Columbia Falls, MT has a C safety grade (59/100) with a violent crime rate of 274 per 100,000, 22% below the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · small city
Columbia Falls is a small municipal reporter (5,838 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with MT and U.S. context.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Columbia Falls, MT carries a PlainCrime C safety grade with violent crime 22% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Columbia Falls, MT shows violent crime at 274.1 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 1,593 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 22% 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.
Small-count caution
Columbia Falls reported 16 violent offences in 2024 against a population of 5,838. 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.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Columbia Falls's 274.1 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Columbus (260.6), Kalispell (292.9), Conrad (246.5), Miles City (307.2). 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.
Property-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 98.9% of reported property offenses in Columbia Falls, against a cohort median of 84.2%. The remainder is burglary (0) and motor vehicle theft (1). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Position in the state cohort
At 274.1 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Columbia Falls ranks 28 of 44 — above 16 of the 43 other Montana cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is -34.9% against the cohort median of 420.8. Cities that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 14.7% of the 109 Part I offenses reported in Columbia Falls for 2024, against a median of 19.5% across comparable Montana cities — a gap of 4.8 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 298.9 per 100,000 in 2020 to 274.1 in 2024 (-8.3%). The highest observed value was 397.0 in 2023 and the lowest 261.6 in 2022. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property counts dominate Columbia Falls'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 16 reported violent incidents in a population of 5,838. 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 2.3 Census sq mi, Columbia Falls logged 40.8 property and 7 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Columbia Falls's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (84% of 109 offenses; mix index 7,278).
Violent offenses are only 15% of the municipal total - a property-led book.
Columbia Falls offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (2.3 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 | 93 | 1593 |
| Larceny-Theft | 92 | 1575.9 |
| Arson | 2 | 34.3 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 1 | 17.1 |
| Burglary | 0 | 0 |
| Violent Crime | 16 | 274.1 |
| Aggravated Assault | 13 | 222.7 |
| Rape | 3 | 51.4 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
| Robbery | 0 | 0 |
Lead series · rose across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · fell · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 6,023 | 298.9 | 1477.7 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 6,385 | 297.6 | 1425.2 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 5,734 | 261.6 | 2127.7 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 5,794 | 397 | 1812.2 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 5,838 | 274.1 | 1593 |
Columbia Falls Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Columbia Falls's 109 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 Montana cities closest to Columbia Falls in population. Their populations run from 3,677 to 7,185, against 5,838 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Columbia Falls sits at 274.1/100K violent (grade C); the Montana cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
In 2024, Columbia Falls reported 16 violent crimes and 93 property crimes, for a total of 109 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Columbia Falls's violent crime rate decreased by 31%, and the property crime rate decreased by 12.1%.
The most common crime type in Columbia Falls is larceny-theft, accounting for 84.4% of all reported crimes (92 incidents in 2024).
Small-city read: Columbia Falls 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 Columbia Falls's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Columbia Falls, MT 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. Columbia Falls is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (5,838 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.