Forest Heights, MD has a C safety grade (42/100) with a violent crime rate of 466 per 100,000, 32% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · small city
Forest Heights is a small municipal reporter (2,573 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with MD and U.S. context.
Data updated 2026-09-05
Forest Heights, MD is among the highest-crime cities in the country, and earns a C PlainCrime safety grade, where violent crime runs 32% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Forest Heights, MD shows violent crime at 466.4 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 1,282.5 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 32% above 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
Forest Heights reported 12 violent offences in 2024 against a population of 2,573. 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 Forest Heights's 466.4 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Cumberland (460.9), Capitol Heights (458.5), North East (477.4), Frederick (406.0). 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 48.5% of reported property offenses in Forest Heights, against a cohort median of 78.0%. The remainder is burglary (3) and motor vehicle theft (14). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 26.7% of the 45 Part I offenses reported in Forest Heights for 2024, against a median of 14.3% across comparable Maryland cities — a gap of 12.4 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.
Position in the state cohort
At 466.4 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Forest Heights ranks 23 of 72 — above 49 of the 71 other Maryland cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +84.4% against the cohort median of 252.9. 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 427.4 per 100,000 in 2020 to 466.4 in 2024 (+9.1%). The highest observed value was 466.4 in 2024 and the lowest 0.0 in 2021. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property counts dominate Forest Heights'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 12 reported violent incidents in a population of 2,573. 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 1.6 Census sq mi, Forest Heights logged 20.1 property and 7.3 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Forest Heights leans on larceny-theft at 36% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 2,504.
Violent offenses are 27% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
Forest Heights offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (1.6 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 | 33 | 1282.5 |
| Larceny-Theft | 16 | 621.8 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 14 | 544.1 |
| Burglary | 3 | 116.6 |
| Arson | 0 | 0 |
| Violent Crime | 12 | 466.4 |
| Aggravated Assault | 5 | 194.3 |
| Robbery | 4 | 155.5 |
| Murder | 2 | 77.7 |
| Rape | 1 | 38.9 |
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 | 2,574 | 427.4 | 1826 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 2,566 | 0 | 0 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 2,588 | 0 | 0 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 2,580 | 310.1 | 1162.8 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 2,573 | 466.4 | 1282.5 |
Forest Heights Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Forest Heights's 45 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 Maryland cities closest to Forest Heights in population. Their populations run from 2,020 to 3,205, against 2,573 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Forest Heights sits at 466.4/100K violent (grade C); the Maryland cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
In 2024, Forest Heights reported 12 violent crimes and 33 property crimes, for a total of 45 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Forest Heights's violent crime rate increased by 50.4%, and the property crime rate increased by 10.3%.
The most common crime type in Forest Heights is larceny-theft, accounting for 35.6% of all reported crimes (16 incidents in 2024).
Small-city read: Forest Heights 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 Forest Heights's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Forest Heights, MD rates use the reporting-year population on the municipal row.
Bulk download: city crime dataset (CSV/JSON)
Put this to use
Put the Forest Heights, MD 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. Forest Heights is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (2,573 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.