Fargo, ND has a F safety grade (20/100) with a violent crime rate of 498 per 100,000, 42% above the national average.
At 135,682 residents, Fargo is a large city: FBI UCR Table 8 rates (per 100,000) here are read against ND and U.S. averages before the offense-family breakdown.
Fargo, ND carries a PlainCrime F safety grade with violent crime 42% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Fargo, ND shows violent crime at 498.2 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 3,696.9 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 42% 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.
The verdict
Fargo earns an F safety grade: violent crime runs 42% above the U.S. average, placing it among the highest-crime cities in the country.
Position in the state cohort
At 498.2 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Fargo ranks 1 of 23 — above 22 of the 22 other North Dakota cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +233.8% against the cohort median of 149.3. Cities that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
Share of the state cohort
The 5,692 Part I offenses reported here are 42.8% of the 13,292 reported across all 23 comparable North Dakota cities in 2024. A city this large moves the statewide municipal total on its own, so state-level changes should be read against its population of 135,682 rather than as a uniform shift.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Fargo's 498.2 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Williston (437.3), Grand Forks (358.6), Minot (318.9), Watford City (302.6). 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 70.4% of reported property offenses in Fargo, against a cohort median of 79.2%. The remainder is burglary (1,006) and motor vehicle theft (481). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 465.6 per 100,000 in 2020 to 498.2 in 2024 (+7.0%). The highest observed value was 629.1 in 2022 and the lowest 465.6 in 2020. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property counts dominate Fargo'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.
| Offense | Count | Rate /100K |
|---|---|---|
| Property Crime | 5,016 | 3696.9 |
| Larceny-Theft | 3,529 | 2600.9 |
| Burglary | 1,006 | 741.4 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 481 | 354.5 |
| Arson | 15 | 11.1 |
| Violent Crime | 676 | 498.2 |
| Aggravated Assault | 426 | 314 |
| Rape | 139 | 102.4 |
| Robbery | 105 | 77.4 |
| Murder | 6 | 4.4 |
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 | 126,927 | 465.6 | 3510.7 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 127,313 | 526.3 | 4401 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 127,649 | 629.1 | 4197.4 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 134,268 | 523.6 | 3926.5 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 135,682 | 498.2 | 3696.9 |
Fargo's crime figures on this page originate from Fargo Police Department's submission to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program.
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 North Dakota cities closest to Fargo in population. Their populations run from 15,651 to 75,546, against 135,682 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
These North Dakota cities report the closest violent-crime rates to Fargo's 498.2/100K (same FBI UCR vintage rules; size peers above are excluded so the two lists stay distinct).
Large-city read: Fargo'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 Fargo's large city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Fargo, ND 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. Fargo is scored here as a large city UCR reporter (135,682 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.