Oil City, PA has a A safety grade (81/100) with a violent crime rate of 118 per 100,000, 66% below the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · small city
Oil City is a small municipal reporter (9,303 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with PA and U.S. context.
Data updated 2026-09-05
Oil City, PA is close to the national middle for violent crime, and earns an A PlainCrime safety grade, where violent crime runs 66% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Oil City, PA shows violent crime at 118.2 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 784.7 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 66% 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.
Small-count caution
Oil City reported 11 violent offences in 2024 against a population of 9,303. 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 Oil City's 118.2 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Southern Armstrong Regional (118.3), Newberry Township (117.8), Franklin (118.8), Buffalo Valley Regional (117.6). 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 118.2 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Oil City ranks 271 of 838 — above 567 of the 837 other Pennsylvania cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +81.0% against the cohort median of 65.3. 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 13.1% of the 84 Part I offenses reported in Oil City for 2024, against a median of 10.0% across comparable Pennsylvania cities — a gap of 3.1 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 4 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 115.5 per 100,000 in 2020 to 118.2 in 2024 (+2.3%). The highest observed value was 149.0 in 2023 and the lowest 115.5 in 2020. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property counts dominate Oil 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.
Based on 11 reported violent incidents in a population of 9,303. 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 4.5 Census sq mi, Oil City logged 16.2 property and 2.4 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Oil City's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (80% of 84 offenses; mix index 6,492).
Violent offenses are only 13% of the municipal total - a property-led book.
Oil City offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (4.5 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 | 73 | 784.7 |
| Larceny-Theft | 67 | 720.2 |
| Burglary | 3 | 32.2 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 3 | 32.2 |
| Arson | 1 | 10.7 |
| Violent Crime | 11 | 118.2 |
| Aggravated Assault | 8 | 86 |
| Rape | 3 | 32.2 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
| Robbery | 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 | 9,521 | 115.5 | 1459.9 |
| 2021 | Insufficient reporting | 9,449 | - | - |
| 2022 | Comparable | 9,422 | 138 | 1443.4 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 9,394 | 149 | 1107.1 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 9,303 | 118.2 | 784.7 |
Oil City Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Oil City's 84 reported offenses (4-year span 2020-2024, with internal gaps).
This agency reports via the traditional Summary Reporting System (SRS): aggregate monthly offense counts rather than incident-level detail.
Crime rates read differently at different scales, so these are the Pennsylvania cities closest to Oil City in population. Their populations run from 9,215 to 9,485, against 9,303 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Oil City sits at 118.2/100K violent (grade A); the Pennsylvania cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
In 2024, Oil City reported 11 violent crimes and 73 property crimes, for a total of 84 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Oil City's violent crime rate decreased by 20.7%, and the property crime rate decreased by 29.1%.
The most common crime type in Oil City is larceny-theft, accounting for 79.8% of all reported crimes (67 incidents in 2024).
Small-city read: Oil 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 Oil City's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Oil City, PA rates use the reporting-year population on the municipal row.
Bulk download: city crime dataset (CSV/JSON)
Put this to use
Put the Oil City, PA 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. Oil City is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (9,303 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.