MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. - An analysis of booking reports shows that 83 percent of the people arrested for committing violent crimes in Horry County live in the Grand Strand area.
The Sun News of Myrtle Beach reports that its analysis of more than 14,000 booking reports at the county jail shows that tourists rarely commit violent crimes while they are on vacation, apparently undermining the contention of local leaders.
Local business and law enforcement officials are critical of a new CQ Press study that ranks the Myrtle Beach metro area — which includes all of Horry County — as the 14th-most-dangerous place in the United States.
Local officials say the CQ Press report is skewed because it does not take into account about 14 million tourists who visit Horry County each year. When those tourists are factored into the population, officials said, the area’s crime ranking falls to No. 149 out of 338 metro areas CQ Press ranked.
Booking reports at the county jail, however, indicate that tourists rarely commit violent crimes while they are in the Myrtle Beach area on vacation and they play only a minor role in this area’s overall violent crime ranking.
The newspaper’s review also showed that those people charged this year with committing a violent crime live in either Horry or Georgetown counties.
Ben Krasney, a spokesman for CQ Press, said cities with poor rankings typically attack the annual report. The Myrtle Beach area consistently has ranked among the report’s most dangerous places, finishing No. 7 last year. Tourists probably don’t skew the crime rankings by much, he said.
“While the crime rate would go down if we considered the transient populations in every metro area, it wouldn’t dramatically change each area’s place in the rankings,” Krasney said. “They might move a spot or two, but they wouldn’t all of a sudden appear to be a place with a significantly lower crime rate.”
Warren Gall, chief of the Myrtle Beach Police Department, said some other states have less stringent crime reporting requirements than South Carolina.
“Because of that, our numbers are going to be higher than places that are underreporting or not reporting at all,” Gall said. “We are a victim of being a state that requires accurate reports.”
Local law enforcement officials said residents and tourists should feel safe living in or visiting Horry County.
“Instead of living in a particularly dangerous place, in reality we live in a place that is in the middle of the pack (for crime),” said Greg Hembree, solicitor for the state’s 15th judicial circuit. He added that the CQ Press report “gives a very false sense of fear to our community.”