Fort Dodge, IA has a F safety grade (2/100) with a violent crime rate of 1061 per 100,000, 201% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · mid-size city
Fort Dodge (24,502 people) sits in the mid-size municipal band. This page opens with per-100,000 FBI UCR rates, then IA and national benchmarks.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Fort Dodge, IA carries a PlainCrime F safety grade with violent crime 201% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Fort Dodge, IA shows violent crime at 1,061.1 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 3,195.7 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 201% 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 1061.1 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Fort Dodge ranks 2 of 148 — above 146 of the 147 other Iowa cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +643.5% against the cohort median of 142.7. 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 Fort Dodge's 1061.1 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Des Moines (703.0), Shenandoah (656.8), Sabula (612.2), Davenport (581.4). 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 757.7 per 100,000 in 2020 to 1061.1 in 2024 (+40.0%). The highest observed value was 1061.1 in 2024 and the lowest 496.0 in 2021. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 24.9% of the 1,043 Part I offenses reported in Fort Dodge for 2024, against a median of 15.8% across comparable Iowa cities — a gap of 9.1 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 Fort Dodge'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 16 Census sq mi, Fort Dodge logged 48.9 property and 16.2 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Fort Dodge leans on larceny-theft at 58% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 3,921.
Violent offenses are 25% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
Fort Dodge offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (16 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 | 783 | 3195.7 |
| Larceny-Theft | 604 | 2465.1 |
| Burglary | 102 | 416.3 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 77 | 314.3 |
| Arson | 13 | 53.1 |
| Violent Crime | 260 | 1061.1 |
| Aggravated Assault | 209 | 853 |
| Rape | 37 | 151 |
| Robbery | 13 | 53.1 |
| Murder | 1 | 4.1 |
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 | 23,755 | 757.7 | 3527.7 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 23,788 | 496 | 2530.7 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 25,097 | 518 | 3064.1 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 24,557 | 684.1 | 3351.4 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 24,502 | 1061.1 | 3195.7 |
Fort Dodge Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Fort Dodge's 1,043 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 Iowa cities closest to Fort Dodge in population. Their populations run from 22,422 to 26,786, against 24,502 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Fort Dodge sits at 1,061.1/100K violent (grade F); the Iowa cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Fort Dodge at 1,061.1/100K violent and 3,195.7/100K property - matched below outside Iowa (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
1,061.1/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
3,195.7/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
In 2024, Fort Dodge reported 260 violent crimes and 783 property crimes, for a total of 1,043 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Fort Dodge's violent crime rate increased by 55.1%, and the property crime rate decreased by 4.6%.
The most common crime type in Fort Dodge is larceny-theft, accounting for 57.9% of all reported crimes (604 incidents in 2024).
Mid-size read: Fort Dodge 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 Fort Dodge's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Fort Dodge, IA 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. Fort Dodge is scored in the mid-size municipal band (24,502 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.