In this section, we’ll try to acquaint you with what kind of folks live here. What are the people like? Is it safe?
We’ll approach these questions on a county-by-county basis and, where possible, flesh out the discussion with links to sites that have statistics about the several communities.
As you go to the links we’ve provided in this section, you’ll come across more general demographic information such as male/female percentages, race/ethnicity relative percent, income levels, and so on. Our narrative is going to focus on the crime rates because we think they can be somewhat misleading by themselves.
Drawing a putative connection between these population statistics and the crime rate can be equally misleading. Alcohol and drug abuse play a larger role in crime statistics, in the form of the immediate cause, than anything else. It really doesn’t much matter whether the perpetrator was rich, poor, black, white, or Hispanic. Substance abuse cuts across all those lines and it isn’t directly measured in these statistics.
Charlotte County
Charlotte County is a little unusual compared to the other two coastal counties in that it has almost no black or Hispanic residents. Its overall crime rate is below the national average, as is that of several towns within the county. Punta Gorda is significantly below the national average in all reported crime categories, except burglaries.
This is pretty typical of Southwest Florida. “Burglaries” include home break-ins, as well as vandalism connected with breaking in, and car burglaries, including pilfering unlocked cars. The large number of vacant houses are a tempting target, as are unlocked cars in shopping malls and at the beach.
Lee County
Lee County has the largest population of the three, and has an overall higher crime rate than the U.S. average. Lee County, however, has several population centers that are markedly different from each other, both in terms of crime rates and other demographics. It is not useful to lump them all together into one measuring unit.
The burglary statistics are affected by the number of vacant houses in any case.
- Cape Coral has a lower overall crime rate than the national average, though burglaries are right at the national average.
- Fort Myers Has a higher crime rate than the national average. In this case, I suspect, one or two neighborhoods account for a significant part of this. You can talk to some of the residents and then draw your own conclusions…. Drugs and gang activity in certain areas account for much of the reported crime, I think.
- Sanibel has the lowest reported crime rate in all categories, compared to any other locality in Lee County. There has been an increase in car burglaries in the beach parking lots over the last several years, though I must add that the problem isn’t as bad on Sanibel beaches as it is on some of the other ones. The Sanibel police aggressively patrol these areas, which likely accounts for the lower rate.
- Other Lee County communities, such as Lehigh, South Fort Myers, Fort Myers Beach, Pine Island, and North Fort Myers do not have their own police. Law enforcement is provided by the sheriff and their statistics are aggregated into the Lee County numbers.
Collier County
Collier County, to the east of the coastal urban corridor, is mostly in the Everglades National Park or one of the associated state parks. High income families are pretty much concentrated in Naples and Marco.
Its crime rate is higher than the national average but, once again, you need to look a bit deeper. Through 2007, the county showed a decrease in crime year after year for six straight years.
- Naples, which has its own police department, ranks below the national average in all but two crime categories, burglaries and larceny. As to these two, burglaries are right at the average, while larceny is somewhat above it. That it doesn’t come close to the overall county figures in most categories (or even the Naples/Marco metro ones) is instructive as to the inability to generalize from aggregated statistics across jurisdictional lines. The City of Naples does not include surrounding communities where law enforcement is the responsibility of the sheriff.
- Marco Island has its own police department. Its crime rate is well under the national average in all categories. Marco is an upscale community with a significant number of part-time residents.
- Immokalee law enforcement is handled by the Collier County Sheriff. Actual crime statistics are available, but we’ve been unable to find comparative statistics showing Immokalee’s relative place in the larger scheme of things. The percent of folks under poverty levels is the highest of any community in our area.
So, there you are. Based on what you’ve seen, especially with Sanibel and Marco, if you are inclined to draw inferences about crime avoidance, then obviously you need to become rich and move to one of those places. Or, maybe just get rich and hang out there.
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