NEW ORLEANS - With more than 60 murders so far this year, a recent uptick in violence and multiple federal investigations into questionable police shootings it would be easy to argue that New Orleans is a dangerous city. Is it however, one of the world's most dangerous?
CNN makes that distinction, based on factors such as the city's internal stability and effectiveness of law enforcement, as well as official crime statistics and media reports.
According to a list published this week on cnn.com, New Orleans ranks up there in the top ten along with other troubled and somewhat more dubious cities including, in no particular order: Baghdad, Iraq; Beirut, Lebanon; Caracas, Venezuela; Karachi, Pakistan; Juarez, Mexico, Cape Town, South Africa; Moscow, Russia and Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The only other American city on the list is Detroit, Michigan.
CNN admits that it is a "tall order" to rank cities in terms of most dangerous. In doing so, the cable network collected data from Mercer's latest global report on personal safety and Foreign Policy magazine's most recent report on murder rates, as well as reports by Forbes and security watchdog Citizen's Council for Public Safety.
According to a recent ranking by CQ Press, New Orleans was number six in the U.S. for crime. That's down from number one in 2008.
(What do you think? Is New Orleans one of the world's most dangerous cities? Leave your comments below.)
