SOUTH BEND, Ind. (WNDU) – You may have seen an article in USA Today that ranked South Bend as one of the 50 worst cities to live in.

We shared that article Wednesday and later took it down after the mayor’s office reached out to us disputing the use of FBI crime data used to evaluate cities. The mayor’s office told us you can’t draw valid comparisons since cities report crimes differently.

So, we decided to look into it ourselves to make sure the information we’re sharing is accurate.

NewsCenter 16’s Jen Cardone dug deeper Thursday to see if cities’ crime rates can accurately be compared to each other using the FBI’s crime database.

What she found was that the short answer is no. On the FBI’s website, they say they are well aware news media might want to use the crime data to rank cities, but they warn us not to.

Browsing through this USA Today article caught many of our eyes when we saw South Bend ranked the 40th worst city to live.

See news story here.