7	117	345	298	767	321.11
Irving	240,765	5	37	213	266	521	216.39

City	Population	Homicide	Sex offense	Robbery	Agg Assault	Violent Crime	Violent Crime per 100,000
Brownsville	185,583	4	50	130	264	448	241.40
Amarillo	200,141	11	162	260	981	1414	706.50
Grand Prairie	190,270	9	139	185	254	587	308.51
McKinney	169,689	5	49	65	124	243	143.20
Frisco	162,917	0	21	27	78	126	77.34
Pasadena	154,648	3	105	211	372	691	446.82

City	Population	Homicide	Sex offense	Robbery	Agg Assault	Violent Crime	Violent Crime per 100,000
Hidalgo	13943	0	5	3	14	22	157.79
Live Oak	15809	1	3	9	12	25	158.14
Leon Valley	11376	0	2	6	28	36	316.46
Kilgore	15258	0	12	11	41	64	419.45
Hewitt	14384	0	3	3	17	23	159.90
La Marque	16191	4	10	21	88	123	759.68

These numbers show the border cities compare favorably to comparably-sized stand-alone cities in Texas, though are generally more dangerous than higher-income suburban cities.

We also looked at cities that were near the border and looked at how they compared to other Texas cities of similar size.

City	Population	Homicide	Sex offense	Robbery	Agg Assault	Violent Crime	Violent Crime per 100,000
McAllen	142227	3	40	65	107	215	151.17
Mesquite	145786	2	66	250	285	603	413.62
Killeen	143248	16	129	234	617	996	695.30
Carrollton	136095	4	51	65	100	220	161.65
Midland	137780	3	24	93	292	412	299.03
Waco	133790	4	126	156	409	695	519.47

City	Population	Homicide	Sex offense	Robbery	Agg Assault	Violent Crime	Violent Crime per 100,000
Edinburg	86535	3	61	51	239	354	409.08
Sugar Land	90088	0	16	43	18	77	85.47
Mission	84380	0	36	40	44	120	142.21
Longview	82287	13	59	120	292	484	588.19
Bryan	83286	1	59	96	264	420	504.29
Pharr	77744	1	25	35	167	228	293.27
Baytown	77224	9	25	98	170	302	391.07

City	Population	Homicide	Sex offense	Robbery	Agg Assault	Violent Crime	Violent Crime per 100,000
Harlingen	65913	2	35	58	186	281	426.32
Conroe	71111	1	39	86	126	252	354.38
Victoria	67574	5	42	60	162	269	398.08
Cedar Park	69051	0	41	17	58	116	167.99
Mansfield	65882	1	16	19	31	67	101.70
Georgetown	67436	0	22	11	52	85	126.05
San Marcos	64380	1	58	56	112	227	352.59

And here are some other notable San Antonio area statistics from 2016 to compare crime rates to:

City	Population	Homicide	Sex offense	Robbery	Agg Assault	Violent Crime	Violent Crime per 100,000
San Antonio	1498642	149	1190	2232	7183	10754	717.58
New Braunfels	73334	1	34	25	147	207	282.27
Boerne	14368	0	9	3	13	25	174.00
Seguin	28319	4	26	15	65	111	391.96
Schertz	39225	0	19	6	60	85	216.70
Alamo Heights	8248	1	1	2	4	8	96.99
Converse	22782	1	6	11	105	123	539.90
Universal City	20275	0	5	14	15	34	167.69
Helotes	8855	0	4	3	0	7	79.05
Balcones Heights	3366	0	1	13	18	32	950.68
Pleasanton	10013	2	5	8	19	34	339.56