Broken Bow, NE has a A+ safety grade (90/100) with a violent crime rate of 85 per 100,000, 76% below the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · small city
Broken Bow is a small municipal reporter (3,552 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with NE and U.S. context.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Broken Bow, NE carries a PlainCrime A+ safety grade with violent crime 76% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Broken Bow, NE shows violent crime at 84.5 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 140.8 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 76% below the U.S. average. PlainCrime assigns grade A+ from those rates. Figures are voluntary agency submissions joined to population denominators; incomplete coverage can move the number.
Small-count caution
Broken Bow reported 3 violent offences in 2024 against a population of 3,552. 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.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 37.5% of the 8 Part I offenses reported in Broken Bow for 2024, against a median of 10.7% across comparable Nebraska cities — a gap of 26.8 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.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Broken Bow's 84.5 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Columbus (85.4), St. Paul (82.3), Beatrice (81.5), Seward (78.3). 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 84.5 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Broken Bow ranks 34 of 47 — above 13 of the 46 other Nebraska cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is -32.2% against the cohort median of 124.6. Cities that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 114.5 per 100,000 in 2020 to 84.5 in 2024 (-26.3%). The highest observed value was 114.5 in 2020 and the lowest 29.0 in 2022. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property counts dominate Broken Bow'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 3 reported violent incidents in a population of 3,552. 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.
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.
Across 2 Census sq mi, Broken Bow logged 2.5 property and 1.5 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Broken Bow leans on larceny-theft at 50% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 3,438.
Violent offenses are 38% of the municipal total - a violence-heavy book for a small city.
Broken Bow offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (2 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 | 5 | 140.8 |
| Larceny-Theft | 4 | 112.6 |
| Burglary | 1 | 28.2 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 0 | 0 |
| Arson | 0 | 0 |
| Violent Crime | 3 | 84.5 |
| Aggravated Assault | 2 | 56.3 |
| Rape | 1 | 28.2 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
| Robbery | 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 | 3,492 | 114.5 | 630 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 3,427 | 87.5 | 175.1 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 3,448 | 29 | 174 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 3,467 | 57.7 | 86.5 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 3,552 | 84.5 | 140.8 |
Broken Bow Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Broken Bow's 8 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 Nebraska cities closest to Broken Bow in population. Their populations run from 2,632 to 4,618, against 3,552 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
In 2024, Broken Bow reported 3 violent crimes and 5 property crimes, for a total of 8 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Broken Bow's violent crime rate increased by 46.4%, and the property crime rate increased by 62.8%.
The most common crime type in Broken Bow is larceny-theft, accounting for 50.0% of all reported crimes (4 incidents in 2024).
Small-city read: Broken Bow 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 Broken Bow's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Broken Bow, NE 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. Broken Bow is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (3,552 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.