Poway, CA has a A safety grade (82/100) with a violent crime rate of 134 per 100,000, 62% below the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · mid-size city
Poway (47,808 people) sits in the mid-size municipal band. This page opens with per-100,000 FBI UCR rates, then CA and national benchmarks.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Poway, CA carries a PlainCrime A safety grade with violent crime 62% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Poway, CA shows violent crime at 133.9 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 583.6 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 62% 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.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Poway's 133.9 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Benicia (133.6), Aliso Viejo (134.9), Carmel (130.3), Del Mar (130.2). 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 133.9 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Poway ranks 393 of 458 — above 65 of the 457 other California cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is -59.8% against the cohort median of 333.1. Cities that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 107.1 per 100,000 in 2020 to 133.9 in 2024 (+25.0%). The highest observed value was 171.8 in 2023 and the lowest 107.1 in 2020. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property counts dominate Poway'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.
Across 39.1 Census sq mi, Poway logged 7.1 property and 1.6 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Poway leans on larceny-theft at 57% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 3,822.
Violent offenses are 19% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
Poway offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (39.1 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 | 279 | 583.6 |
| Larceny-Theft | 197 | 412.1 |
| Burglary | 53 | 110.9 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 29 | 60.7 |
| Arson | 0 | 0 |
| Violent Crime | 64 | 133.9 |
| Aggravated Assault | 48 | 100.4 |
| Robbery | 14 | 29.3 |
| Rape | 2 | 4.2 |
| 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 | 49,479 | 107.1 | 749.8 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 49,381 | 162 | 889 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 48,011 | 168.7 | 968.5 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 47,731 | 171.8 | 844.3 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 47,808 | 133.9 | 583.6 |
Poway Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Poway's 343 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 California cities closest to Poway in population. Their populations run from 46,548 to 48,901, against 47,808 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Poway sits at 133.9/100K violent (grade A); the California cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Poway at 133.9/100K violent and 583.6/100K property - matched below outside California (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
133.9/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
583.6/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
Out-of-state cities whose violent rate moved a similar share from 2023→2024 (-22.1% here); level-based peers above are excluded.
In 2024, Poway reported 64 violent crimes and 279 property crimes, for a total of 343 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Poway's violent crime rate decreased by 22.1%, and the property crime rate decreased by 30.9%.
The most common crime type in Poway is larceny-theft, accounting for 57.4% of all reported crimes (197 incidents in 2024).
Mid-size read: Poway 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 Poway's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Poway, CA 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. Poway is scored in the mid-size municipal band (47,808 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.