Seaside, CA has a C safety grade (42/100) with a violent crime rate of 513 per 100,000, 46% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · mid-size city
Seaside (30,985 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
Seaside, CA carries a PlainCrime C safety grade with violent crime 46% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Seaside, CA shows violent crime at 513.2 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 832.7 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 46% 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 212.9 per 100,000 in 2020 to 513.2 in 2024 (+141.1%). The highest observed value was 513.2 in 2024 and the lowest 212.9 in 2020. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 38.1% of the 417 Part I offenses reported in Seaside for 2024, against a median of 17.1% across comparable California cities — a gap of 21.0 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.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Seaside's 513.2 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are El Segundo (512.5), Beverly Hills (512.2), Stanton (512.0), Mammoth Lakes (516.0). 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 513.2 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Seaside ranks 119 of 458 — above 339 of the 457 other California cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +56.2% 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 counts dominate Seaside'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 8.9 Census sq mi, Seaside logged 28.9 property and 17.8 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Seaside leans on larceny-theft at 47% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 3,239.
Violent offenses are 38% of the municipal total - a violence-heavy book for a mid-size city.
Seaside offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (8.9 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 | 258 | 832.7 |
| Larceny-Theft | 194 | 626.1 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 41 | 132.3 |
| Burglary | 23 | 74.2 |
| Arson | 6 | 19.4 |
| Violent Crime | 159 | 513.2 |
| Aggravated Assault | 126 | 406.6 |
| Robbery | 20 | 64.5 |
| Rape | 13 | 42 |
| 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 | 33,822 | 212.9 | 1475.4 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 34,211 | 491.1 | 1368 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 31,864 | 420.5 | 1255.3 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 31,064 | 428.1 | 827.3 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 30,985 | 513.2 | 832.7 |
Seaside Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Seaside's 417 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 Seaside in population. Their populations run from 29,895 to 31,828, against 30,985 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Seaside sits at 513.2/100K violent (grade C); the California cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Seaside at 513.2/100K violent and 832.7/100K property - matched below outside California (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
513.2/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
832.7/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
Out-of-state cities whose violent rate moved a similar share from 2023→2024 (+19.9% here); level-based peers above are excluded.
In 2024, Seaside reported 159 violent crimes and 258 property crimes, for a total of 417 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Seaside's violent crime rate increased by 19.9%, and the property crime rate increased by 0.7%.
The most common crime type in Seaside is larceny-theft, accounting for 46.5% of all reported crimes (194 incidents in 2024).
Mid-size read: Seaside 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 Seaside's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Seaside, 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. Seaside is scored in the mid-size municipal band (30,985 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.