Emporia, VA has a F safety grade (5/100) with a violent crime rate of 1069 per 100,000, 204% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · small city
Emporia is a small municipal reporter (5,426 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with VA and U.S. context.
Data updated 2026-09-05
Emporia, VA is among the highest-crime cities in the country, and earns an F PlainCrime safety grade, where violent crime runs 204% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Emporia, VA shows violent crime at 1,068.9 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 2,893.5 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 204% above the U.S. average. PlainCrime assigns grade F 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 378.6 per 100,000 in 2020 to 1068.9 in 2024 (+182.3%). The highest observed value was 1068.9 in 2024 and the lowest 378.6 in 2020. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Position in the state cohort
At 1068.9 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Emporia ranks 1 of 125 — above 124 of the 124 other Virginia cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +466.4% against the cohort median of 188.7. 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 Emporia's 1068.9 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Petersburg (1043.6), Portsmouth (752.4), Newport News (736.0), Roanoke (620.4). 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 27.0% of the 215 Part I offenses reported in Emporia for 2024, against a median of 10.4% across comparable Virginia cities — a gap of 16.6 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 Emporia'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.
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 6.6 Census sq mi, Emporia logged 23.7 property and 8.7 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Emporia's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (65% of 215 offenses; mix index 4,755).
Violent offenses are 27% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
Emporia offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (6.6 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 | 157 | 2893.5 |
| Larceny-Theft | 139 | 2561.7 |
| Burglary | 17 | 313.3 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 1 | 18.4 |
| Arson | 1 | 18.4 |
| Violent Crime | 58 | 1068.9 |
| Aggravated Assault | 48 | 884.6 |
| Robbery | 8 | 147.4 |
| Murder | 1 | 18.4 |
| Rape | 1 | 18.4 |
Lead series · fell across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · rose · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 5,282 | 378.6 | 3464.6 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 5,189 | 424 | 2832.9 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 5,637 | 443.5 | 3583.5 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 5,375 | 688.4 | 3218.6 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 5,426 | 1068.9 | 2893.5 |
Emporia Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Emporia's 215 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 Virginia cities closest to Emporia in population. Their populations run from 4,949 to 5,983, against 5,426 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Emporia sits at 1,068.9/100K violent (grade F); the Virginia cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
In 2024, Emporia reported 58 violent crimes and 157 property crimes, for a total of 215 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Emporia's violent crime rate increased by 55.3%, and the property crime rate decreased by 10.1%.
The most common crime type in Emporia is larceny-theft, accounting for 64.7% of all reported crimes (139 incidents in 2024).
Small-city read: Emporia 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 Emporia's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Emporia, VA rates use the reporting-year population on the municipal row.
Bulk download: city crime dataset (CSV/JSON)
Put this to use
Put the Emporia, VA 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. Emporia is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (5,426 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.