San Diego, CA has a C safety grade (44/100) with a violent crime rate of 412 per 100,000, 17% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · very large city
At 1,389,024 residents, San Diego is a very large city: FBI UCR Table 8 rates (per 100,000) here are read against CA and U.S. averages before the offense-family breakdown.
Data updated 2026-08-24
San Diego, CA carries a PlainCrime C safety grade with violent crime 17% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, San Diego, CA shows violent crime at 412.2 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 1,670 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 17% above 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.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to San Diego's 412.2 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Lemoore (411.9), Ventura (410.9), Galt (410.8), La Puente (410.5). 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 412.2 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, San Diego ranks 179 of 458 — above 279 of the 457 other California cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +25.5% against the cohort median of 328.5. 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 368.9 per 100,000 in 2020 to 412.2 in 2024 (+11.8%). The highest observed value was 433.9 in 2022 and the lowest 368.9 in 2020. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property counts dominate San Diego'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 very large city row, these are citywide reported offense totals - not neighbourhood advice. Conditions vary by place and time; reporting rates differ across jurisdictions.
Across 326.1 Census sq mi, San Diego logged 71.1 property and 17.6 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
San Diego leans on larceny-theft at 52% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 3,406.
Violent offenses are 20% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
San Diego offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (326.1 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 | 23,197 | 1670 |
| Larceny-Theft | 15,100 | 1087.1 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 5,494 | 395.5 |
| Burglary | 2,603 | 187.4 |
| Arson | 136 | 9.8 |
| Violent Crime | 5,726 | 412.2 |
| Aggravated Assault | 4,319 | 310.9 |
| Robbery | 1,075 | 77.4 |
| Rape | 297 | 21.4 |
| Murder | 35 | 2.5 |
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 | 1,437,608 | 368.9 | 1707.2 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 1,434,673 | 403.7 | 1943.9 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 1,377,838 | 433.9 | 1840.6 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 1,378,349 | 424.9 | 1831 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 1,389,024 | 412.2 | 1670 |
San Diego Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind San Diego's 28,923 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 San Diego in population. Their populations run from 338,488 to 956,840, against 1,389,024 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
San Diego sits at 412.2/100K violent (grade C); the California cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
San Diego at 412.2/100K violent and 1,670/100K property - matched below outside California (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
412.2/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
1,670/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
Out-of-state cities whose violent rate moved a similar share from 2023→2024 (-3% here); level-based peers above are excluded.
In 2024, San Diego reported 5,726 violent crimes and 23,197 property crimes, for a total of 28,923 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, San Diego's violent crime rate decreased by 3%, and the property crime rate decreased by 8.8%.
The most common crime type in San Diego is larceny-theft, accounting for 52.2% of all reported crimes (15,100 incidents in 2024).
Large-city read: San Diego'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 (very 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 San Diego's very large city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 San Diego, 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. San Diego is scored here as a very large city UCR reporter (1,389,024 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.