Sault Ste. Marie, MI has a C safety grade (50/100) with a violent crime rate of 406 per 100,000, 15% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · mid-size city
Sault Ste. Marie (13,310 people) sits in the mid-size municipal band. This page opens with per-100,000 FBI UCR rates, then MI and national benchmarks.
Data updated 2026-09-05
Sault Ste. Marie, MI is higher-crime than most U.S. cities, and earns a C PlainCrime safety grade, where violent crime runs 15% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Sault Ste. Marie, MI shows violent crime at 405.7 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 1,104.4 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 15% 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 254.9 per 100,000 in 2020 to 405.7 in 2024 (+59.2%). The highest observed value was 405.7 in 2024 and the lowest 164.0 in 2022. 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 Sault Ste. Marie's 405.7 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Cassopolis (408.9), Oak Park (398.5), Menominee (418.6), Newaygo (390.0). 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 405.7 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Sault Ste. Marie ranks 76 of 366 — above 290 of the 365 other Michigan cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +117.0% against the cohort median of 187.0. Cities that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 26.9% of the 201 Part I offenses reported in Sault Ste. Marie for 2024, against a median of 16.7% across comparable Michigan cities — a gap of 10.2 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 89.8% of reported property offenses in Sault Ste. Marie, against a cohort median of 79.7%. The remainder is burglary (9) and motor vehicle theft (6). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Property counts dominate Sault Ste. Marie'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 14.8 Census sq mi, Sault Ste. Marie logged 10 property and 3.7 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Sault Ste. Marie's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (66% of 201 offenses; mix index 4,711).
Violent offenses are 27% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
Sault Ste. Marie offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (14.8 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 | 147 | 1104.4 |
| Larceny-Theft | 132 | 991.7 |
| Burglary | 9 | 67.6 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 6 | 45.1 |
| Arson | 0 | 0 |
| Violent Crime | 54 | 405.7 |
| Aggravated Assault | 33 | 247.9 |
| Rape | 20 | 150.3 |
| Robbery | 1 | 7.5 |
| 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 | 13,340 | 254.9 | 1334.3 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 13,282 | 256 | 1023.9 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 13,412 | 164 | 917.1 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 13,325 | 382.7 | 1103.2 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 13,310 | 405.7 | 1104.4 |
Sault Ste. Marie Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Sault Ste. Marie's 201 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 Michigan cities closest to Sault Ste. Marie in population. Their populations run from 12,267 to 14,543, against 13,310 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Sault Ste. Marie sits at 405.7/100K violent (grade C); the Michigan cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Sault Ste. Marie at 405.7/100K violent and 1,104.4/100K property - matched below outside Michigan (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
405.7/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
1,104.4/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
In 2024, Sault Ste. Marie reported 54 violent crimes and 147 property crimes, for a total of 201 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Sault Ste. Marie's violent crime rate increased by 6%, and the property crime rate increased by 0.1%.
The most common crime type in Sault Ste. Marie is larceny-theft, accounting for 65.7% of all reported crimes (132 incidents in 2024).
Mid-size read: Sault Ste. Marie 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 Sault Ste. Marie's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Sault Ste. Marie, MI rates use the reporting-year population on the municipal row.
Bulk download: city crime dataset (CSV/JSON)
Put this to use
Put the Sault Ste. Marie, MI 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. Sault Ste. Marie is scored in the mid-size municipal band (13,310 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.