Bartow, FL has a D safety grade (35/100) with a violent crime rate of 492 per 100,000, 40% above the national average.
Bartow (20,948 people) sits in the mid-size municipal band. This page opens with per-100,000 FBI UCR rates, then FL and national benchmarks.
Bartow, FL carries a PlainCrime D safety grade with violent crime 40% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Bartow, FL shows violent crime at 491.7 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 1,790.1 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 40% above the U.S. average. PlainCrime assigns grade D from those rates. Figures are voluntary agency submissions joined to population denominators; incomplete coverage can move the number.
The verdict
Bartow earns a D safety grade: violent crime runs 40% above the U.S. average, placing it among the highest-crime cities in the country.
2020–2024 direction
Across 4 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 229.2 per 100,000 in 2020 to 491.7 in 2024 (+114.5%). The highest observed value was 491.7 in 2024 and the lowest 229.2 in 2020. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Bartow's 491.7 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Kissimmee (491.7), Ocala (499.7), Miami (473.3), Arcadia (513.4). 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.
Position in the state cohort
At 491.7 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Bartow ranks 23 of 126 — above 103 of the 125 other Florida cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +155.2% against the cohort median of 192.7. Cities that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 21.5% of the 478 Part I offenses reported in Bartow for 2024, against a median of 13.3% across comparable Florida cities — a gap of 8.3 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 72.5% of reported property offenses in Bartow, against a cohort median of 81.8%. The remainder is burglary (78) and motor vehicle theft (25). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Property counts dominate Bartow'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.
Mid-size municipal totals above are reported offenses, not safety advice for any single block. Reporting completeness still varies by year and agency.
| Offense | Count | Rate /100K |
|---|---|---|
| Property Crime | 375 | 1790.1 |
| Larceny-Theft | 272 | 1298.5 |
| Burglary | 78 | 372.4 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 25 | 119.3 |
| Arson | 3 | 14.3 |
| Violent Crime | 103 | 491.7 |
| Aggravated Assault | 79 | 377.1 |
| Robbery | 14 | 66.8 |
| Rape | 9 | 43 |
| Murder | 1 | 4.8 |
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 · fell across 4 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · rose · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 20,507 | 229.2 | 2053 |
| 2021 | Insufficient reporting | 20,534 | - | - |
| 2022 | Comparable | 19,634 | 422.7 | 1833.6 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 20,070 | 383.7 | 2247.1 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 20,948 | 491.7 | 1790.1 |
Bartow's crime figures on this page originate from Bartow Police Department's submission to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program.
This agency reports via the traditional Summary Reporting System (SRS): aggregate monthly offense counts rather than incident-level detail.
Crime rates read differently at different scales, so these are the Florida cities closest to Bartow in population. Their populations run from 20,109 to 22,065, against 20,948 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
These Florida cities report the closest violent-crime rates to Bartow's 491.7/100K (same FBI UCR vintage rules; size peers above are excluded so the two lists stay distinct).
Mid-size read: Bartow figures are FBI UCR CIUS Table 8 (vintage 2024), population-adjusted per 100,000.
Denominators are the reporting-year population on the municipal row. Incomplete years are dropped from rankings. Confirm at FBI Crime Data Explorer and Census.gov QuickFacts.
Disclaimer (mid-size municipal): figures are informational, not advice. FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program is the source. Consult a professional before decisions.
Mid-size rate methodology for how Bartow's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Bartow, FL 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. Bartow is scored in the mid-size municipal band (20,948 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.