Nitro, WV has a C safety grade (54/100) with a violent crime rate of 157 per 100,000, 55% below the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · small city
Nitro is a small municipal reporter (6,360 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with WV and U.S. context.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Nitro, WV carries a PlainCrime C safety grade with violent crime 55% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Nitro, WV shows violent crime at 157.2 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 3,773.6 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 55% below the U.S. average. PlainCrime assigns grade C from those rates. Figures are voluntary agency submissions joined to population denominators; incomplete coverage can move the number.
Small-count caution
Nitro reported 10 violent offences in 2024 against a population of 6,360. 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.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Nitro's 157.2 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Oak Hill (154.9), Vienna (153.9), Bridgeport (138.4), Philippi (138.1). 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 190.1 per 100,000 in 2020 to 157.2 in 2024 (-17.3%). The highest observed value was 289.2 in 2021 and the lowest 157.2 in 2024. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 4.0% of the 250 Part I offenses reported in Nitro for 2024, against a median of 9.7% across comparable West Virginia 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.
Position in the state cohort
At 157.2 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Nitro ranks 26 of 49 — above 23 of the 48 other West Virginia cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is -20.5% against the cohort median of 197.8. Cities that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
Property counts dominate Nitro'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 10 reported violent incidents in a population of 6,360. 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.
Small-city offense counts above are voluntary UCR submissions, not neighbourhood advice. Year-to-year swings can look large when the population base is modest.
Across 5.3 Census sq mi, Nitro logged 44.9 property and 1.9 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Nitro's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (88% of 250 offenses; mix index 7,731).
Violent offenses are only 4% of the municipal total - a property-led book.
Nitro offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (5.3 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 | 240 | 3773.6 |
| Larceny-Theft | 219 | 3443.4 |
| Burglary | 17 | 267.3 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 4 | 62.9 |
| Arson | 0 | 0 |
| Violent Crime | 10 | 157.2 |
| Aggravated Assault | 7 | 110.1 |
| Rape | 2 | 31.4 |
| Robbery | 1 | 15.7 |
| 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 | 6,314 | 190.1 | 3769.4 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 6,225 | 289.2 | 3839.4 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 6,444 | 170.7 | 4283.1 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 6,377 | 235.2 | 5284.6 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 6,360 | 157.2 | 3773.6 |
Nitro Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Nitro's 250 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 West Virginia cities closest to Nitro in population. Their populations run from 4,839 to 7,747, against 6,360 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Nitro sits at 157.2/100K violent (grade C); the West Virginia cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
In 2024, Nitro reported 10 violent crimes and 240 property crimes, for a total of 250 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Nitro's violent crime rate decreased by 33.2%, and the property crime rate decreased by 28.6%.
The most common crime type in Nitro is larceny-theft, accounting for 87.6% of all reported crimes (219 incidents in 2024).
Small-city read: Nitro is sourced from FBI UCR Table 8 for 2024; rates use that row's population.
Small-city rows use the same per-100,000 formula; a few unreported years can leave gaps in the trend table. Verify the agency's submission on FBI.gov UCR.
Disclaimer (small city): UCR counts here are informational only. They are not a victimization probability. Source: FBI UCR Program.
Small-city rate methodology for how Nitro's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Nitro, WV 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. Nitro is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (6,360 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.