Gardner, KS has a A safety grade (79/100) with a violent crime rate of 138 per 100,000, 61% below the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · mid-size city
Gardner (26,071 people) sits in the mid-size municipal band. This page opens with per-100,000 FBI UCR rates, then KS and national benchmarks.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Gardner, KS carries a PlainCrime A safety grade with violent crime 61% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Gardner, KS shows violent crime at 138.1 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 878.4 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 61% 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.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Gardner's 138.1 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Belle Plaine (138.2), Maize (139.5), Lyons (144.3), Fairway (144.4). 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 277.2 per 100,000 in 2020 to 138.1 in 2024 (-50.2%). The highest observed value was 277.2 in 2020 and the lowest 138.1 in 2024. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Position in the state cohort
At 138.1 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Gardner ranks 81 of 125 — above 44 of the 124 other Kansas cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is -27.7% against the cohort median of 191.0. Cities that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
Property-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 87.3% of reported property offenses in Gardner, against a cohort median of 76.7%. The remainder is burglary (10) and motor vehicle theft (19). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Property counts dominate Gardner'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 14.6 Census sq mi, Gardner logged 15.7 property and 2.5 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Gardner's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (75% of 265 offenses; mix index 5,910).
Violent offenses are only 14% of the municipal total - a property-led book.
Gardner offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (14.6 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 | 229 | 878.4 |
| Larceny-Theft | 200 | 767.1 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 19 | 72.9 |
| Burglary | 10 | 38.4 |
| Arson | 2 | 7.7 |
| Violent Crime | 36 | 138.1 |
| Aggravated Assault | 32 | 122.7 |
| Rape | 4 | 15.3 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
| Robbery | 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 | 22,370 | 277.2 | 916.4 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 22,714 | 193.7 | 1100.6 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 24,497 | 155.1 | 800.1 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 24,611 | 219.4 | 739.5 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 26,071 | 138.1 | 878.4 |
Gardner Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Gardner's 265 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 Kansas cities closest to Gardner in population. Their populations run from 18,760 to 27,441, against 26,071 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Gardner sits at 138.1/100K violent (grade A); the Kansas cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Gardner at 138.1/100K violent and 878.4/100K property - matched below outside Kansas (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
138.1/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
878.4/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
In 2024, Gardner reported 36 violent crimes and 229 property crimes, for a total of 265 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Gardner's violent crime rate decreased by 37.1%, and the property crime rate increased by 18.8%.
The most common crime type in Gardner is larceny-theft, accounting for 75.5% of all reported crimes (200 incidents in 2024).
Mid-size read: Gardner 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 Gardner's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Gardner, KS 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. Gardner is scored in the mid-size municipal band (26,071 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.