Gonzales, CA has a C safety grade (56/100) with a violent crime rate of 401 per 100,000, 14% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · small city
Gonzales is a small municipal reporter (8,226 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with CA and U.S. context.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Gonzales, CA carries a PlainCrime C safety grade with violent crime 14% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Gonzales, CA shows violent crime at 401.2 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 425.5 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 14% 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 156.2 per 100,000 in 2020 to 401.2 in 2024 (+156.8%). The highest observed value was 401.2 in 2024 and the lowest 156.2 in 2020. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 48.5% of the 68 Part I offenses reported in Gonzales for 2024, against a median of 17.1% across comparable California cities — a gap of 31.4 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.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Gonzales's 401.2 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Brisbane (400.6), Watsonville (399.3), Blythe (404.1), Pinole (404.2). 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 401.2 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Gonzales ranks 189 of 458 — above 269 of the 457 other California cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +22.1% against the cohort median of 328.5. Cities that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
Gonzales's FBI UCR Table 8 municipal row keeps violent and property totals in a closer balance. Per-100,000 rates use the reporting-year population on that row; incomplete reporters stay out of rate rankings. A citywide figure rarely describes any single neighbourhood inside the municipal boundary.
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 1.9 Census sq mi, Gonzales logged 18.3 property and 17.3 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Gonzales leans on aggravated assault at 38% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 3,002.
Violent offenses are 49% of the municipal total - a violence-heavy book for a small city.
Gonzales offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (1.9 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 | 35 | 425.5 |
| Larceny-Theft | 25 | 303.9 |
| Burglary | 5 | 60.8 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 5 | 60.8 |
| Arson | 0 | 0 |
| Violent Crime | 33 | 401.2 |
| Aggravated Assault | 26 | 316.1 |
| Robbery | 6 | 72.9 |
| Rape | 1 | 12.2 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
Secondary series · rose · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
Lead series · fell across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 8,321 | 156.2 | 757.1 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 8,245 | 315.3 | 1030.9 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 8,514 | 258.4 | 1092.3 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 8,344 | 227.7 | 647.2 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 8,226 | 401.2 | 425.5 |
Gonzales Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Gonzales's 68 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 California cities closest to Gonzales in population. Their populations run from 7,813 to 8,092, against 8,226 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Gonzales sits at 401.2/100K violent (grade C); the California cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
In 2024, Gonzales reported 33 violent crimes and 35 property crimes, for a total of 68 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Gonzales's violent crime rate increased by 76.2%, and the property crime rate decreased by 34.3%.
The most common crime type in Gonzales is aggravated assault, accounting for 38.2% of all reported crimes (26 incidents in 2024).
Small-city read: Gonzales 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 Gonzales's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Gonzales, CA 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. Gonzales is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (8,226 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.