Roanoke, AL has a F safety grade (0/100) with a violent crime rate of 776 per 100,000, 121% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · small city
Roanoke is a small municipal reporter (5,411 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with AL and U.S. context.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Roanoke, AL carries a PlainCrime F safety grade with violent crime 121% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Roanoke, AL shows violent crime at 776.2 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 3,881 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 121% 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 271.5 per 100,000 in 2020 to 776.2 in 2024 (+185.9%). The highest observed value was 803.9 in 2023 and the lowest 33.7 in 2021. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Position in the state cohort
At 776.2 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Roanoke ranks 29 of 263 — above 234 of the 262 other Alabama cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +263.5% against the cohort median of 213.5. 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 Roanoke's 776.2 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Phenix City (777.6), Ashland (778.0), Level Plains (762.1), Childersburg (760.7). 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 counts dominate Roanoke'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.
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 18.7 Census sq mi, Roanoke logged 11.2 property and 2.2 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Roanoke's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (65% of 252 offenses; mix index 4,589).
Violent offenses are 17% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
Roanoke offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (18.7 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 | 210 | 3881 |
| Larceny-Theft | 163 | 3012.4 |
| Burglary | 30 | 554.4 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 17 | 314.2 |
| Arson | 1 | 18.5 |
| Violent Crime | 42 | 776.2 |
| Aggravated Assault | 37 | 683.8 |
| Rape | 3 | 55.4 |
| Robbery | 2 | 37 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
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 · rose across 4 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · rose · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 5,894 | 271.5 | 729.6 |
| 2021 | Insufficient reporting | 5,926 | - | - |
| 2022 | Comparable | 5,266 | 360.8 | 2164.8 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 5,349 | 803.9 | 3252.9 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 5,411 | 776.2 | 3881 |
Roanoke Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Roanoke's 252 reported offenses (4-year span 2020-2024, with internal gaps).
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 Alabama cities closest to Roanoke in population. Their populations run from 5,007 to 5,813, against 5,411 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Roanoke sits at 776.2/100K violent (grade F); the Alabama cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
In 2024, Roanoke reported 42 violent crimes and 210 property crimes, for a total of 252 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Roanoke's violent crime rate decreased by 3.4%, and the property crime rate increased by 19.3%.
The most common crime type in Roanoke is larceny-theft, accounting for 64.7% of all reported crimes (163 incidents in 2024).
Small-city read: Roanoke 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 Roanoke's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Roanoke, AL 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. Roanoke is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (5,411 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.