Springfield, Missouri (Republic, St. John, Battlefield: high crime, houses, neighborhood)

[wisconsinwoman]

Where are the safest and best areas to live in Springfield? What is the high crime all about there? Drug-related or what?

[littlemonkeys]

The safer area of Springfield and the nicer area is generally on the South side of town. Avoid the North and West sides of town and the downtown area if you are looking for a better area to live in. I suspect that most of the crime in this area has to do with petty theft. We've had several bikes stolen. There is also a higher rate of domestic violence than in some areas and of course drugs. Missouri has a meth problem in general.

Living here I've never felt like we were in "danger" so it's not that kind of crime, but it is a blue collar area and there are quite a few poor folks in this town. So, like most poorer areas there are drug and theft type crimes. It doesn't seem that violent though. Some houses on my street were robbed a few months ago and I live in a decent enough area in the middle of town (near St. Johns/Bass Pro). I hope the police are cracking down on that because I did see a sign in another neighborhood (over off Golden between Battlefield and Republic road) that houses had been getting robbed over there. You might want to invest in a home security system if you can. Still, these weren't violent robberies, just people getting stuff stolen from them, to my knowledge.