Palos Heights, IL has a A safety grade (86/100) with a violent crime rate of 62 per 100,000, 82% below the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · mid-size city
Palos Heights (11,353 people) sits in the mid-size municipal band. This page opens with per-100,000 FBI UCR rates, then IL and national benchmarks.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Palos Heights, IL carries a PlainCrime A safety grade with violent crime 82% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Palos Heights, IL shows violent crime at 61.7 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 863.2 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 82% 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
Palos Heights reported 7 violent offences in 2024 against a population of 11,353. 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 Palos Heights's 61.7 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Geneva (61.7), Wheeling (61.7), Lake Zurich (61.1), Oak Brook (62.4). 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.
Property-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 88.8% of reported property offenses in Palos Heights, against a cohort median of 70.2%. The remainder is burglary (10) and motor vehicle theft (1). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Position in the state cohort
At 61.7 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Palos Heights ranks 327 of 506 — above 179 of the 505 other Illinois cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is -38.8% against the cohort median of 100.7. 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 6.7% of the 105 Part I offenses reported in Palos Heights for 2024, against a median of 11.3% across comparable Illinois 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 63.9 per 100,000 in 2020 to 61.7 in 2024 (-3.5%). The highest observed value was 121.3 in 2021 and the lowest 52.4 in 2023. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property counts dominate Palos Heights'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 7 reported violent incidents in a population of 11,353. 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.
Mid-size municipal totals above are reported offenses, not safety advice for any single block. Reporting completeness still varies by year and agency.
Across 3.8 Census sq mi, Palos Heights logged 25.9 property and 1.9 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Palos Heights's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (83% of 105 offenses; mix index 6,976).
Violent offenses are only 7% of the municipal total - a property-led book.
Palos Heights offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (3.8 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 | 98 | 863.2 |
| Larceny-Theft | 87 | 766.3 |
| Burglary | 10 | 88.1 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 1 | 8.8 |
| Arson | 0 | 0 |
| Violent Crime | 7 | 61.7 |
| Rape | 4 | 35.2 |
| Robbery | 2 | 17.6 |
| Aggravated Assault | 1 | 8.8 |
| 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 | 12,520 | 63.9 | 734.8 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 12,361 | 121.3 | 517.8 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 11,602 | 69 | 870.5 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 11,442 | 52.4 | 707.9 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 11,353 | 61.7 | 863.2 |
Palos Heights Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Palos Heights's 105 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 Illinois cities closest to Palos Heights in population. Their populations run from 10,912 to 11,835, against 11,353 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Palos Heights sits at 61.7/100K violent (grade A); the Illinois cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Palos Heights at 61.7/100K violent and 863.2/100K property - matched below outside Illinois (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
61.7/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
863.2/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
In 2024, Palos Heights reported 7 violent crimes and 98 property crimes, for a total of 105 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Palos Heights's violent crime rate increased by 17.7%, and the property crime rate increased by 21.9%.
The most common crime type in Palos Heights is larceny-theft, accounting for 82.9% of all reported crimes (87 incidents in 2024).
Mid-size read: Palos Heights 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 Palos Heights's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Palos Heights, 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. Palos Heights is scored in the mid-size municipal band (11,353 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.