Los Gatos, CA has a B safety grade (73/100) with a violent crime rate of 148 per 100,000, 58% below the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · mid-size city
Los Gatos (31,828 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 Gatos, CA carries a PlainCrime B safety grade with violent crime 58% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Los Gatos, CA shows violent crime at 147.7 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 1,432.7 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 58% below the U.S. average. PlainCrime assigns grade B 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 66.1 per 100,000 in 2020 to 147.7 in 2024 (+123.5%). The highest observed value was 170.7 in 2022 and the lowest 16.5 in 2021. 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 Los Gatos's 147.7 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Westlake Village (147.9), Calexico (147.0), Oakley (146.1), Lake Forest (145.7). 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 147.7 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Los Gatos ranks 382 of 458 — above 76 of the 457 other California cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is -55.7% 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.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 9.3% of the 503 Part I offenses reported in Los Gatos for 2024, against a median of 17.1% across comparable California cities — a gap of 7.8 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.
Property-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 78.5% of reported property offenses in Los Gatos, against a cohort median of 69.5%. The remainder is burglary (70) and motor vehicle theft (28). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Property counts dominate Los Gatos'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.
Mid-size municipal totals above are reported offenses, not safety advice for any single block. Reporting completeness still varies by year and agency.
Across 11.6 Census sq mi, Los Gatos logged 39.5 property and 4.1 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Los Gatos's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (71% of 503 offenses; mix index 5,327).
Violent offenses are only 9% of the municipal total - a property-led book.
Los Gatos offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (11.6 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 | 456 | 1432.7 |
| Larceny-Theft | 358 | 1124.8 |
| Burglary | 70 | 219.9 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 28 | 88 |
| Arson | 4 | 12.6 |
| Violent Crime | 47 | 147.7 |
| Aggravated Assault | 26 | 81.7 |
| Robbery | 14 | 44 |
| Rape | 7 | 22 |
| 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 | 30,271 | 66.1 | 1341.2 |
| 2021 | Insufficient reporting | 30,315 | - | - |
| 2022 | Comparable | 31,640 | 170.7 | 1858.4 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 31,903 | 156.7 | 1717.7 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 31,828 | 147.7 | 1432.7 |
Los Gatos Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Los Gatos's 503 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 Gatos in population. Their populations run from 31,052 to 32,560, against 31,828 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Los Gatos sits at 147.7/100K violent (grade B); the California cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Los Gatos at 147.7/100K violent and 1,432.7/100K property - matched below outside California (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
147.7/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
1,432.7/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
Out-of-state cities whose violent rate moved a similar share from 2023→2024 (-5.7% here); level-based peers above are excluded.
In 2024, Los Gatos reported 47 violent crimes and 456 property crimes, for a total of 503 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Los Gatos's violent crime rate decreased by 5.7%, and the property crime rate decreased by 16.6%.
The most common crime type in Los Gatos is larceny-theft, accounting for 71.2% of all reported crimes (358 incidents in 2024).
Mid-size read: Los Gatos 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 Gatos's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Los Gatos, 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 Gatos is scored in the mid-size municipal band (31,828 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.