Believe It Or Not, Amarillo Named One Of Safest Cities In Texas

Things in life have a tendency to be a bit confusing, and Amarillo always seems to be in the middle of the confusion. This one has to be one of the more confusing things I've seen in recent memory.

Several months ago, a study came out that showed Amarillo was one of the most dangerous cities in Texas. We checked in at number six on the list, and the sad part is it surprised nobody.

Get our free mobile app

Now there is a new study that's out and it seems to completely contradict everything the previous study says.

Apparently, Amarillo can be ranked the sixth most dangerous city in Texas while also being ranked as the third safest city in the state. Scratching your head yet? Yeah, I was when I first read this.

The report brought a lot of different factors into play here, and yes, home & community safety was one of them. You would think that category alone would be enough to knock us near the bottom of the list, especially considering it seemed to hold the most weight, but it wasn't.

Other factors they took into consideration for this study were natural disaster risk, as well as financial safety.

Inside these three categories were different things that held a different weight to it. I won't break out each category because we'd be listing around 60 different things. The one that held the most weight was the "presence of terrorist attacks" which the study gave triple weight to.

According to the study, that particular category "considers the presence or absence of terrorist attack or terrorist-related incident in the city between 2014 and 2024," which we can safely say we haven't had in Amarillo.

HOME & COMMUNITY SAFETY

Let's start with the big one, the one we figure would've sent the city tumbling down the rankings. Out of 182 cities that received rankings in this report, Amarillo checked in at number 53. For this study, the smaller the number, the better you are.

So after being ranked the sixth most dangerous city in Texas, it's now showing Amarillo as the 53rd BEST city in the country when it comes to safety here. Now to be fair, this category had the most subcategories in it, and it wasn't ALL about crime in general.

It takes into account first responders and how many we have per capita in the city and things like the number of mass shootings, so these most certainly helped lower this number.

NATURAL DISASTER RISK

So this category is where we ranked terribly. Out of 182 cities, we came in at number 154 on this one. It makes sense, I mean we are essentially sitting in the middle of nowhere, and those severe thunderstorms do bring a lot of risk for tornadoes.

Another thing it takes into account here is the risk of flooding, and as we've seen on numerous occasions, we love to flood here, and quickly.

FINANCIAL SAFETY RISK

So I was a bit confused by this category at first glance. The financial safety risk category took into account things such as job security, credit score, unemployment rate, bankruptcy filings, and a whole lot more. In other words, this was a very broad category that took into account anything to do with money.

It was also our BEST category ranking as the 33rd best city in the study for this. We all talk about how cheap it can be to live in Amarillo, and because of it, we don't tend to deal with a lot of poverty or people underwater on their mortgages. We also have a very low unemployment rate which is a winner for this category.

OVERALL

The only two cities that ranked better than us in the state were Laredo and Brownsville. In fact, Laredo was ranked as the 21st safest city overall in the country. Not too shabby.

What we can take away from it is that yes, our crime is still there, but we have the means to deal with it. Furthermore, while some of it is considered violent crime, it's not something that is so egregious that it affects the entire community.

We live in an area that is always at risk for some pretty nasty weather stuff, but financially we are one of the best cities to be in. All in all, I'll take all the positives and take solace in knowing we really are a pretty safe place to be.

Here's a look at the full study from WalletHub.