States made the magazine 's top five , too , with New Orleans , Louisiana coming in at No. 3 . Its murder rate is estimated as 67 per 100,000 by its police department and 95 per 100,000 by the FBI . Still , the rate in Caracas comes in far ahead of the following four murderous capitals . `` Caracas has become far more dangerous in recent years than any South American city , even beating out the once notorious Bogota , -LSB- Colombia -RSB- , '' Foreign Policy said . `` What 's worse , the city 's official homicide statistics likely fall short of the mark because they omit prison-related murders as well as deaths that the state never gets around to properly ` categorizing . ' `` The numbers also do n't count those who died while ` resisting arrest , ' suggesting that Caracas ' cops -- already known for their brutality against student protesters -- might be cooking the books , '' the magazine said . CNN affiliate Globovision TV reported this week that officials reported 510 killings in Caracas this month , capping a particularly brutal year . `` It 's shocking ,
-LRB- CNN -RRB- -- At least 510 people were killed in Caracas , Venezuela , in December , giving support to a recent report that called the city the murder capital of the world . A chalk message reads No More Murders as a student protests killings in Caracas in this file photo . It 's against that backdrop that the country 's minister for Interior Relations and Justice announced efforts this week to combat crime in 2009 . Minister Tareck El Aissami said Monday he will form 50 community police units in Caracas and take other measures so that `` we can have in a short time a culture of peace , tranquility and calm for all the Venezuelan public . '' By all accounts , it will be a tall order . Foreign Policy magazine said in September that Caracas tops the list of five murder capitals of the world , with an official tally of 130 homicides per 100,000 residents . The city , which is Venezuela 's capital , has about 4 million inhabitants . Foreign Policy is owned by The Washington Post Co. and published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace . The United