My favorite bit of research recently is basically to just draw a big circle around an anomaly and figure out what it is. The problem, of course, is that this leads to a lot of correlation without causality, so I offer this up with no analysis whatsoever.
| City (Mayor) | Crimes Per Population |
| Springfield, Ma (D) | 0.331 |
| Reno (R) | 0.318 |
| Columbus (D) | 0.241 |
| Richmond (I) | 0.234 |
| St. Louis (D) | 0.215 |
| Columbia, Sc (D) | 0.204 |
| Orlando (D) | 0.204 |
| Little Rock (D) | 0.203 |
| Birmingham (D) | 0.202 |
| Memphis (D) | 0.200 |
| Rochester (D) | 0.187 |
| Salt Lake City (D) | 0.186 |
| Kansas City (NP) | 0.184 |
| Flint (D) | 0.178 |
| Miami Gardens (D) | 0.175 |
| Tacoma (D) | 0.174 |
| Detroit (D) | 0.173 |
| Chattanooga (D) | 0.170 |
| West Palm Beach (D) | 0.168 |
| Atlanta (D) | 0.167 |
| Fayetteville (NP) | 0.163 |
| Knoxville (R) | 0.163 |
| Jackson (D) | 0.160 |
Interesting – out of the 20 top cities (over 100,000) by crime per capita, 18 have Democratic (or Democratic-leaning non-partisans) as mayor. The stat I do not have here, which is critical, is the percentage of mayors that are Democratic, but I doubt it’s over 90%.
