And now for something less funny from me.

Atlanta, Georgia, St. Louis, Missouri, and Gary, Indiana, rounded out the top five in the most dangerous city rankings, which was to be released Monday by Morgan Quitno Corp. The company publishes “City Crime Rankings,” an annual reference book that will be published next month. Detroit fell to second in this year’s list. Story here from CNN.com

The AJC reports: “…The rankings look at the rate for six crime categories: Murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary and auto theft…”

Also, here is a report from 2-2004 in the L.A. Times talking about the crime level in Atlanta.

Atlanta Chief Calls His City The Most Dangerous in Nation

“…The Atlanta study, funded by the Atlanta Police Foundation, was released at a fundraiser Friday. Prominent among its findings was a substantial underreporting of crime in the city. Over the course of 2003, police failed to report 1,500 major crimes, the auditors found. Of police reports that were taken, more than 22,000 went missing in the department’s records system…”

That was a surprise to me. But, here is something that is not a surprise.

[Scott] Kreher [president of Local 623 of the International Brotherhood of Police] said that police find themselves scrambling to respond to emergencies in the face of chronic shortages of officers and equipment. “We have to continually play catch-up with 911 calls,” Kreher said. “We’re not able to do any proactive police work. It’s all reactive. If we don’t have the cars, we can’t put officers on the street.”

My years in public safety here in Atlanta proved to me we didn’t have the resources to handle emergency medical calls, mainly due to the major abuse of 911 for non-emergencies. This is one of the problems that is on going here in the ATL.

I don’t have a perfect solution but, as long as tax payers believe that money for public safety is handled well, I would suggest they be willing to invest more into the system to make it better.

Programs for crime prevention, especially in the area of domestic violence, would be a great help I believe.

I don’t like paying taxes any more than you do but, to think that my city would be a much safer place to live, I would be willing to come off a little extra cash each year to fund targeted input into the public safety system in Atlanta. Don’t ask me for the figures and don’t think I am defending any misuse of funds – as I am sure there are some – but, the city needs to target this issue with great force. I trust they will do so.