It's certainly not the kind of ranking any city aims to receive, but in crunching the numbers from the FBI, which looks at the rates of violent crime in American cities, Rockford ranks high, and that's not good.

The FBI recently released compiled data on the most violent cities in each state in the first six months of 2015. The feds looked at robbery, aggravated assault, rape and even murder. For Rockford, murders were down at that point, but other violent crimes were up.

Overall, here are America's top ten most dangerous cities (the number following the city's name indicates the number of violent crimes per 10,000 residents):

1. St. Louis, Missouri: 88.1

2. Memphis, Tennessee: 84.2

3. Detroit, Michigan: 83.4

4. Birmingham, Alabama: 82.8

5. Rockford, Illinois: 76.3

6. Baltimore, Maryland: 67.7

7. Stockton, California: 67.4

8. Milwaukee, Wisconsin: 65.3

9. Cleveland, Ohio: 61.5

10. Hartford, Connecticut: 55.8

From the piece in the Daily Mail:

The murder rate dropped slightly in Rockford last year, from ten in 2014 to nine. Sadly the number of other serious violent crimes soared from 927 to 1142.

Rape reports in particular increased from 69 to 78, while assault and property crime has also climbed.

Rockford, which has a relatively small population of 150,000, has an average homicide rate of 19 per year.

The 2015 figure represents the first dip below double digits since 2004 when just eight people were killed, as the mid-90's gang related violence finally appeared to be subsiding.

But it had risen again slowly, securing Rockford's place on the country's most dangerous lists for years.

Well, that seems a bit bleak, doesn't it? Okay, forget all about that list, and go with this one. It's better. Why? Rockford isn't on it at all:

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