Panama City, FL has a F safety grade (16/100) with a violent crime rate of 650 per 100,000, 85% above the national average.
Panama City (36,646 people) sits in the mid-size municipal band. This page opens with per-100,000 FBI UCR rates, then FL and national benchmarks.
Panama City, FL carries a PlainCrime F safety grade with violent crime 85% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Panama City, FL shows violent crime at 649.5 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 2,188.5 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 85% 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.
The verdict
Panama City earns an F safety grade: violent crime runs 85% above the U.S. average, placing it among the highest-crime cities in the country.
Position in the state cohort
At 649.5 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Panama City ranks 12 of 126 — above 114 of the 125 other Florida cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +237.0% against the cohort median of 192.7. 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 Panama City's 649.5 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are St. Petersburg (619.6), Palmetto (607.5), North Miami Beach (582.5), Lake Park (580.4). 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.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 22.9% of the 1,040 Part I offenses reported in Panama City for 2024, against a median of 13.3% across comparable Florida cities — a gap of 9.6 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 4 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 873.9 per 100,000 in 2020 to 649.5 in 2024 (-25.7%). The highest observed value was 873.9 in 2020 and the lowest 649.5 in 2024. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property counts dominate Panama 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.
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 | 802 | 2188.5 |
| Larceny-Theft | 616 | 1680.9 |
| Burglary | 147 | 401.1 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 39 | 106.4 |
| Arson | 1 | 2.7 |
| Violent Crime | 238 | 649.5 |
| Aggravated Assault | 205 | 559.4 |
| Rape | 21 | 57.3 |
| Robbery | 9 | 24.6 |
| Murder | 3 | 8.2 |
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 | 34,672 | 873.9 | 4208 |
| 2021 | Insufficient reporting | 33,651 | - | - |
| 2022 | Comparable | 35,384 | 678.3 | 2916.6 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 35,684 | 734.2 | 2589.4 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 36,646 | 649.5 | 2188.5 |
Panama City's crime figures on this page originate from Panama City 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 Florida cities closest to Panama City in population. Their populations run from 33,435 to 41,656, against 36,646 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
These Florida cities report the closest violent-crime rates to Panama City's 649.5/100K (same FBI UCR vintage rules; size peers above are excluded so the two lists stay distinct).
Mid-size read: Panama City 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 Panama City's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Panama City, FL 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. Panama City is scored in the mid-size municipal band (36,646 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.