Shasta County fared worse than the city of Redding in a report this week that ranked the area No. 1 in the rise of violent crime.

The list appeared in a story on the website 247wallst.com.

Based on FBI statistics and adjusted to reflect violent crimes per 100,000 residents, the Redding metropolitan area showed a jump from 475 in 2005 to 797 in 2010, an increase of 322.

In the city alone, the rate of violent crimes per 100,000 increased by 250, according to the agency.

The federal government deems a metropolitan statistical area a core urban area of 50,000 or more population, and includes all residents in the surrounding county.

Sheriff Tom Bosenko said Wednesday he had not seen the report or the statistics, so declined to speculate what might be behind the spike.

"I'd have to look at our past statistical data," Bosenko said. "I don't want to make any speculations. I don't know what the indicators could be."

On Tuesday, Redding Police Chief Robert Paoletti also said he'd need more time to research the crime stats before offering an explanation for the rising rate of violence.

The FBI discourages the sort of ranking performed by 247wallst.com, noting the numbers don't account for many factors that make it hard to compare cities and counties with each other.

Bosenko said he's lost approximately 40 positions in his department since 2005.

"Of those, at least 15 have been deputies," he said, adding that on any given shift there may be "only three or four deputies working what we call the Redding basin."

But he stopped short of linking the decline in staff to the report.

His department has between 200 and 220 employees, about 120 of them sworn officers.

"We have a lot of hardworking men and women in the Sheriff's Office doing the best we can with the amount of staffing and funding we have available to us," he said.

Overall, the total number of crimes in Redding decreased over the same five-year period, City Manager Kurt Starman said in an email, from 4,651 in 2005 to 3,831 in 2010. Those figures include nonviolent offenses.

In this week's report, the Redding area was followed in second place by Victoria, Texas, with Albany, Ga., in third, Odessa, Texas, fourth and Mobile, Ala., fifth.

The news outlet 24/7 Wall St. is "a financial news and opinion operation with content delivered over the Internet," according to the website. It provides content to various other publications, including The Atlantic, MarketWatch, Yahoo! Finance and TheStreet.com.