PITTSBURGH — Target 11 analyzed new FBI data and found three out of the four largest communities in the entire state with zero violent crime reported in 2013 are right here in Western Pennsylvania.
“It's about the demographics of your community, the type of community you live in, the type of developments that you have coming in, the type of businesses you have coming in," said Ohio Township Police Chief Norbert Micklos.
Out of 858 communities in Pennsylvania tracked by the FBI, 140 had zero violent crime.
Economy Borough, O'Hara Township and Ohio Township are the largest communities in our area to reach that level.
If you take a drive through each of them, you'll likely notice that they're all bedroom communities -- mostly homes, newer developments and very few businesses.
“Being rural, we have more housing than we do business. They don't have the opportunity really, for those types of crimes to be occurring," said Economy Police Chief Mike O'Brien.
But Economy Borough already has three violent crimes reported for 2014.
Two of them happened at the new Walmart store that recently opened, where thefts involved physical force.
The FBI classifies violent crime as murder, rape and aggravated assault.
Each local police department told us they've done nothing different to curb violence.
“We don't have a lot of rental property," said Micklos, “My experience with rental properties in communities is if you have a lot of it, a lot of your problems do arise from lower rental properties…if people don't have a vested interest in that property.”
And while each community has had neighborhood watch groups in the past, they've long been inactive, or they've just changed with the times.
“It's seems as though these new housing plans seem to take on their own role as crime watch with the Internet and a lot of blogs that go back and forth through the community,"said Micklos.
CLICK HERE to see where your community ranked on the FBI’s list for both violent crime and property crime.