Alturas, CA has a F safety grade (24/100) with a violent crime rate of 1477 per 100,000, 320% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · small city
Alturas is a small municipal reporter (2,640 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with CA and U.S. context.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Alturas, CA carries a PlainCrime F safety grade with violent crime 320% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Alturas, CA shows violent crime at 1,477.3 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 643.9 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 320% above the U.S. average. PlainCrime assigns grade F from those rates. Figures are voluntary agency submissions joined to population denominators; incomplete coverage can move the number.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 552.3 per 100,000 in 2020 to 1477.3 in 2024 (+167.5%). The highest observed value was 1477.3 in 2024 and the lowest 0.0 in 2021. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 69.6% of the 56 Part I offenses reported in Alturas for 2024, against a median of 17.1% across comparable California cities — a gap of 52.5 points. Offense mix is shaped by which agencies report and how incidents are classified as well as by the underlying offenses, so it describes the reported record rather than a settled difference in conditions.
Position in the state cohort
At 1477.3 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Alturas ranks 9 of 458 — above 449 of the 457 other California cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +349.7% against the cohort median of 328.5. Cities that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Alturas's 1477.3 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Commerce (1448.0), Crescent City (1386.0), Big Bear (1581.9), Colma (1596.5). These are same-year agency submissions that pass the same completeness screen, not a claim that the cities have identical conditions. They make the cohort position above checkable against named records instead of a generic state average.
Property-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 58.8% of reported property offenses in Alturas, against a cohort median of 69.5%. The remainder is burglary (5) and motor vehicle theft (2). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Violent counts are the sharper signal on Alturas's FBI UCR Table 8 municipal row. Per-100,000 rates use the reporting-year population on that row; incomplete reporters stay out of rate rankings. A citywide figure rarely describes any single neighbourhood inside the municipal boundary.
Small-city offense counts above are voluntary UCR submissions, not neighbourhood advice. Year-to-year swings can look large when the population base is modest.
Across 2.8 Census sq mi, Alturas logged 6 property and 13.7 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Alturas's 2024 book concentrates in aggravated assault (64% of 56 offenses; mix index 4,585).
Violent offenses are 70% of the municipal total - a violence-heavy book for a small city.
Alturas offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (2.8 sq mi); mix index is HHI x 10,000 on the offense-type shares above. Distinct from the per-100K rates in the hero.
| Offense | Count | Rate /100K |
|---|---|---|
| Violent Crime | 39 | 1477.3 |
| Aggravated Assault | 36 | 1363.6 |
| Rape | 3 | 113.6 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
| Robbery | 0 | 0 |
| Property Crime | 17 | 643.9 |
| Larceny-Theft | 10 | 378.8 |
| Burglary | 5 | 189.4 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 2 | 75.8 |
| Arson | 2 | 75.8 |
The chart omits 2021 rather than drawing an unsupported zero or partial-coverage dip. The table preserves the year and marks the gap.
Lead series · rose across 4 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · fell · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 2,535 | 552.3 | 1735.7 |
| 2021 | Insufficient reporting | 2,514 | - | - |
| 2022 | Comparable | 2,692 | 668.6 | 1188.7 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 2,637 | 493 | 948 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 2,640 | 1477.3 | 643.9 |
Alturas Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Alturas's 56 reported offenses (4-year span 2020-2024, with internal gaps).
This agency reports via NIBRS, the incident-based system that captures more detail per offense (multiple crimes per incident, victim/offender data) than the older summary counts.
Crime rates read differently at different scales, so these are the California cities closest to Alturas in population. Their populations run from 2,273 to 3,203, against 2,640 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Alturas sits at 1,477.3/100K violent (grade F); the California cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
In 2024, Alturas reported 39 violent crimes and 17 property crimes, for a total of 56 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Alturas's violent crime rate increased by 199.7%, and the property crime rate decreased by 32.1%.
The most common crime type in Alturas is aggravated assault, accounting for 64.3% of all reported crimes (36 incidents in 2024).
Small-city read: Alturas is sourced from FBI UCR Table 8 for 2024; rates use that row's population.
Small-city rows use the same per-100,000 formula; a few unreported years can leave gaps in the trend table. Verify the agency's submission on FBI.gov UCR.
Disclaimer (small city): UCR counts here are informational only. They are not a victimization probability. Source: FBI UCR Program.
Small-city rate methodology for how Alturas's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Alturas, CA rates use the reporting-year population on the municipal row.
Bulk download: city crime dataset (CSV/JSON)
Every figure on PlainCrime is rendered directly from FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) source data, no number is typed in by an editor. Alturas is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (2,640 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.