Over decades, the city of Lawton has acquired a negative reputation across Oklahoma. When I first moved to Lawton as a teenager, my new classmates made sure to impress upon me how “ghetto” Lawton is and how there was gang violence on every street corner. When I interned at the Oklahoma state capitol last semester, there were people (emphasis on people, plural) who apologized to me as soon as I said I was from Lawton. A quick Google search can reveal a plethora of half-baked articles and unscientific polls indicating that Lawton is just a terrible, run-down city, incapable of supporting civilized life forms.
However, the data tells a different story. While Lawton is hardly a crime-free city, it’s certainly not the “Little Chicago” that one might hear about online. Among its companion cities in Oklahoma, Lawton is on the low end as far as its overall crime rate goes. Lawton’s numbers look less like Chicago, and more like Norman or Moore. While violent crime remains a problem in Lawton, …