Menlo Park, CA has a B safety grade (62/100) with a violent crime rate of 229 per 100,000, 35% below the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · mid-size city
Menlo Park (31,052 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
Menlo Park, CA carries a PlainCrime B safety grade with violent crime 35% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Menlo Park, CA shows violent crime at 228.6 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 1,780.9 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 35% 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 4 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 148.6 per 100,000 in 2020 to 228.6 in 2024 (+53.9%). The highest observed value was 293.6 in 2022 and the lowest 148.6 in 2020. 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 Menlo Park's 228.6 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Stallion Springs (228.2), Firebaugh (229.9), Gustine (230.0), Arcadia (230.4). 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 228.6 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Menlo Park ranks 312 of 458 — above 146 of the 457 other California cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is -31.4% 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 11.4% of the 624 Part I offenses reported in Menlo Park for 2024, against a median of 17.1% across comparable California cities — a gap of 5.7 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 counts dominate Menlo Park'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 10 Census sq mi, Menlo Park logged 55.4 property and 7.1 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Menlo Park's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (68% of 624 offenses; mix index 4,953).
Violent offenses are only 11% of the municipal total - a property-led book.
Menlo Park offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (10 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 | 553 | 1780.9 |
| Larceny-Theft | 425 | 1368.7 |
| Burglary | 87 | 280.2 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 41 | 132 |
| Arson | 3 | 9.7 |
| Violent Crime | 71 | 228.6 |
| Aggravated Assault | 53 | 170.7 |
| Rape | 10 | 32.2 |
| Robbery | 8 | 25.8 |
| 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 · fell across 4 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · rose · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 35,002 | 148.6 | 2239.9 |
| 2021 | Insufficient reporting | 35,235 | - | - |
| 2022 | Comparable | 31,332 | 293.6 | 1768.2 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 31,632 | 256.1 | 1741.9 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 31,052 | 228.6 | 1780.9 |
Menlo Park Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Menlo Park's 624 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 Menlo Park in population. Their populations run from 30,457 to 32,093, against 31,052 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Menlo Park sits at 228.6/100K violent (grade B); the California cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Menlo Park at 228.6/100K violent and 1,780.9/100K property - matched below outside California (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
228.6/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
1,780.9/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
Out-of-state cities whose violent rate moved a similar share from 2023→2024 (-10.7% here); level-based peers above are excluded.
In 2024, Menlo Park reported 71 violent crimes and 553 property crimes, for a total of 624 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Menlo Park's violent crime rate decreased by 10.7%, and the property crime rate increased by 2.2%.
The most common crime type in Menlo Park is larceny-theft, accounting for 68.1% of all reported crimes (425 incidents in 2024).
Mid-size read: Menlo Park 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 Menlo Park's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Menlo Park, 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. Menlo Park is scored in the mid-size municipal band (31,052 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.