Forest Lake, MN has a A safety grade (75/100) with a violent crime rate of 121 per 100,000, 66% below the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · mid-size city
Forest Lake (20,680 people) sits in the mid-size municipal band. This page opens with per-100,000 FBI UCR rates, then MN and national benchmarks.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Forest Lake, MN carries a PlainCrime A safety grade with violent crime 66% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Forest Lake, MN shows violent crime at 120.9 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 1,474.9 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 66% below the U.S. average. PlainCrime assigns grade A from those rates. Figures are voluntary agency submissions joined to population denominators; incomplete coverage can move the number.
Small-count caution
Forest Lake reported 25 violent offences in 2024 against a population of 20,680. 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 Lake's 120.9 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Janesville (120.8), Cold Spring/Richmond (120.8), Lake Crystal (120.6), West Concord (119.9). 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 179.0 per 100,000 in 2020 to 120.9 in 2024 (-32.5%). The highest observed value was 179.0 in 2020 and the lowest 90.8 in 2023. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Position in the state cohort
At 120.9 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Forest Lake ranks 112 of 276 — above 164 of the 275 other Minnesota cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +23.5% against the cohort median of 97.8. Cities that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 7.6% of the 330 Part I offenses reported in Forest Lake for 2024, against a median of 10.6% across comparable Minnesota cities — a gap of 3.1 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 Forest Lake'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 25 reported violent incidents in a population of 20,680. 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.
Mid-size municipal totals above are reported offenses, not safety advice for any single block. Reporting completeness still varies by year and agency.
Across 30.5 Census sq mi, Forest Lake logged 10 property and 0.8 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Forest Lake's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (76% of 330 offenses; mix index 5,962).
Violent offenses are only 8% of the municipal total - a property-led book.
Forest Lake offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (30.5 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 | 305 | 1474.9 |
| Larceny-Theft | 251 | 1213.7 |
| Burglary | 32 | 154.7 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 22 | 106.4 |
| Arson | 0 | 0 |
| Violent Crime | 25 | 120.9 |
| Aggravated Assault | 20 | 96.7 |
| Rape | 4 | 19.3 |
| Robbery | 1 | 4.8 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
Lead series · fell across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · fell · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 21,230 | 179 | 2882.7 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 21,592 | 120.4 | 2542.6 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 20,512 | 107.3 | 1969.6 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 20,936 | 90.8 | 1762.5 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 20,680 | 120.9 | 1474.9 |
Forest Lake Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Forest Lake's 330 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 Minnesota cities closest to Forest Lake in population. Their populations run from 19,845 to 22,022, against 20,680 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Forest Lake sits at 120.9/100K violent (grade A); the Minnesota cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Forest Lake at 120.9/100K violent and 1,474.9/100K property - matched below outside Minnesota (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
120.9/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
1,474.9/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
In 2024, Forest Lake reported 25 violent crimes and 305 property crimes, for a total of 330 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Forest Lake's violent crime rate increased by 33.1%, and the property crime rate decreased by 16.3%.
The most common crime type in Forest Lake is larceny-theft, accounting for 76.1% of all reported crimes (251 incidents in 2024).
Mid-size read: Forest Lake 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 Forest Lake's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Forest Lake, MN 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. Forest Lake is scored in the mid-size municipal band (20,680 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.