Los Altos, CA has a A safety grade (82/100) with a violent crime rate of 78 per 100,000, 78% below the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · mid-size city
Los Altos (29,551 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
Los Altos, CA carries a PlainCrime A safety grade with violent crime 78% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Los Altos, CA shows violent crime at 77.8 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 1,211.5 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 78% 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
Los Altos reported 23 violent offences in 2024 against a population of 29,551. 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.
Position in the state cohort
At 77.8 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Los Altos ranks 439 of 458 — above 19 of the 457 other California cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is -76.6% against the cohort median of 333.1. Cities that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Los Altos's 77.8 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Diamond Bar (78.2), Imperial (77.3), Lafayette (80.2), Rancho Santa Margarita (81.1). 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 6.0% of the 381 Part I offenses reported in Los Altos for 2024, against a median of 17.1% across comparable California cities — a gap of 11.1 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 76.2 per 100,000 in 2020 to 77.8 in 2024 (+2.2%). The highest observed value was 90.1 in 2023 and the lowest 6.6 in 2021. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property counts dominate Los Altos'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 23 reported violent incidents in a population of 29,551. 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.
Mid-size municipal totals above are reported offenses, not safety advice for any single block. Reporting completeness still varies by year and agency.
Across 6.5 Census sq mi, Los Altos logged 54.7 property and 3.5 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Los Altos's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (70% of 381 offenses; mix index 5,334).
Violent offenses are only 6% of the municipal total - a property-led book.
Los Altos offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (6.5 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 | 358 | 1211.5 |
| Larceny-Theft | 267 | 903.5 |
| Burglary | 75 | 253.8 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 16 | 54.1 |
| Arson | 0 | 0 |
| Violent Crime | 23 | 77.8 |
| Aggravated Assault | 15 | 50.8 |
| Robbery | 5 | 16.9 |
| Rape | 3 | 10.2 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
The chart omits 2021 rather than drawing an unsupported zero or partial-coverage dip. The table preserves the year and marks the gap.
Lead series · rose across 4 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · rose · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 30,203 | 76.2 | 1072.7 |
| 2021 | Insufficient reporting | 30,400 | - | - |
| 2022 | Comparable | 29,847 | 83.8 | 1226.3 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 29,972 | 90.1 | 1041 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 29,551 | 77.8 | 1211.5 |
Los Altos Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Los Altos's 381 reported offenses (4-year span 2020-2024, with internal gaps).
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 Los Altos in population. Their populations run from 28,792 to 29,895, against 29,551 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Los Altos sits at 77.8/100K violent (grade A); the California cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Los Altos at 77.8/100K violent and 1,211.5/100K property - matched below outside California (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
77.8/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
1,211.5/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
Out-of-state cities whose violent rate moved a similar share from 2023→2024 (-13.7% here); level-based peers above are excluded.
In 2024, Los Altos reported 23 violent crimes and 358 property crimes, for a total of 381 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Los Altos's violent crime rate decreased by 13.7%, and the property crime rate increased by 16.4%.
The most common crime type in Los Altos is larceny-theft, accounting for 70.1% of all reported crimes (267 incidents in 2024).
Mid-size read: Los Altos 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 Los Altos's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Los Altos, 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. Los Altos is scored in the mid-size municipal band (29,551 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.