Fort Payne, AL has a B safety grade (70/100) with a violent crime rate of 160 per 100,000, 54% below the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · mid-size city
Fort Payne (14,984 people) sits in the mid-size municipal band. This page opens with per-100,000 FBI UCR rates, then AL and national benchmarks.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Fort Payne, AL carries a PlainCrime B safety grade with violent crime 54% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Fort Payne, AL shows violent crime at 160.2 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 1,615.1 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 54% below the U.S. average. PlainCrime assigns grade B from those rates. Figures are voluntary agency submissions joined to population denominators; incomplete coverage can move the number.
Small-count caution
Fort Payne reported 24 violent offences in 2024 against a population of 14,984. 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 Fort Payne's 160.2 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Satsuma (159.9), Pleasant Grove (160.6), Goodwater (160.6), Lineville (161.0). 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.
Position in the state cohort
At 160.2 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Fort Payne ranks 171 of 263 — above 92 of the 262 other Alabama cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is -26.2% against the cohort median of 217.1. 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 9.0% of the 266 Part I offenses reported in Fort Payne for 2024, against a median of 13.9% across comparable Alabama cities — a gap of 4.9 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 Payne'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 24 reported violent incidents in a population of 14,984. 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 56.4 Census sq mi, Fort Payne logged 4.3 property and 0.4 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Fort Payne's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (67% of 266 offenses; mix index 4,910).
Violent offenses are only 9% of the municipal total - a property-led book.
Fort Payne offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (56.4 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 | 242 | 1615.1 |
| Larceny-Theft | 179 | 1194.6 |
| Burglary | 43 | 287 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 20 | 133.5 |
| Arson | 0 | 0 |
| Violent Crime | 24 | 160.2 |
| Aggravated Assault | 21 | 140.1 |
| Rape | 3 | 20 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
| Robbery | 0 | 0 |
Lead series · rose across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · fell · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 14,071 | 0 | 184.8 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 14,038 | 85.5 | 890.4 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 14,845 | 154.9 | 1798.6 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 14,880 | 221.8 | 1371 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 14,984 | 160.2 | 1615.1 |
Fort Payne Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Fort Payne's 266 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 Alabama cities closest to Fort Payne in population. Their populations run from 14,250 to 16,011, against 14,984 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Fort Payne sits at 160.2/100K violent (grade B); the Alabama cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Fort Payne at 160.2/100K violent and 1,615.1/100K property - matched below outside Alabama (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
160.2/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
1,615.1/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
In 2024, Fort Payne reported 24 violent crimes and 242 property crimes, for a total of 266 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Fort Payne's violent crime rate decreased by 27.8%, and the property crime rate increased by 17.8%.
The most common crime type in Fort Payne is larceny-theft, accounting for 67.3% of all reported crimes (179 incidents in 2024).
Mid-size read: Fort Payne 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 Payne's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Fort Payne, AL 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 Payne is scored in the mid-size municipal band (14,984 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.