Wisconsin City Is Sadly Living Up To Nickname With Top 5 Murder Rate

The homicide rate has decreased by an average of roughly 5% in 40 of the biggest U.S. cities between Q3 2021 and Q3 2023.  While this Wisconsin city has seen a slight decrease over the past few years others in the country have dropped more propelling it into the Top 5 cities with the biggest homicide rate problems.

Below you can see the full list and the other Midwest City that is surprisingly not even in the top 20.

Highest Murder Rate Per Capita

WalletHub examined the 40 most populated cities in America to find out which ones had the highest murder rate per capita.

Coming in at the bottom of the list (safest) are:

36 - Chandler, AZ
37 - Tucson, AZ
38 - Sacramento, CA
39 - Lincoln, NE
40 - Chesapeake, VA

The biggest surprise on the list was number 27. Chicago, Illinois. Chicago has seen a -2.01 drop from 2022 and a -4.74 drop since 2021.

The other Wisconsin city on this list is Madison.  It comes 35th on the murder rate per capita.  No change from 2022 but down -1.51 from 2021.

Milwaukee's New Nickname

Wisconsin is the land of beer and cheese.  The dairy state.  But sadly, Milwaukee is getting a new nickname from some residents.  And these new figures won't help.

"Killwaukee" ranked 4th on the list for homicide rate per capita.  While Milwaukee is down .86 and .52 over the last two years, it's not enough to keep it from the top 5 of the list.

The full top 5 looks like this:

5 - Atlanta, GA
4 - Milwaukee, WI
3 - Detroit, MI
2 - Memphis, TN
1 - Washington, DC

So while it could be worse, it's not much to brag about when you are only better than those cities.

You can see more on this study on WalletHub.