Ocean City, MD has a F safety grade (0/100) with a violent crime rate of 980 per 100,000, 178% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · small city
Ocean City is a small municipal reporter (6,938 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with MD and U.S. context.
Data updated 2026-09-05
Ocean City, MD is among the highest-crime cities in the country, and earns an F PlainCrime safety grade, where violent crime runs 178% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Ocean City, MD shows violent crime at 980.1 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 8,806.6 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 178% above the U.S. average. PlainCrime assigns grade F 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 2396.8 per 100,000 in 2020 to 980.1 in 2024 (-59.1%). The highest observed value was 2396.8 in 2020 and the lowest 719.3 in 2023. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Position in the state cohort
At 980.1 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Ocean City ranks 8 of 72 — above 64 of the 71 other Maryland cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +287.5% against the cohort median of 252.9. Cities that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Ocean City's 980.1 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Riverdale Park (984.7), Bladensburg (969.9), Seat Pleasant (994.4), Salisbury (954.7). 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.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 10.0% of the 679 Part I offenses reported in Ocean City for 2024, against a median of 14.6% across comparable Maryland cities — a gap of 4.6 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 Ocean City'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.
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 4.4 Census sq mi, Ocean City logged 138.1 property and 15.4 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Ocean City's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (77% of 679 offenses; mix index 6,052).
Violent offenses are only 10% of the municipal total - a property-led book.
Ocean City offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (4.4 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 | 611 | 8806.6 |
| Larceny-Theft | 521 | 7509.4 |
| Burglary | 63 | 908 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 27 | 389.2 |
| Arson | 0 | 0 |
| Violent Crime | 68 | 980.1 |
| Aggravated Assault | 52 | 749.5 |
| Rape | 12 | 173 |
| Robbery | 4 | 57.7 |
| 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 · fell · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 6,926 | 2396.8 | 12157.1 |
| 2021 | Insufficient reporting | 6,894 | - | - |
| 2022 | Comparable | 6,957 | 1854.2 | 10809.3 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 6,951 | 719.3 | 8732.6 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 6,938 | 980.1 | 8806.6 |
Ocean City Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Ocean City's 679 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 Maryland cities closest to Ocean City in population. Their populations run from 5,970 to 8,055, against 6,938 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Ocean City sits at 980.1/100K violent (grade F); the Maryland cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
In 2024, Ocean City reported 68 violent crimes and 611 property crimes, for a total of 679 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Ocean City's violent crime rate increased by 36.3%, and the property crime rate increased by 0.8%.
The most common crime type in Ocean City is larceny-theft, accounting for 76.7% of all reported crimes (521 incidents in 2024).
Small-city read: Ocean City 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 Ocean City's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Ocean City, MD rates use the reporting-year population on the municipal row.
Bulk download: city crime dataset (CSV/JSON)
Put this to use
Put the Ocean City, MD 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. Ocean City is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (6,938 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.