Brea, CA has a C safety grade (54/100) with a violent crime rate of 211 per 100,000, 40% below the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · mid-size city
Brea (48,901 people) sits in the mid-size municipal band. This page opens with per-100,000 FBI UCR rates, then CA and national benchmarks.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Brea, CA carries a PlainCrime C safety grade with violent crime 40% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Brea, CA shows violent crime at 210.6 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 2,865 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 40% below the U.S. average. PlainCrime assigns grade C from those rates. Figures are voluntary agency submissions joined to population denominators; incomplete coverage can move the number.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Brea's 210.6 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are South Pasadena (210.1), Tustin (211.7), Palo Alto (212.0), La Palma (208.7). 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 144.1 per 100,000 in 2020 to 210.6 in 2024 (+46.1%). The highest observed value was 222.4 in 2023 and the lowest 144.1 in 2020. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 6.8% of the 1,504 Part I offenses reported in Brea for 2024, against a median of 17.1% across comparable California cities — a gap of 10.3 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.
Position in the state cohort
At 210.6 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Brea ranks 323 of 458 — above 135 of the 457 other California cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is -36.8% against the cohort median of 333.1. Cities that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
Property-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 85.2% of reported property offenses in Brea, against a cohort median of 69.5%. The remainder is burglary (132) and motor vehicle theft (76). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Property counts dominate Brea'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.
Across 12.6 Census sq mi, Brea logged 110.8 property and 8.1 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Brea's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (79% of 1,504 offenses; mix index 6,415).
Violent offenses are only 7% of the municipal total - a property-led book.
Brea offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (12.6 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Property Crime | 1,401 | 2865 |
| Larceny-Theft | 1,193 | 2439.6 |
| Burglary | 132 | 269.9 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 76 | 155.4 |
| Arson | 3 | 6.1 |
| Violent Crime | 103 | 210.6 |
| Aggravated Assault | 51 | 104.3 |
| Robbery | 45 | 92 |
| Rape | 6 | 12.3 |
| Murder | 1 | 2 |
Lead series · rose across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · rose · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 43,705 | 144.1 | 2711.4 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 45,023 | 182.1 | 2665.3 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 47,617 | 189 | 3261.4 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 46,754 | 222.4 | 3210.4 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 48,901 | 210.6 | 2865 |
Brea Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Brea's 1,504 reported offenses (5-year span 2020-2024).
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 Brea in population. Their populations run from 47,940 to 49,948, against 48,901 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Brea sits at 210.6/100K violent (grade C); the California cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Brea at 210.6/100K violent and 2,865/100K property - matched below outside California (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
210.6/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
2,865/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
Out-of-state cities whose violent rate moved a similar share from 2023→2024 (-5.3% here); level-based peers above are excluded.
In 2024, Brea reported 103 violent crimes and 1,401 property crimes, for a total of 1,504 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Brea's violent crime rate decreased by 5.3%, and the property crime rate decreased by 10.8%.
The most common crime type in Brea is larceny-theft, accounting for 79.3% of all reported crimes (1,193 incidents in 2024).
Mid-size read: Brea 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 Brea's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Brea, 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. Brea is scored in the mid-size municipal band (48,901 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.