Big Bear, CA has a F safety grade (11/100) with a violent crime rate of 1582 per 100,000, 349% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · small city
Big Bear is a small municipal reporter (4,994 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with CA and U.S. context.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Big Bear, CA carries a PlainCrime F safety grade with violent crime 349% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Big Bear, CA shows violent crime at 1,581.9 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 2,122.5 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 349% 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.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 42.7% of the 185 Part I offenses reported in Big Bear for 2024, against a median of 17.1% across comparable California cities — a gap of 25.6 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 1581.9 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Big Bear ranks 8 of 458 — above 450 of the 457 other California cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +381.6% 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 Big Bear's 1581.9 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Colma (1596.5), Alturas (1477.3), Commerce (1448.0), Nevada City (1753.8). 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.
Big Bear's FBI UCR Table 8 municipal row keeps violent and property totals in a closer balance. 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.
Big Bear leans on larceny-theft at 39% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 3,125.
Violent offenses are 43% of the municipal total - a violence-heavy book for a small city.
Big Bear offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (when validated); 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Property Crime | 106 | 2122.5 |
| Larceny-Theft | 73 | 1461.8 |
| Burglary | 25 | 500.6 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 8 | 160.2 |
| Arson | 0 | 0 |
| Violent Crime | 79 | 1581.9 |
| Aggravated Assault | 68 | 1361.6 |
| Rape | 6 | 120.1 |
| Robbery | 4 | 80.1 |
| Murder | 1 | 20 |
Crime rates read differently at different scales, so these are the California cities closest to Big Bear in population. Their populations run from 4,790 to 5,177, against 4,994 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Big Bear sits at 1,581.9/100K violent (grade F); the California cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
In 2024, Big Bear reported 79 violent crimes and 106 property crimes, for a total of 185 reported offenses.
The most common crime type in Big Bear is larceny-theft, accounting for 39.5% of all reported crimes (73 incidents in 2024).
Small-city read: Big Bear 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 Big Bear's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Big Bear, 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. Big Bear is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (4,994 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.