click to enlarge Photo courtesy of Flickr/Paul Sableman

Webster Groves: No. 14 on the list of Missouri's safest cities in 2016.

If it's safety you crave, you may want to avoid north county. Or Ladue, St. Charles, Chesterfield and the city of St. Louis. Those municipalities all failed to make the grade in a just-released list of the twenty safest cities in Missouri by the website Safewise.com But plenty of St. Louis' suburbs to the west and south did make the list — proving that plenty of super-safe spots are to be found, even in a metro area where crime has remained a concern.The study's authors compiled their results by surveying violent crimes per 1,000 people, along with property crimes per 1,000 people. By that metric, Bonne Terre, Missouri, is the safest spot in the whole state. Good luck finding something to do there, but we're sure you'll be free from marauders.Similarly, the safest municipality in the St. Louis area by the study's metric is the St. Charles County suburb of Cottleville, a wee little hamlet of 3,000 soulsout west. It finished second in Missouri on the Safewise.com list, followed by three more populous suburbs along the Manchester Road corridor: Ballwin (No. 3), Glendale (No. 6) and Ellisville (No. 10).Incidentally, the list does show, however inadvertently, just how random violence can be. The quote-unquote safest city in St. Louis County, Ballwin, was the site of that high-profile police shooting just this summer , in which a man at a traffic stop ambushed Officer Mike Flamion, leaving him paralyzed. It's a safe city, yes, but anyone can end up in harm's way if they run into the wrong person — and that's true even for a well-trained, fully armed officer of the law.See below for the complete top 20 list. Oh, and in case you were wondering, Ladue was No. 22 on this list and Chesterfield was No. 26. So close!1. Bonne Terre2. Cottleville3. Ballwin4. Portageville5. Greenwood6. Glendale7. Tipton8. Holts Summit9. Louisiana10. Ellisville11. Savannah12. Smithville13. Town and Country14. Webster Groves15. California16. Shrewsbury17. New Madrid18. Pleasant Hill19. Kearney20. O'Fallon