Rocky Mount, VA has a C safety grade (56/100) with a violent crime rate of 140 per 100,000, 60% below the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · small city
Rocky Mount is a small municipal reporter (4,990 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with VA and U.S. context.
Data updated 2026-09-05
Rocky Mount, VA is close to the national middle for violent crime, and earns a C PlainCrime safety grade, where violent crime runs 60% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Rocky Mount, VA shows violent crime at 140.3 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 3,466.9 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 60% 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
Rocky Mount reported 7 violent offences in 2024 against a population of 4,990. 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.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Rocky Mount's 140.3 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Hillsville (140.5), West Point (139.9), Staunton (141.5), Woodstock (133.7). 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 190.8 per 100,000 in 2020 to 140.3 in 2024 (-26.5%). The highest observed value was 202.9 in 2022 and the lowest 80.8 in 2023. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 3.9% of the 180 Part I offenses reported in Rocky Mount for 2024, against a median of 10.7% across comparable Virginia cities — a gap of 6.8 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.
Property-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 97.7% of reported property offenses in Rocky Mount, against a cohort median of 86.7%. The remainder is burglary (0) and motor vehicle theft (4). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Position in the state cohort
At 140.3 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Rocky Mount ranks 72 of 125 — above 53 of the 124 other Virginia cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is -26.1% against the cohort median of 189.9. 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 Rocky Mount'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 7 reported violent incidents in a population of 4,990. 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 6.8 Census sq mi, Rocky Mount logged 25.3 property and 1 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Rocky Mount's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (94% of 180 offenses; mix index 8,827).
Violent offenses are only 4% of the municipal total - a property-led book.
Rocky Mount offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (6.8 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 | 173 | 3466.9 |
| Larceny-Theft | 169 | 3386.8 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 4 | 80.2 |
| Arson | 1 | 20 |
| Burglary | 0 | 0 |
| Violent Crime | 7 | 140.3 |
| Rape | 4 | 80.2 |
| Aggravated Assault | 2 | 40.1 |
| Robbery | 1 | 20 |
| 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 | 4,718 | 190.8 | 4684.2 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 4,707 | 85 | 2953 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 4,929 | 202.9 | 3672.1 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 4,953 | 80.8 | 6279 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 4,990 | 140.3 | 3466.9 |
Rocky Mount Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Rocky Mount's 180 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 Virginia cities closest to Rocky Mount in population. Their populations run from 4,829 to 5,426, against 4,990 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Rocky Mount sits at 140.3/100K violent (grade C); the Virginia cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
In 2024, Rocky Mount reported 7 violent crimes and 173 property crimes, for a total of 180 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Rocky Mount's violent crime rate increased by 73.6%, and the property crime rate decreased by 44.8%.
The most common crime type in Rocky Mount is larceny-theft, accounting for 93.9% of all reported crimes (169 incidents in 2024).
Small-city read: Rocky Mount 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 Rocky Mount's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Rocky Mount, VA rates use the reporting-year population on the municipal row.
Bulk download: city crime dataset (CSV/JSON)
Put this to use
Put the Rocky Mount, VA FBI UCR record to work: compare peers, open the state atlas, or look up another city.
A citywide UCR rate is a starting point, not a neighbourhood verdict: read the full profile and the year coverage notes before drawing conclusions.
Every figure on PlainCrime is rendered directly from FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) source data, no number is typed in by an editor. Rocky Mount is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (4,990 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.