ELGIN — For the fifth year in a row, Elgin has been declared the safest city in Oklahoma.
That designation comes from Safewise.com which used FBI crime statistics to comprise its 2023 report. The list was compiled based on 2021 crime figures, which is the most recent FBI data available, and the website’s State of Safety survey.
“It’s great. We try to keep things safe around here,” Elgin Police Chief Paul Tracy said.
Tracy has worked in law enforcement for 51 years, including a long career with the U.S. Marshal’s Service and 12 years with the Comanche County Sheriff’s Department. He began working as an Elgin officer in 2006 and was appointed chief in 2015.
Elgin has maintained a 0.0 violent crime rate per 1,000 thousand residents for the past three years. The city’s property crime rate was 2.1 incidents per 1,000 residents for the 2021 and 2022 reports. However, that figure dropped to 0.3 incidents for the 2023 report.
“We have a good bunch of people who work here as officers, people who are retired military and retirees from other departments who know what they’re doing,” Tracy said. “It’s always quiet. We have a good school system and very few problems at the school. It (low crime rate) doesn’t surprise me at all. We get very few complaints about anything.”
Statewide, the violent crime rate per 1,000 people is 4.4 incidents while the property crime rate is 26.0. Elgin was one of four Oklahoma cities to have property crime rates in the single digits last year. The other cities were Langston, Coalgate and Burns Flat.
The State of Safety study used a 10-minute online survey that was fielded in February and March 2022. The website spoke to 5,000 respondents across the country (at least 100 from every state). Responses were weighted for population. Based on the number of completions, the margin of error is ±1.4%.
The State of Safety survey asked participants to rate how concerned they were about each crime and safety issue using a scale from one to seven. One was “not at all concerned” and seven was “highly concerned.” For comparison and ranking purposes, responses were grouped into three ranges:
Responses marked 7, 6, or 5 indicated high concern.
Responses marked 4 were considered neutral.
Responses marked 3, 2, or 1 indicated low concern.
A new update of approximately 5,000 Americans was fielded in February and March 2023.