Poteau, OK has a C safety grade (45/100) with a violent crime rate of 295 per 100,000, 16% below the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · small city
Poteau is a small municipal reporter (9,161 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with OK and U.S. context.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Poteau, OK carries a PlainCrime C safety grade with violent crime 16% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Poteau, OK shows violent crime at 294.7 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 2,936.4 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 16% below the U.S. average. PlainCrime assigns grade C from those rates. Figures are voluntary agency submissions joined to population denominators; incomplete coverage can move the number.
Small-count caution
Poteau reported 27 violent offences in 2024 against a population of 9,161. 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 651.8 per 100,000 in 2020 to 294.7 in 2024 (-54.8%). The highest observed value was 651.8 in 2020 and the lowest 294.7 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 Poteau's 294.7 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Dickson (294.6), Sawyer (294.1), Hollis (293.9), Skiatook (293.4). 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.
Position in the state cohort
At 294.7 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Poteau ranks 103 of 300 — above 197 of the 299 other Oklahoma cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +38.8% against the cohort median of 212.4. 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 9.1% of the 296 Part I offenses reported in Poteau for 2024, against a median of 15.0% across comparable Oklahoma cities — a gap of 5.9 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.
Property-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 76.6% of reported property offenses in Poteau, against a cohort median of 66.1%. The remainder is burglary (53) and motor vehicle theft (10). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Property counts dominate Poteau'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 27 reported violent incidents in a population of 9,161. 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 26.6 Census sq mi, Poteau logged 10.1 property and 1 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Poteau's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (70% of 296 offenses; mix index 5,234).
Violent offenses are only 9% of the municipal total - a property-led book.
Poteau offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (26.6 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 | 269 | 2936.4 |
| Larceny-Theft | 206 | 2248.7 |
| Burglary | 53 | 578.5 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 10 | 109.2 |
| Arson | 3 | 32.7 |
| Violent Crime | 27 | 294.7 |
| Aggravated Assault | 22 | 240.1 |
| Rape | 4 | 43.7 |
| Robbery | 1 | 10.9 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
Lead series · fell across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · fell · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 8,899 | 651.8 | 3809.4 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 8,942 | 413.8 | 3746.4 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 8,871 | 642.5 | 3765.1 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 9,029 | 376.6 | 3798.9 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 9,161 | 294.7 | 2936.4 |
Poteau Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Poteau's 296 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 Oklahoma cities closest to Poteau in population. Their populations run from 8,630 to 9,763, against 9,161 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Poteau sits at 294.7/100K violent (grade C); the Oklahoma cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
In 2024, Poteau reported 27 violent crimes and 269 property crimes, for a total of 296 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Poteau's violent crime rate decreased by 21.7%, and the property crime rate decreased by 22.7%.
The most common crime type in Poteau is larceny-theft, accounting for 69.6% of all reported crimes (206 incidents in 2024).
Small-city read: Poteau 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 Poteau's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Poteau, OK 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. Poteau is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (9,161 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.