Melrose, MA has a A safety grade (86/100) with a violent crime rate of 101 per 100,000, 71% below the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · mid-size city
Melrose (29,784 people) sits in the mid-size municipal band. This page opens with per-100,000 FBI UCR rates, then MA and national benchmarks.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Melrose, MA carries a PlainCrime A safety grade with violent crime 71% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Melrose, MA shows violent crime at 100.7 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 429.8 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 71% 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.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Melrose's 100.7 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Carver (100.8), Newbury (101.3), Billerica (101.6), Brookline (99.8). 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 100.7 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Melrose ranks 208 of 317 — above 109 of the 316 other Massachusetts cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is -30.6% against the cohort median of 145.1. 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 92.9 per 100,000 in 2020 to 100.7 in 2024 (+8.4%). The highest observed value was 141.5 in 2023 and the lowest 58.6 in 2022. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property counts dominate Melrose'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 4.7 Census sq mi, Melrose logged 27.3 property and 6.4 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Melrose's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (63% of 158 offenses; mix index 4,444).
Violent offenses are 19% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
Melrose offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (4.7 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 | 128 | 429.8 |
| Larceny-Theft | 100 | 335.8 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 16 | 53.7 |
| Burglary | 12 | 40.3 |
| Arson | 1 | 3.4 |
| Violent Crime | 30 | 100.7 |
| Aggravated Assault | 26 | 87.3 |
| Robbery | 4 | 13.4 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
| Rape | 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 | 27,975 | 92.9 | 475.4 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 28,094 | 106.8 | 526.8 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 29,013 | 58.6 | 496.3 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 28,982 | 141.5 | 548.6 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 29,784 | 100.7 | 429.8 |
Melrose Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Melrose's 158 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 Massachusetts cities closest to Melrose in population. Their populations run from 28,832 to 30,599, against 29,784 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Melrose sits at 100.7/100K violent (grade A); the Massachusetts cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Melrose at 100.7/100K violent and 429.8/100K property - matched below outside Massachusetts (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
100.7/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
429.8/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
Out-of-state cities whose violent rate moved a similar share from 2023→2024 (-28.8% here); level-based peers above are excluded.
In 2024, Melrose reported 30 violent crimes and 128 property crimes, for a total of 158 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Melrose's violent crime rate decreased by 28.8%, and the property crime rate decreased by 21.7%.
The most common crime type in Melrose is larceny-theft, accounting for 63.3% of all reported crimes (100 incidents in 2024).
Mid-size read: Melrose 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 Melrose's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Melrose, MA 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. Melrose is scored in the mid-size municipal band (29,784 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.