4 Central New York Towns Among State's Most Dangerous

Years ago David Letterman featured "The World's Most Dangerous Band" on his late night TV show. That was a good thing.

This is the opposite and it's no joke. It's a list of New York state's most dangerous towns and cities. These are locales where murders, robberies and property crimes have been on the rise. The list of the Top 25 most dangerous spots in Upstate New York was identified by NewYorkUpstate.com. Four cities in Central New York made the top 20 and a Mohawk Valley town is in the top five.

#4 Herkimer
#13 Utica
#14 Syracuse
#18 Oneida

Syracuse ranked a little less dangerous than last year, while Herkimer and Utica's ranks both grew a bit worse. Oneida was unranked last year.

The entire list is available here. The statistics were provided by the FBI and NewYorkUpstate assigned far greater weight to violent crimes as opposed to property crimes, in order to match what they believe to be a larger public concern.

Cities and towns with populations of at least 5,000 were measured.