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After dropping to the ninth spot on the list last year, the Logan metropolitan area, which includes most of Cache Valley, reclaimed the top spot among the nation’s safest metros this week. It is the second time in three years the valley has earned that distinction.

“We just had an accreditor here from Chicago,” Cache County Sheriff Lynn Nelson said. “He had a life changing experience. He said, ‘I didn’t know places like this still existed.’”

For most in the valley, however, the announcement is nothing new; it is the sort of ho-hum factoid real estate agents tell prospective buyers and college kids lament over after officers shut down their parties.

But as crime statistics remain low, even amid continued population growth, the real question is: What makes us so safe? Police point to community support, hard work, communication and even geography for the answer.

“Other places around the state, they’re always looking for two or three suspects for serious crimes,” Logan Police Capt. Eric Collins said. “But these criminals don’t come up here. I don’t know if word has gotten out to these people to stay away from Cache Valley.”

The valley, however, is not free from serious crimes. Mychal Denny, 24, was convicted last year of child abuse homicide for the death of his 2-year-old son, Tyson.

But these incidents are infrequent, and Logan has experienced yet another drop in its most serious crimes this year.

Police said that is, in part, due to the geography of the area.

Being surrounded by mountains and away from a major freeway helps keep criminals out, Collins said. When crime does find its way into the valley — the September drive-by shooting in a Hyrum trailer park, for example — it generally doesn’t take long to find the offenders on the two or three major routes back to the freeway.

Because the valley’s law enforcement officers also live here, their work often has personal meaning, officials said.

“All of our kids go to these schools,” Logan Police Chief Russ Roper said. “We have a vested interest in keeping it safe.”

Doing that starts with proactive police work and preventative measures, officials said.

Officers subscribe to the “broken windows theory” — the idea that failing to repair windows or remove graffiti on a building will only invite further vandalism.

Valley agencies put officers in the public schools to help address problems before they become more serious, officials said.

“It’s a community of its own and it’s worth doing some preventative work there,” Roper said. “I don’t see that happening anywhere else in Utah.”

And those efforts have paid huge dividends in limiting gang issues, police said.

“We’re so small that we know who these kids are and we squash it,” Collins said. “We arrest them for anything we can — curfew, tobacco, vandalism. We’re not allowing them to get organized.”

But when problems have come up, police said, community support and communication between law enforcement agencies has been crucial.

“If there’s anything that happens, everyone works together to solve that crime,” Collins said. “You don’t always find that down along the Wasatch Front.”

After a rash of gang graffiti hit Smithfield last summer, officers there worked with police in Logan to help put an end to the problem. It has been more than a month since the last reported graffiti incident, Smithfield Chief Johnny McCoy said.

“It’s been a positive response from the whole community,” he said. “And the law enforcement response is countywide.”