Pelican Rapids, MN has a A+ safety grade (91/100) with a violent crime rate of 77 per 100,000, 78% below the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · small city
Pelican Rapids is a small municipal reporter (2,599 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with MN and U.S. context.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Pelican Rapids, MN carries a PlainCrime A+ safety grade with violent crime 78% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Pelican Rapids, MN shows violent crime at 77 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 153.9 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 78% 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
Pelican Rapids reported 2 violent offences in 2024 against a population of 2,599. 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.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 33.3% of the 6 Part I offenses reported in Pelican Rapids for 2024, against a median of 10.6% across comparable Minnesota cities — a gap of 22.8 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 156.1 per 100,000 in 2020 to 77.0 in 2024 (-50.7%). The highest observed value was 156.1 in 2020 and the lowest 77.0 in 2024. 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 Pelican Rapids's 77.0 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Wabasha (76.8), Lakeville (76.5), Becker (77.9), Madison Lake (75.9). 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 75.0% of reported property offenses in Pelican Rapids, against a cohort median of 85.7%. The remainder is burglary (0) 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 77.0 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Pelican Rapids ranks 164 of 276 — above 112 of the 275 other Minnesota cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is -22.1% against the cohort median of 98.8. 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 Pelican Rapids'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 2 reported violent incidents in a population of 2,599. 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 2.6 Census sq mi, Pelican Rapids logged 1.5 property and 0.8 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Pelican Rapids leans on larceny-theft at 50% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 3,889.
Violent offenses are 33% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
Pelican Rapids offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (2.6 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 | 4 | 153.9 |
| Larceny-Theft | 3 | 115.4 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 1 | 38.5 |
| Burglary | 0 | 0 |
| Arson | 0 | 0 |
| Violent Crime | 2 | 77 |
| Aggravated Assault | 2 | 77 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
| Rape | 0 | 0 |
| Robbery | 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 | 2,563 | 156.1 | 39 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 2,652 | 150.8 | 226.2 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 2,571 | 77.8 | 272.3 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 2,606 | 115.1 | 0 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 2,599 | 77 | 153.9 |
Pelican Rapids Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Pelican Rapids's 6 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 Minnesota cities closest to Pelican Rapids in population. Their populations run from 2,487 to 2,711, against 2,599 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
In 2024, Pelican Rapids reported 2 violent crimes and 4 property crimes, for a total of 6 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Pelican Rapids's violent crime rate decreased by 33.1%.
The most common crime type in Pelican Rapids is larceny-theft, accounting for 50.0% of all reported crimes (3 incidents in 2024).
Small-city read: Pelican Rapids 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 Pelican Rapids's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Pelican Rapids, MN 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. Pelican Rapids is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (2,599 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.