Liberal, MO has a C safety grade (46/100) with a violent crime rate of 470 per 100,000, 33% above the national average.
Liberal's UCR row covers a small municipal population (639). Rates below are per 100,000 and sit next to MO and U.S. averages.
Liberal, MO carries a PlainCrime C safety grade with violent crime 33% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Liberal, MO shows violent crime at 469.5 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 782.5 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 33% 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.
The verdict
Liberal earns a C safety grade: violent crime runs 33% above the U.S. average, placing it among the highest-crime cities in the country.
Based on 3 reported violent incidents in a population of 639. 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-count caution
Liberal reported 3 violent offences in 2024 against a population of 639. 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.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 37.5% of the 8 Part I offenses reported in Liberal for 2024, against a median of 13.4% across comparable Missouri cities — a gap of 24.1 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 Liberal's 469.5 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Ash Grove (466.4), New Madrid (465.8), Steele (475.9), Branson (477.6). 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 469.5 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Liberal ranks 51 of 272 — above 221 of the 271 other Missouri cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +154.7% against the cohort median of 184.3. 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 100.0% of reported property offenses in Liberal, against a cohort median of 78.6%. The remainder is burglary (0) and motor vehicle theft (0). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Property counts dominate Liberal'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 3 reported violent incidents in a population of 639. 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.
On a small municipal row, small denominators make rates sensitive to a handful of incidents. Figures are reported totals, not neighbourhood advice.
| Offense | Count | Rate /100K |
|---|---|---|
| Property Crime | 5 | 782.5 |
| Larceny-Theft | 5 | 782.5 |
| Burglary | 0 | 0 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 0 | 0 |
| Arson | 0 | 0 |
| Violent Crime | 3 | 469.5 |
| Aggravated Assault | 3 | 469.5 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
| Rape | 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 | 717 | 0 | 0 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 697 | 143.5 | 0 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 635 | 0 | 0 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 639 | 0 | 156.5 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 639 | 469.5 | 782.5 |
Liberal's crime figures on this page originate from Liberal Police Department's submission to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program.
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 Missouri cities closest to Liberal in population. Their populations run from 556 to 728, against 639 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
These Missouri cities report the closest violent-crime rates to Liberal's 469.5/100K (same FBI UCR vintage rules; size peers above are excluded so the two lists stay distinct).
Micro-municipal read: Liberal's FBI UCR Table 8 row (2024) is the only source for the rates above.
With a small population base, per-100,000 rates amplify sparse counts. Incomplete submissions are excluded from rankings. See FBI.gov UCR for the raw Table 8 file.
Disclaimer (small municipal): small-base rates are especially easy to misread. Informational only - not advice. Source: FBI UCR Program.
Micro-municipal rate methodology for how Liberal's small municipal row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Liberal, MO 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. Liberal is scored as a small municipal UCR reporter (639 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.