Imperial Beach, CA has a C safety grade (41/100) with a violent crime rate of 539 per 100,000, 53% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · mid-size city
Imperial Beach (25,247 people) sits in the mid-size municipal band. This page opens with per-100,000 FBI UCR rates, then CA and national benchmarks.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Imperial Beach, CA carries a PlainCrime C safety grade with violent crime 53% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Imperial Beach, CA shows violent crime at 538.7 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 637.7 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 53% 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.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 45.8% of the 297 Part I offenses reported in Imperial Beach for 2024, against a median of 17.1% across comparable California cities — a gap of 28.7 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 344.7 per 100,000 in 2020 to 538.7 in 2024 (+56.3%). The highest observed value was 538.7 in 2024 and the lowest 344.7 in 2020. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Imperial Beach's 538.7 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Grass Valley (540.2), Highland (534.5), Paramount (547.1), San Leandro (548.7). 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 538.7 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Imperial Beach ranks 111 of 458 — above 347 of the 457 other California cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +64.0% 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.
Property-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 51.6% of reported property offenses in Imperial Beach, against a cohort median of 69.5%. The remainder is burglary (7) and motor vehicle theft (71). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Imperial Beach'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.
Mid-size municipal totals above are reported offenses, not safety advice for any single block. Reporting completeness still varies by year and agency.
Across 4.3 Census sq mi, Imperial Beach logged 37.5 property and 31.7 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Imperial Beach leans on aggravated assault at 40% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 2,973.
Violent offenses are 46% of the municipal total - a violence-heavy book for a mid-size city.
Imperial Beach offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (4.3 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 | 161 | 637.7 |
| Larceny-Theft | 83 | 328.8 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 71 | 281.2 |
| Burglary | 7 | 27.7 |
| Arson | 1 | 4 |
| Violent Crime | 136 | 538.7 |
| Aggravated Assault | 118 | 467.4 |
| Robbery | 18 | 71.3 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
| Rape | 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 | 27,560 | 344.7 | 1041.4 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 27,421 | 412.1 | 1024.8 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 25,933 | 397.2 | 1060.4 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 25,625 | 370.7 | 940.5 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 25,247 | 538.7 | 637.7 |
Imperial Beach Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Imperial Beach's 297 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 Imperial Beach in population. Their populations run from 24,934 to 25,491, against 25,247 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Imperial Beach sits at 538.7/100K violent (grade C); the California cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Imperial Beach at 538.7/100K violent and 637.7/100K property - matched below outside California (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
538.7/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
637.7/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
Out-of-state cities whose violent rate moved a similar share from 2023→2024 (+45.3% here); level-based peers above are excluded.
In 2024, Imperial Beach reported 136 violent crimes and 161 property crimes, for a total of 297 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Imperial Beach's violent crime rate increased by 45.3%, and the property crime rate decreased by 32.2%.
The most common crime type in Imperial Beach is aggravated assault, accounting for 39.7% of all reported crimes (118 incidents in 2024).
Mid-size read: Imperial Beach 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 Imperial Beach's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Imperial Beach, 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. Imperial Beach is scored in the mid-size municipal band (25,247 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.