Rio Rancho, NM has a C safety grade (57/100) with a violent crime rate of 318 per 100,000, 10% below the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · large city
At 112,817 residents, Rio Rancho is a large city: FBI UCR Table 8 rates (per 100,000) here are read against NM and U.S. averages before the offense-family breakdown.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Rio Rancho, NM carries a PlainCrime C safety grade with violent crime 10% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Rio Rancho, NM shows violent crime at 318.2 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 1,339.3 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 10% 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 77.6 per 100,000 in 2020 to 318.2 in 2024 (+310.0%). The highest observed value was 459.8 in 2022 and the lowest 77.6 in 2020. 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 Rio Rancho's 318.2 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Sunland Park (327.9), Alamogordo (334.4), Questa (389.5), Edgewood (392.6). 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 318.2 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Rio Rancho ranks 31 of 43 — above 12 of the 42 other New Mexico cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is -33.9% against the cohort median of 481.6. Cities that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
Property-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 76.3% of reported property offenses in Rio Rancho, against a cohort median of 65.3%. The remainder is burglary (213) and motor vehicle theft (145). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Property counts dominate Rio Rancho'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.
On a large city row, these are citywide reported offense totals - not neighbourhood advice. Conditions vary by place and time; reporting rates differ across jurisdictions.
Across 103.4 Census sq mi, Rio Rancho logged 14.6 property and 3.5 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Rio Rancho's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (62% of 1,870 offenses; mix index 4,254).
Violent offenses are 19% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
Rio Rancho offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (103.4 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 | 1,511 | 1339.3 |
| Larceny-Theft | 1,153 | 1022 |
| Burglary | 213 | 188.8 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 145 | 128.5 |
| Arson | 5 | 4.4 |
| Violent Crime | 359 | 318.2 |
| Aggravated Assault | 300 | 265.9 |
| Rape | 42 | 37.2 |
| Robbery | 9 | 8 |
| Murder | 8 | 7.1 |
Lead series · rose across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · rose · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 100,508 | 77.6 | 710.4 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 101,162 | 440.9 | 1292 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 107,435 | 459.8 | 1679.2 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 109,992 | 411.8 | 1501.9 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 112,817 | 318.2 | 1339.3 |
Rio Rancho Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Rio Rancho's 1,870 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 New Mexico cities closest to Rio Rancho in population. Their populations run from 20,019 to 115,977, against 112,817 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Rio Rancho sits at 318.2/100K violent (grade C); the New Mexico cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Rio Rancho at 318.2/100K violent and 1,339.3/100K property - matched below outside New Mexico (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
318.2/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
1,339.3/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
Out-of-state cities whose violent rate moved a similar share from 2023→2024 (-22.7% here); level-based peers above are excluded.
In 2024, Rio Rancho reported 359 violent crimes and 1,511 property crimes, for a total of 1,870 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Rio Rancho's violent crime rate decreased by 22.7%, and the property crime rate decreased by 10.8%.
The most common crime type in Rio Rancho is larceny-theft, accounting for 61.7% of all reported crimes (1,153 incidents in 2024).
Large-city read: Rio Rancho's rates come from the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, CIUS Table 8, vintage 2024.
Incomplete reporters stay out of rate rankings. Cross-check population with Census ACS; state UCR programs for statewide context. Primary verify links: FBI.gov UCR, Census QuickFacts.
Disclaimer (large city): informational crime rates only - not legal, insurance, or personal-safety advice. Source: FBI UCR. Ask a qualified professional before acting.
Large-city rate methodology for how Rio Rancho's large city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Rio Rancho, NM 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. Rio Rancho is scored here as a large city UCR reporter (112,817 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.