GRESHAM, Ore. -- The City of Gresham had the highest crime rate of any city in Oregon last year, according to the publication CQ Press.
The publication, formerly owned by Congressional Quarterly, ranked Gresham 157th out of nearly 400 cities across the nation by looking at violent crime statistics, including murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault. It also looks at property crimes and motor vehicle theft, according to the CQ Press website.
Rankings were based upon 2008 statistics. Gresham came in just three spots below Los Angeles, ranked 154th, but was higher than other big cities like Seattle, San Diego, New York and Portland.
Gresham's top cop acknowledged that it's a list that no one wants to make -- and one his city does not belong upon.
"We had a spike in homicides last year, but this year we've had no homicides so we're down 600 percent," says Chief of Police Craig Junginger.
Data was gathered from the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program and ranked by CP Press. The ranking, however, is only as accurate as the agency reporting it. View the entire list of cities here.
According to the City of Gresham, its numbers were wrong.
"We found out we misreported a lot of the crimes in a couple of the top categories last year," explains Chief Junginger.
The Gresham Police Department says in an audit of its crime reporting, it found cases where incidents were recorded as more serious in nature than they truly were, thus skewing the statistics.
"We had to go back and over a two month period we had to look at every rape report, every assault and found that many of them we were representing as a certain crime when they really weren't," says Junginger.
According to Junginger, as a result of the error, officers from the police force were re-trained in reporting practices and he assures the public that his city is not as dangerous as it may appear.
"If I can say one thing it's that the citizens of Gresham can feel safe that we're much better at fighting crime than we are at reporting it."
Portland was ranked number 221st and Vancouver was ranked 179th.
