Atlantic Beach, NC has a F safety grade (0/100) with a violent crime rate of 776 per 100,000, 120% above the national average.
Atlantic Beach's UCR row covers a small municipal population (1,418). Rates below are per 100,000 and sit next to NC and U.S. averages.
Atlantic Beach, NC carries a PlainCrime F safety grade with violent crime 120% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Atlantic Beach, NC shows violent crime at 775.7 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 3,596.6 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 120% 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.
The verdict
Atlantic Beach earns an F safety grade: violent crime runs 120% above the U.S. average, placing it among the highest-crime cities in the country.
Based on 11 reported violent incidents in a population of 1,418. At this volume, one additional or one fewer report can shift the rate and letter grade noticeably; small-city crime counts are inherently more volatile year to year than large-city counts, so treat this grade as a data point, not a precise ranking.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 396.6 per 100,000 in 2020 to 775.7 in 2024 (+95.6%). The highest observed value was 775.7 in 2024 and the lowest 140.8 in 2022. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Small-count caution
Atlantic Beach reported 11 violent offences in 2024 against a population of 1,418. At this volume one additional or one fewer report moves the per-100,000 rate noticeably, so the figure is better read as a data point than as a precise measurement, and year-to-year swings here are expected.
Position in the state cohort
At 775.7 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Atlantic Beach ranks 25 of 206 — above 181 of the 205 other North Carolina cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +194.4% against the cohort median of 263.5. 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 Atlantic Beach's 775.7 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Rocky Mount (765.4), Asheville (796.1), Wilson's Mills (754.7), Benson (748.6). 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.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 17.7% of the 62 Part I offenses reported in Atlantic Beach for 2024, against a median of 11.4% across comparable North Carolina cities — a gap of 6.3 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.
Property-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 62.7% of reported property offenses in Atlantic Beach, against a cohort median of 74.6%. The remainder is burglary (16) and motor vehicle theft (3). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Property counts dominate Atlantic Beach's FBI UCR Table 8 municipal row. Per-100,000 rates use the reporting-year population on that row; cities that fail the completeness test stay out of rate rankings. A citywide figure rarely describes any single neighbourhood inside the municipal boundary.
Based on 11 reported violent incidents in a population of 1,418. At this volume, one additional or one fewer report can shift the rate and letter grade noticeably; small-city crime counts are inherently more volatile year to year than large-city counts, so treat this grade as a data point, not a precise ranking.
On a small municipal row, small denominators make rates sensitive to a handful of incidents. Figures are reported totals, not neighbourhood advice.
| Offense | Count | Rate /100K |
|---|---|---|
| Property Crime | 51 | 3596.6 |
| Larceny-Theft | 32 | 2256.7 |
| Burglary | 16 | 1128.3 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 3 | 211.6 |
| Arson | 2 | 141 |
| Violent Crime | 11 | 775.7 |
| Aggravated Assault | 7 | 493.7 |
| Robbery | 3 | 211.6 |
| Rape | 1 | 70.5 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
Lead series · fell across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · rose · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 1,513 | 396.6 | 7666.9 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 1,516 | 263.9 | 4617.4 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 1,420 | 140.8 | 5140.8 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 1,416 | 706.2 | 5367.2 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 1,418 | 775.7 | 3596.6 |
Atlantic Beach's crime figures on this page originate from Atlantic Beach Police Department's submission to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program.
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 North Carolina cities closest to Atlantic Beach in population. Their populations run from 1,340 to 1,495, against 1,418 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
These North Carolina cities report the closest violent-crime rates to Atlantic Beach's 775.7/100K (same FBI UCR vintage rules; size peers above are excluded so the two lists stay distinct).
Micro-municipal read: Atlantic Beach's FBI UCR Table 8 row (2024) is the only source for the rates above.
With a small population base, per-100,000 rates amplify sparse counts. Incomplete submissions are excluded from rankings. See FBI.gov UCR for the raw Table 8 file.
Disclaimer (small municipal): small-base rates are especially easy to misread. Informational only - not advice. Source: FBI UCR Program.
Micro-municipal rate methodology for how Atlantic Beach's small municipal row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Atlantic Beach, NC 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. Atlantic Beach is scored as a small municipal UCR reporter (1,418 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.