Elsa, TX has a C safety grade (44/100) with a violent crime rate of 298 per 100,000, 15% below the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · small city
Elsa is a small municipal reporter (5,702 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with TX and U.S. context.
Data updated 2026-09-05
Elsa, TX is higher-crime than most U.S. cities, and earns a C PlainCrime safety grade, where violent crime runs 15% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Elsa, TX shows violent crime at 298.1 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 3,016.5 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 15% 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
Elsa reported 17 violent offences in 2024 against a population of 5,702. 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 Elsa's 298.1 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Port Lavaca (297.0), Arp (300.6), Nixon (291.8), Terrell (305.3). 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 298.1 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Elsa ranks 197 of 686 — above 489 of the 685 other Texas cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +66.6% against the cohort median of 178.9. 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 247.5 per 100,000 in 2020 to 298.1 in 2024 (+20.5%). The highest observed value was 510.3 in 2022 and the lowest 247.5 in 2020. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 9.0% of the 189 Part I offenses reported in Elsa for 2024, against a median of 14.4% across comparable Texas cities — a gap of 5.4 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-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 82.6% of reported property offenses in Elsa, against a cohort median of 71.6%. The remainder is burglary (28) and motor vehicle theft (2). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Property counts dominate Elsa'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 17 reported violent incidents in a population of 5,702. 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 2.1 Census sq mi, Elsa logged 82.4 property and 8.1 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Elsa's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (75% of 189 offenses; mix index 5,930).
Violent offenses are only 9% of the municipal total - a property-led book.
Elsa offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (2.1 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 | 172 | 3016.5 |
| Larceny-Theft | 142 | 2490.4 |
| Burglary | 28 | 491.1 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 2 | 35.1 |
| Arson | 0 | 0 |
| Violent Crime | 17 | 298.1 |
| Aggravated Assault | 15 | 263.1 |
| Rape | 2 | 35.1 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
| Robbery | 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 | 7,274 | 247.5 | 2969.5 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 7,205 | 333.1 | 2484.4 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 5,683 | 510.3 | 4469.5 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 5,663 | 494.4 | 3690.6 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 5,702 | 298.1 | 3016.5 |
Elsa Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Elsa's 189 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 Texas cities closest to Elsa in population. Their populations run from 5,604 to 5,783, against 5,702 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Elsa sits at 298.1/100K violent (grade C); the Texas cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
In 2024, Elsa reported 17 violent crimes and 172 property crimes, for a total of 189 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Elsa's violent crime rate decreased by 39.7%, and the property crime rate decreased by 18.3%.
The most common crime type in Elsa is larceny-theft, accounting for 75.1% of all reported crimes (142 incidents in 2024).
Small-city read: Elsa 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 Elsa's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Elsa, TX rates use the reporting-year population on the municipal row.
Bulk download: city crime dataset (CSV/JSON)
Put this to use
Put the Elsa, TX 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. Elsa is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (5,702 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.