Seal Beach, CA has a D safety grade (28/100) with a violent crime rate of 482 per 100,000, 37% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · mid-size city
Seal Beach (24,079 people) sits in the mid-size municipal band. This page opens with per-100,000 FBI UCR rates, then CA and national benchmarks.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Seal Beach, CA carries a PlainCrime D safety grade with violent crime 37% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Seal Beach, CA shows violent crime at 481.7 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 2,749.3 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 37% above the U.S. average. PlainCrime assigns grade D from those rates. Figures are voluntary agency submissions joined to population denominators; incomplete coverage can move the number.
2020–2024 direction
Across 4 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 108.9 per 100,000 in 2020 to 481.7 in 2024 (+342.3%). The highest observed value was 481.7 in 2024 and the lowest 108.9 in 2020. 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 Seal Beach's 481.7 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Jackson (482.9), Pasadena (480.4), Hanford (483.3), El Cerrito (479.9). 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 481.7 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Seal Beach ranks 142 of 458 — above 316 of the 457 other California cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +46.7% 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.
Property-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 81.9% of reported property offenses in Seal Beach, against a cohort median of 69.5%. The remainder is burglary (92) and motor vehicle theft (28). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Property counts dominate Seal Beach'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 11.3 Census sq mi, Seal Beach logged 58.6 property and 10.3 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Seal Beach's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (70% of 778 offenses; mix index 5,170).
Violent offenses are only 15% of the municipal total - a property-led book.
Seal Beach offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (11.3 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 | 662 | 2749.3 |
| Larceny-Theft | 542 | 2250.9 |
| Burglary | 92 | 382.1 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 28 | 116.3 |
| Arson | 1 | 4.2 |
| Violent Crime | 116 | 481.7 |
| Aggravated Assault | 98 | 407 |
| Robbery | 17 | 70.6 |
| Rape | 1 | 4.2 |
| 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 | 23,873 | 108.9 | 2362.5 |
| 2021 | Insufficient reporting | 23,859 | - | - |
| 2022 | Comparable | 24,665 | 316.2 | 2473.1 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 24,354 | 394.2 | 2710 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 24,079 | 481.7 | 2749.3 |
Seal Beach Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Seal Beach's 778 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 California cities closest to Seal Beach in population. Their populations run from 23,173 to 25,043, against 24,079 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Seal Beach sits at 481.7/100K violent (grade D); the California cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Seal Beach at 481.7/100K violent and 2,749.3/100K property - matched below outside California (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
481.7/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
2,749.3/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
In 2024, Seal Beach reported 116 violent crimes and 662 property crimes, for a total of 778 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Seal Beach's violent crime rate increased by 22.2%, and the property crime rate increased by 1.5%.
The most common crime type in Seal Beach is larceny-theft, accounting for 69.7% of all reported crimes (542 incidents in 2024).
Mid-size read: Seal Beach 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 Seal Beach's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Seal Beach, 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. Seal Beach is scored in the mid-size municipal band (24,079 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.