Bolivar, TN has a F safety grade (8/100) with a violent crime rate of 1270 per 100,000, 261% above the national average.
Bolivar is a small municipal reporter (5,119 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with TN and U.S. context.
Bolivar, TN carries a PlainCrime F safety grade with violent crime 261% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Bolivar, TN shows violent crime at 1,269.8 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 2,481 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 261% 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
Bolivar earns an F safety grade: violent crime runs 261% above the U.S. average, placing it among the highest-crime cities in the country.
Position in the state cohort
At 1269.8 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Bolivar ranks 4 of 176 — above 172 of the 175 other Tennessee cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +325.5% against the cohort median of 298.4. 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 Bolivar's 1269.8 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Dyersburg (1256.5), Fayetteville (1150.2), Metropolitan Nashville Police Department (1124.1), Covington (1112.8). 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.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 33.9% of the 192 Part I offenses reported in Bolivar for 2024, against a median of 18.7% across comparable Tennessee cities — a gap of 15.1 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 2146.4 per 100,000 in 2020 to 1269.8 in 2024 (-40.8%). The highest observed value was 2539.4 in 2023 and the lowest 1269.8 in 2024. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 68.5% of reported property offenses in Bolivar, against a cohort median of 77.1%. The remainder is burglary (20) and motor vehicle theft (20). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Property counts dominate Bolivar'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.
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.
| Offense | Count | Rate /100K |
|---|---|---|
| Property Crime | 127 | 2481 |
| Larceny-Theft | 87 | 1699.6 |
| Burglary | 20 | 390.7 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 20 | 390.7 |
| Arson | 0 | 0 |
| Violent Crime | 65 | 1269.8 |
| Aggravated Assault | 58 | 1133 |
| Robbery | 5 | 97.7 |
| Rape | 2 | 39.1 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
Lead series · fell across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · fell · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 4,892 | 2146.4 | 4292.7 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 4,798 | 2021.7 | 2105 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 5,127 | 1970 | 1931 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 5,198 | 2539.4 | 2135.4 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 5,119 | 1269.8 | 2481 |
Bolivar's crime figures on this page originate from Bolivar 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 Tennessee cities closest to Bolivar in population. Their populations run from 4,623 to 5,654, against 5,119 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
These Tennessee cities report the closest violent-crime rates to Bolivar's 1,269.8/100K (same FBI UCR vintage rules; size peers above are excluded so the two lists stay distinct).
Small-city read: Bolivar 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 Bolivar's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Bolivar, TN 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. Bolivar is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (5,119 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.