Council Bluffs, IA has a D safety grade (37/100) with a violent crime rate of 421 per 100,000, 20% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · large city
At 62,269 residents, Council Bluffs is a large city: FBI UCR Table 8 rates (per 100,000) here are read against IA and U.S. averages before the offense-family breakdown.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Council Bluffs, IA carries a PlainCrime D safety grade with violent crime 20% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Council Bluffs, IA shows violent crime at 420.8 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 2,452.3 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 20% above the U.S. average. PlainCrime assigns grade D from those rates. Figures are voluntary agency submissions joined to population denominators; incomplete coverage can move the number.
Position in the state cohort
At 420.8 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Council Bluffs ranks 12 of 148 — above 136 of the 147 other Iowa cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +194.8% against the cohort median of 142.7. 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 923.7 per 100,000 in 2020 to 420.8 in 2024 (-54.4%). The highest observed value was 923.7 in 2020 and the lowest 360.1 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 Council Bluffs's 420.8 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are De Soto (426.9), Burlington (413.8), Dubuque (400.9), Perry (398.9). 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 66.7% of reported property offenses in Council Bluffs, against a cohort median of 76.8%. The remainder is burglary (303) and motor vehicle theft (206). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Property counts dominate Council Bluffs'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.
On a large city row, these are citywide reported offense totals - not neighbourhood advice. Conditions vary by place and time; reporting rates differ across jurisdictions.
Across 43 Census sq mi, Council Bluffs logged 35.5 property and 6.1 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Council Bluffs leans on larceny-theft at 57% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 3,761.
Violent offenses are only 15% of the municipal total - a property-led book.
Council Bluffs offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (43 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 | 1,527 | 2452.3 |
| Larceny-Theft | 1,018 | 1634.8 |
| Burglary | 303 | 486.6 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 206 | 330.8 |
| Arson | 8 | 12.8 |
| Violent Crime | 262 | 420.8 |
| Aggravated Assault | 171 | 274.6 |
| Rape | 45 | 72.3 |
| Robbery | 44 | 70.7 |
| Murder | 2 | 3.2 |
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 | 62,144 | 923.7 | 4816.2 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 62,202 | 360.1 | 3443.6 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 62,206 | 421.2 | 3019 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 62,214 | 448.5 | 3082.9 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 62,269 | 420.8 | 2452.3 |
Council Bluffs Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Council Bluffs's 1,789 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 Iowa cities closest to Council Bluffs in population. Their populations run from 42,420 to 76,547, against 62,269 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Council Bluffs sits at 420.8/100K violent (grade D); the Iowa cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Council Bluffs at 420.8/100K violent and 2,452.3/100K property - matched below outside Iowa (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
420.8/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
2,452.3/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
Out-of-state cities whose violent rate moved a similar share from 2023→2024 (-6.2% here); level-based peers above are excluded.
In 2024, Council Bluffs reported 262 violent crimes and 1,527 property crimes, for a total of 1,789 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Council Bluffs's violent crime rate decreased by 6.2%, and the property crime rate decreased by 20.5%.
The most common crime type in Council Bluffs is larceny-theft, accounting for 56.9% of all reported crimes (1,018 incidents in 2024).
Large-city read: Council Bluffs's rates come from the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, CIUS Table 8, vintage 2024.
Incomplete reporters stay out of rate rankings. Cross-check population with Census ACS; state UCR programs for statewide context. Primary verify links: FBI.gov UCR, Census QuickFacts.
Disclaimer (large city): informational crime rates only - not legal, insurance, or personal-safety advice. Source: FBI UCR. Ask a qualified professional before acting.
Large-city rate methodology for how Council Bluffs's large city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Council Bluffs, IA 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. Council Bluffs is scored here as a large city UCR reporter (62,269 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.