violent crime

If you've ever wondered if the city in which you live is considered actually "dangerous," here's some definitive proof.

When you look at headlines like "Rockford’s violent crime, shootings, assaults continue to climb," it really shouldn't come as a surprise that Rockford's position on the Illinois' Safest Cities list is pretty far down.

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.

We thought we'd give Rockford's new Police Chief, Dan O'Shea, a few weeks to get the lay of the land before we asked him to take a few minutes for a chat. Chief O'Shea has been on the job for around a month, and this morning he dropped by to tell us a bit about himself and his background, before moving on to other topics like reaching out to the community, what he expects from his officers, and wa