LITTLE ROCK — “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

-Mark Twain, who attributed the phrase to Benjamin Disraeli, apparently with no basis whatsoever, perhaps just to give it a little authority.

MANY years ago, sometime in the late Cretaceous period when cigarettes were still allowed in newsrooms, we remember some book publisher coming up with the idea of finding the Most Dangerous College Town in America. The old boy got a list of all the college towns in the United States, looked up the FBI’s crime stats for each, then published a book. Along with a number of press releases promoting it. (A man’s gotta make a living.)

Second to St. Louis in the number of crimes against citizens was a little town in south Louisiana named Hammond. You know, Hammond. That infamous well of vipers and vermin.

Of course the good people of Hammond had a collective conniption. And somebody sicced a reporter on the matter. Was that little bedroom community down the road from Baton Rouge really the No. 2 most crime-ridden college town in the whole country?

In a word, no.

It seems the police in little Hammond, at least back then, reported everything, all the time, to the feds. The local cops there kept themselves busy sending the FBI crime reports-something that police in many college towns didn’t even bother with.

When asked, even the FBI admitted its crime stats weren’t uniform. In some cities, police would call a crime an assault, and the cops in the next town over would call the very same thing an attempted murder.

Also, a bike stolen in a small town like Hammond would boost the crimes-per-capita numbers through the statistical roof. Whereas just another murder in Detroit would hardly register. That is, if the cops in Detroit even bothered to send the feds any numbers at all.

The numbers could be explained. And were. And little Hammond was off the hook.

FAST FORWARD to now, and go up one state on the map. A newspaper across the pond recently ran a story claiming that Pine Bluff, Ark., is the second most dangerous metropolitan area in this whole country. The Independent ran a feature story on the town, and interviewed police and civilians. The story pretty much painted Pine Bluff as the epicenter of evil in the universe.

Goodness. Can little ol’ Pine Bluff be that dangerous? We get the feeling the answer is probably, surely, no doubt No. It’d be difficult to rank cities this way without having better numbers. Even the FBI warns against relying on these kinds of rankings, calling them “simplistic and/or incomplete.”

So you can understand the frustration of mayors and chamber of commerce types when these rankings come out every year.

Consider the comment offered by the mayor of Little Rock, a veteran attorney and level-headed type. Mark Stodola’s city was ranked eighth-worst in the nation, to which he responds:“The numbers get manipulated based on local procedures. Say someone robs a store with six people inside. Different cities would report that as one robbery or six. In Little Rock, we’d call that six robberies.”

And some cities wouldn’t even report it. For good example, take Chicago. Which is in the middle of something of a crime spree, as has been happening regularly since Al Capone’s day. Some 506 people were murdered there last year and more victims are reported every week. We’d imagine that Chicago is a more dangerous place these days than Pine Bluff, Ark., much as we love the Windy City. No matter what the numbers are tortured into saying.

SO THE police chief in Pine Bluff, Ark., is seething with anger at the ranking, right? He’s been calling the papers to defend his city as safe as Andy Griffith’s little Mayberry, right? He’s filled with righteous indignation at the slight, right?

Not at all.

Jeff Hubanks isn’t burying his head in the sand, which is a good quality in a police chief. Pine Bluff may not be the second most dangerous city in the nation, but it is dangerous enough. Its head cop isn’t making any excuses. And he’ll tell you that, quick:

“I have to say,” Chief Hubanks proceeded to say, “we earned” the bad press. “Pine Bluff had 18 homicides in the city limits in 2012. We’ve got a crime problem as well as an image problem, and we are working on it as hard as we can.” He added: “I’m not going to boohoo about the numbers looking bad. Hell, they do look bad. They are.”

That’s the ticket, chief. Your job prohibits the use of rose-colored glasses. Just keep working to bring crime down, put away the bad guys, and make life better in your city. And keep talking straight. Which is what police chiefs are supposed to do. Without making excuses or carping about the problems with statistics.

The chief is to be complimented for both recognizing the problem with using statistics this way and not denying his town’s crime problem. Good for him on both counts.

But let’s get this straight, chief: Carping about the problems with the statistics is our job. And we hope we’ve done it today.

Editorial, Pages 16 on 03/01/2013