Ottawa, IL has a B safety grade (68/100) with a violent crime rate of 187 per 100,000, 47% below the national average.
Ottawa (18,722 people) sits in the mid-size municipal band. This page opens with per-100,000 FBI UCR rates, then IL and national benchmarks.
Ottawa, IL carries a PlainCrime B safety grade with violent crime 47% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Ottawa, IL shows violent crime at 186.9 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 1,495.6 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 47% 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.
The verdict
Ottawa earns a B safety grade: violent crime runs 47% below the U.S. average, placing it close to the national middle for violent crime.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 111.2 per 100,000 in 2020 to 186.9 in 2024 (+68.1%). The highest observed value was 279.9 in 2023 and the lowest 61.1 in 2021. 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 Ottawa's 186.9 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are La Grange (187.4), Homewood (186.1), South Elgin (188.4), Streator (188.5). 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 186.9 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Ottawa ranks 159 of 506 — above 347 of the 505 other Illinois cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +87.6% against the cohort median of 99.7. 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 Ottawa'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.
| Offense | Count | Rate /100K |
|---|---|---|
| Property Crime | 280 | 1495.6 |
| Larceny-Theft | 209 | 1116.3 |
| Burglary | 54 | 288.4 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 17 | 90.8 |
| Arson | 1 | 5.3 |
| Violent Crime | 35 | 186.9 |
| Aggravated Assault | 22 | 117.5 |
| Rape | 12 | 64.1 |
| Robbery | 1 | 5.3 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
Lead series · fell across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · rose · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 17,983 | 111.2 | 1584.8 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 18,017 | 61.1 | 194.3 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 18,696 | 176.5 | 738.1 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 18,579 | 279.9 | 1496.3 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 18,722 | 186.9 | 1495.6 |
Ottawa's crime figures on this page originate from Ottawa Police Department's submission to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program.
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 Illinois cities closest to Ottawa in population. Their populations run from 18,269 to 19,121, against 18,722 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
These Illinois cities report the closest violent-crime rates to Ottawa's 186.9/100K (same FBI UCR vintage rules; size peers above are excluded so the two lists stay distinct).
Mid-size read: Ottawa 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 Ottawa's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Ottawa, IL 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. Ottawa is scored in the mid-size municipal band (18,722 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.