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.
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.
Sault Ste. Marie, MI carries a PlainCrime C safety grade with violent crime 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.
The verdict
Sault Ste. Marie earns a C safety grade: violent crime runs 15% above the U.S. average, placing it higher-crime than most U.S. cities.
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.
| 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's crime figures on this page originate from Sault Ste. Marie Police Department's submission to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program.
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.
These Michigan cities report the closest violent-crime rates to Sault Ste. Marie's 405.7/100K (same FBI UCR vintage rules; size peers above are excluded so the two lists stay distinct).
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)
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.