Sparta Third-Safest Town in NJ, Report Says

Sparta is the third-safest place to live in New Jersey thanks to its low crime rate, most notably having just one violent crime in 2012, according to Movoto Real Estate.

The study of New Jersey towns with at least 10,000 residents used the FBI's 2012 crime report and examined violent crime (rape, murder and assault), property crime (theft, burglary and motor vehicle thefts) and the chance a resident will be a victim of a crime, according to Movoto.

"For violent crime and property crime, we calculated the number of transgressions per resident," according to the report. "In order to determine a resident's chances of being the victim of a crime, we used the total number of crimes in the city. Then, we ranked each city from one to 238 across the three criteria. The lower the number was, the better the city's score."

Sparta, with a population just less than 20,000, had a 132 property crimes in 2012 and residents had a 1 in 146 chance of being a victim of any crime, according to the report.

Here are the top-10 towns, according to Movoto:

1. Chatham Township
2. Mahwah
3. Sparta
4. Bernards
5. Hasbrouck Heights
6. Berkeley Heights
7. Florham Park
8. Ringwood
9. Tenafly
10. Lincoln Park

Hopatcong was ranked 36th with residents having a 1 in 115 chance of being a victim of a crime based on the 2012 stats, the report said.

Asbury Park was considered the state's least-safest community with 2012 stats showing 1,491 crimes, 344 of which were violent, Movoto reported. The 16,625 residents had a 1 in 11 chance of being a victim of a crime, according to the report.

In addition to Asbury Park, Camden, Atlantic City, Irvington and Bridgeton were the state's most dangerous communities, each with more than 1,000 crimes in 2012, according to Movoto.

In a recent survey by Safewise, Sparta was considered the second-safest town in the state behind Mahwah while Hopatcong was ranked seventh.