Cliffside Park, NJ has a A safety grade (82/100) with a violent crime rate of 126 per 100,000, 64% below the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · mid-size city
Cliffside Park (26,105 people) sits in the mid-size municipal band. This page opens with per-100,000 FBI UCR rates, then NJ and national benchmarks.
Data updated 2026-09-05
Cliffside Park, NJ is close to the national middle for violent crime, and earns an A PlainCrime safety grade, where violent crime runs 64% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Cliffside Park, NJ shows violent crime at 126.4 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 643.6 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 64% 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 56.8 per 100,000 in 2020 to 126.4 in 2024 (+122.5%). The highest observed value was 126.4 in 2024 and the lowest 18.3 in 2021. 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 Cliffside Park's 126.4 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Mount Ephraim (126.2), East Brunswick Township (126.8), Alpha (127.4), Totowa (128.0). 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 16.4% of the 201 Part I offenses reported in Cliffside Park for 2024, against a median of 7.1% across comparable New Jersey cities — a gap of 9.3 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 126.4 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Cliffside Park ranks 132 of 417 — above 285 of the 416 other New Jersey cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +85.5% against the cohort median of 68.1. Cities that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
Property counts dominate Cliffside Park'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.
Cliffside Park's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (66% of 201 offenses; mix index 4,614).
Violent offenses are 16% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
Cliffside Park 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 | 168 | 643.6 |
| Larceny-Theft | 132 | 505.7 |
| Burglary | 21 | 80.4 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 15 | 57.5 |
| Arson | 1 | 3.8 |
| Violent Crime | 33 | 126.4 |
| Aggravated Assault | 22 | 84.3 |
| Robbery | 7 | 26.8 |
| Rape | 4 | 15.3 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
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 | 26,400 | 56.8 | 329.5 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 27,363 | 18.3 | 350.8 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 25,531 | 27.4 | 419.1 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 25,617 | 74.2 | 722.2 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 26,105 | 126.4 | 643.6 |
Cliffside Park Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Cliffside Park's 201 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 New Jersey cities closest to Cliffside Park in population. Their populations run from 25,786 to 26,745, against 26,105 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Cliffside Park sits at 126.4/100K violent (grade A); the New Jersey cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Cliffside Park at 126.4/100K violent and 643.6/100K property - matched below outside New Jersey (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
126.4/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
643.6/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
Out-of-state cities whose violent rate moved a similar share from 2023→2024 (+70.4% here); level-based peers above are excluded.
In 2024, Cliffside Park reported 33 violent crimes and 168 property crimes, for a total of 201 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Cliffside Park's violent crime rate increased by 70.4%, and the property crime rate decreased by 10.9%.
The most common crime type in Cliffside Park is larceny-theft, accounting for 65.7% of all reported crimes (132 incidents in 2024).
Mid-size read: Cliffside Park 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 Cliffside Park's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Cliffside Park, NJ rates use the reporting-year population on the municipal row.
Bulk download: city crime dataset (CSV/JSON)
Put this to use
Put the Cliffside Park, NJ FBI UCR record to work: compare peers, open the state atlas, or look up another city.
A citywide UCR rate is a starting point, not a neighbourhood verdict: read the full profile and the year coverage notes before drawing conclusions.
Every figure on PlainCrime is rendered directly from FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) source data, no number is typed in by an editor. Cliffside Park is scored in the mid-size municipal band (26,105 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.