Mercedes, TX has a D safety grade (32/100) with a violent crime rate of 403 per 100,000, 14% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · mid-size city
Mercedes (16,893 people) sits in the mid-size municipal band. This page opens with per-100,000 FBI UCR rates, then TX and national benchmarks.
Data updated 2026-09-05
Mercedes, TX is higher-crime than most U.S. cities, and earns a D PlainCrime safety grade, where violent crime runs 14% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Mercedes, TX shows violent crime at 402.5 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 3,208.4 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 14% above the U.S. average. PlainCrime assigns grade D 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 Mercedes's 402.5 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Borger (400.6), Early (399.6), Jacksonville (405.4), Lampasas (397.8). 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 402.5 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Mercedes ranks 113 of 686 — above 573 of the 685 other Texas cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +124.9% against the cohort median of 178.9. 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 521.0 per 100,000 in 2020 to 402.5 in 2024 (-22.7%). The highest observed value was 800.5 in 2022 and the lowest 401.6 in 2021. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 84.9% of reported property offenses in Mercedes, against a cohort median of 71.6%. The remainder is burglary (30) and motor vehicle theft (52). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 11.1% of the 610 Part I offenses reported in Mercedes for 2024, against a median of 14.4% across comparable Texas cities — a gap of 3.2 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 Mercedes'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 11.8 Census sq mi, Mercedes logged 45.9 property and 5.8 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Mercedes's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (75% of 610 offenses; mix index 5,852).
Violent offenses are only 11% of the municipal total - a property-led book.
Mercedes offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (11.8 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 | 542 | 3208.4 |
| Larceny-Theft | 460 | 2723 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 52 | 307.8 |
| Burglary | 30 | 177.6 |
| Arson | 7 | 41.4 |
| Violent Crime | 68 | 402.5 |
| Aggravated Assault | 47 | 278.2 |
| Rape | 16 | 94.7 |
| Robbery | 5 | 29.6 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
Lead series · rose across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · fell · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 16,699 | 521 | 3012.2 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 16,684 | 401.6 | 2469.4 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 16,365 | 800.5 | 2927 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 16,949 | 554.6 | 3410.2 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 16,893 | 402.5 | 3208.4 |
Mercedes Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Mercedes's 610 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 Texas cities closest to Mercedes in population. Their populations run from 16,445 to 17,242, against 16,893 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Mercedes sits at 402.5/100K violent (grade D); the Texas cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Mercedes at 402.5/100K violent and 3,208.4/100K property - matched below outside Texas (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
402.5/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
3,208.4/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
In 2024, Mercedes reported 68 violent crimes and 542 property crimes, for a total of 610 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Mercedes's violent crime rate decreased by 27.4%, and the property crime rate decreased by 5.9%.
The most common crime type in Mercedes is larceny-theft, accounting for 75.4% of all reported crimes (460 incidents in 2024).
Mid-size read: Mercedes 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 Mercedes's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Mercedes, TX rates use the reporting-year population on the municipal row.
Bulk download: city crime dataset (CSV/JSON)
Put this to use
Put the Mercedes, TX FBI UCR record to work: compare peers, open the state atlas, or look up another city.
A citywide UCR rate is a starting point, not a neighbourhood verdict: read the full profile and the year coverage notes before drawing conclusions.
Every figure on PlainCrime is rendered directly from FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) source data, no number is typed in by an editor. Mercedes is scored in the mid-size municipal band (16,893 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.