And not just on the island, Galveston Mayor Joe Jaworski said, but surrounding the city's tourist-friendly downtown shopping strip known as The Strand, where visitors roam litter-free streets toting sunglasses, guidebooks and ice cream cones.

"To read this thing you'd think that if you walked 25th Street someone would come up with a beer bottle and hit you on the head," Jaworski said.

The ranking of the nation's "25 most dangerous neighborhoods" was published this week on WalletPop.com and was created by Andrew Schiller, of NeighborhoodScout.com, a real estate-related site.

An area of Chicago topped the list, with a Fort Worth neighborhood coming in at No. 15 and an area encompassing Galveston's The Strand Historic District at No. 21.

The ranking was reported by CNN, ABC, Fox, Time, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and media outlets around the country where neighborhoods were singled out.

Census data outdated

That was a concern for Galveston, where fears about tar balls from the BP oil spill in April exposed the island's sensitivity to public opinion. "Perception is a huge issue," Jaworski said of his tourism-dependent city.

Residents and officials argued the website's findings are questionable, with Schiller saying he has a proprietary calculation for predicting, based on FBI crime statistics, the likelihood that a person will be the victim of a violent crime in a particular neighborhood.

But the FBI does not collect neighborhood-specific calculations for crime, leaving agency and local officials confused as to how Schiller tallied crimes in a roughly 70-square-block area. And Galveston population figures cited by NeighborhoodScout.com appear to match those of 1980, which are far off from estimates for 2010.

Schiller did not respond to repeated requests for comment but told law enforcement agencies that his calculations were based on 2008 data and were the result of a proprietary formula.

Neighborhoods in cities with more crime, such as Houston, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York and Miami, were not on the list.

"I don't know what kind of crime you're talking about man," said Nikolay Minov, the owner of Franky's Liquor Store on The Strand.

James Somerville, a tourist visiting from Palm Springs, Calif., said he felt perfectly safe while playing chess in a park on The Strand.

He said he thought the ranking had overlooked rougher neighborhoods in the country. "I think it's crazy," he said.

'I feel it's safe'

Some residents said a low-income housing project destroyed by Hurricane Ike was previously a source of crime, but even then didn't compare with the worst neighborhoods in Houston and elsewhere.

"I don't know where the statistics are from because I feel it's safe around here," said Malinda Roque, who lives on Mechanic Avenue C, across the street from the old housing development site.

According to NeighborhoodScout.com, a person in an area around The Strand would have a 1 in 11 chance of being a victim of a violent crime, including the possibility of murder and non-negligent manslaughter, forcible rape, armed robbery and aggravated assault.

A map on NeighborhoodScout.com used to distinguish The Strand neighborhood resembled that of a 2000 U.S. Census tract map.

What's the explanation

While Schiller's calculations list a total of 84 violent crimes in the neighborhood, he generated a figure of 88 crimes per 1,000 residents in the area, likely accounting for 954 residents. But the 2000 census tract for that area showed a population of 1,858. The Census Bureau has not collected population data at the census tract level since 2000. It is unclear how Schiller would have obtained the count of 954.

Schiller's data accounted for a citywide population of 61,903, which was about the same as Galveston's 1980 population of 61,902, according to the Census. The bureau in 2009 estimated Galveston's population was 56,149, down from the 2000 tally of 57,247.

And crime in Galveston is at a 30-year low, Police Chief Charles Wiley said, with 412 total violent incidents reported in the city in 2009.

Wiley speculated that the data may have reflected old crime data reported from the address of the old police headquarters, which was within the boundaries of the designated neighborhood until 2007 and may have been where many victims registered as the location of a violent crime they experienced.

"I was raised here," Wiley said. "I have friends and family here. I have friends in that district. That's never been a dangerous neighborhood."

zain.shauk@chron.com