Ferguson, MO has a F safety grade (0/100) with a violent crime rate of 712 per 100,000, 102% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · mid-size city
Ferguson (17,835 people) sits in the mid-size municipal band. This page opens with per-100,000 FBI UCR rates, then MO and national benchmarks.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Ferguson, MO carries a PlainCrime F safety grade with violent crime 102% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Ferguson, MO shows violent crime at 712.1 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 3,498.7 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 102% 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.
Position in the state cohort
At 712.1 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Ferguson ranks 23 of 272 — above 249 of the 271 other Missouri cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +286.3% against the cohort median of 184.3. 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 Ferguson's 712.1 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are North Kansas City (709.5), St. Joseph (728.6), Clinton (737.9), Winfield (675.3). 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.
Property-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 58.3% of reported property offenses in Ferguson, against a cohort median of 78.6%. The remainder is burglary (99) and motor vehicle theft (161). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 16.9% of the 751 Part I offenses reported in Ferguson for 2024, against a median of 13.4% across comparable Missouri cities — a gap of 3.5 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 689.4 per 100,000 in 2020 to 712.1 in 2024 (+3.3%). The highest observed value was 892.8 in 2021 and the lowest 689.4 in 2020. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property counts dominate Ferguson'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 6.2 Census sq mi, Ferguson logged 101.2 property and 20.6 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Ferguson leans on larceny-theft at 48% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 3,149.
Violent offenses are 17% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
Ferguson offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (6.2 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 | 624 | 3498.7 |
| Larceny-Theft | 364 | 2040.9 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 161 | 902.7 |
| Burglary | 99 | 555.1 |
| Arson | 2 | 11.2 |
| Violent Crime | 127 | 712.1 |
| Aggravated Assault | 94 | 527.1 |
| Robbery | 22 | 123.4 |
| Murder | 6 | 33.6 |
| Rape | 5 | 28 |
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 | 20,454 | 689.4 | 5211.7 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 20,386 | 892.8 | 3502.4 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 18,178 | 819.7 | 4032.3 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 17,972 | 762.3 | 3511 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 17,835 | 712.1 | 3498.7 |
Ferguson Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Ferguson's 751 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 Missouri cities closest to Ferguson in population. Their populations run from 16,762 to 19,334, against 17,835 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Ferguson sits at 712.1/100K violent (grade F); the Missouri cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Ferguson at 712.1/100K violent and 3,498.7/100K property - matched below outside Missouri (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
712.1/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
3,498.7/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
In 2024, Ferguson reported 127 violent crimes and 624 property crimes, for a total of 751 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Ferguson's violent crime rate decreased by 6.6%, and the property crime rate decreased by 0.4%.
The most common crime type in Ferguson is larceny-theft, accounting for 48.5% of all reported crimes (364 incidents in 2024).
Mid-size read: Ferguson 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 Ferguson's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Ferguson, MO 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. Ferguson is scored in the mid-size municipal band (17,835 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.