Covington, KY has a C safety grade (57/100) with a violent crime rate of 288 per 100,000, 18% below the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · mid-size city
Covington (40,984 people) sits in the mid-size municipal band. This page opens with per-100,000 FBI UCR rates, then KY and national benchmarks.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Covington, KY carries a PlainCrime C safety grade with violent crime 18% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Covington, KY shows violent crime at 287.9 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 1,634.8 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 18% 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.
Position in the state cohort
At 287.9 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Covington ranks 9 of 231 — above 222 of the 230 other Kentucky cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +333.6% against the cohort median of 66.4. Cities that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Covington's 287.9 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Grayson (289.7), West Buechel (295.9), Harlan (275.6), Oak Grove (275.5). 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 391.8 per 100,000 in 2020 to 287.9 in 2024 (-26.5%). The highest observed value was 391.8 in 2020 and the lowest 265.6 in 2022. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 15.0% of the 788 Part I offenses reported in Covington for 2024, against a median of 8.0% across comparable Kentucky cities — a gap of 7.0 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.
Property counts dominate Covington'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 13.2 Census sq mi, Covington logged 50.9 property and 9 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Covington leans on larceny-theft at 56% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 3,703.
Violent offenses are only 15% of the municipal total - a property-led book.
Covington offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (13.2 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 | 670 | 1634.8 |
| Larceny-Theft | 445 | 1085.8 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 140 | 341.6 |
| Burglary | 85 | 207.4 |
| Arson | 3 | 7.3 |
| Violent Crime | 118 | 287.9 |
| Aggravated Assault | 58 | 141.5 |
| Robbery | 31 | 75.6 |
| Rape | 27 | 65.9 |
| Murder | 2 | 4.9 |
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 | 40,324 | 391.8 | 2653.5 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 40,298 | 347.4 | 1853.7 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 40,657 | 265.6 | 1775.8 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 40,967 | 302.7 | 1913.7 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 40,984 | 287.9 | 1634.8 |
Covington Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Covington's 788 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 Kentucky cities closest to Covington in population. Their populations run from 28,563 to 40,037, against 40,984 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Covington sits at 287.9/100K violent (grade C); the Kentucky cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Covington at 287.9/100K violent and 1,634.8/100K property - matched below outside Kentucky (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
287.9/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
1,634.8/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
Out-of-state cities whose violent rate moved a similar share from 2023→2024 (-4.9% here); level-based peers above are excluded.
In 2024, Covington reported 118 violent crimes and 670 property crimes, for a total of 788 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Covington's violent crime rate decreased by 4.9%, and the property crime rate decreased by 14.6%.
The most common crime type in Covington is larceny-theft, accounting for 56.5% of all reported crimes (445 incidents in 2024).
Mid-size read: Covington 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 Covington's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Covington, KY 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. Covington is scored in the mid-size municipal band (40,984 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.