Lead, SD has a A safety grade (80/100) with a violent crime rate of 164 per 100,000, 53% below the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · small city
Lead is a small municipal reporter (3,054 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with SD and U.S. context.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Lead, SD carries a PlainCrime A safety grade with violent crime 53% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Lead, SD shows violent crime at 163.7 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 392.9 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 53% 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.
Small-count caution
Lead reported 5 violent offences in 2024 against a population of 3,054. 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 Lead's 163.7 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Flandreau (170.0), Burke (173.3), Belle Fourche (151.1), Madison (148.3). 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.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 29.4% of the 17 Part I offenses reported in Lead for 2024, against a median of 15.9% across comparable South Dakota cities — a gap of 13.5 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.
Position in the state cohort
At 163.7 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Lead ranks 26 of 39 — above 13 of the 38 other South Dakota cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is -19.1% against the cohort median of 202.3. Cities that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 136.8 per 100,000 in 2020 to 163.7 in 2024 (+19.6%). The highest observed value was 375.6 in 2021 and the lowest 136.8 in 2020. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property counts dominate Lead'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 5 reported violent incidents in a population of 3,054. 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.
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 2.1 Census sq mi, Lead logged 5.8 property and 2.4 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Lead leans on larceny-theft at 53% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 3,841.
Violent offenses are 29% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
Lead offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (2.1 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 | 12 | 392.9 |
| Larceny-Theft | 9 | 294.7 |
| Burglary | 2 | 65.5 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 1 | 32.7 |
| Arson | 0 | 0 |
| Violent Crime | 5 | 163.7 |
| Aggravated Assault | 5 | 163.7 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
| Rape | 0 | 0 |
| Robbery | 0 | 0 |
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 | 2,923 | 136.8 | 1026.3 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 2,929 | 375.6 | 1297.4 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 2,965 | 168.6 | 371 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 3,031 | 230.9 | 494.9 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 3,054 | 163.7 | 392.9 |
Lead Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Lead's 17 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 South Dakota cities closest to Lead in population. Their populations run from 2,401 to 3,686, against 3,054 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
In 2024, Lead reported 5 violent crimes and 12 property crimes, for a total of 17 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Lead's violent crime rate decreased by 29.1%, and the property crime rate decreased by 20.6%.
The most common crime type in Lead is larceny-theft, accounting for 52.9% of all reported crimes (9 incidents in 2024).
Small-city read: Lead 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 Lead's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Lead, SD 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. Lead is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (3,054 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.