Solana Beach, CA has a A safety grade (80/100) with a violent crime rate of 103 per 100,000, 71% below the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · mid-size city
Solana Beach (12,592 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
Solana Beach, CA carries a PlainCrime A safety grade with violent crime 71% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Solana Beach, CA shows violent crime at 103.2 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 1,167.4 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 71% below the U.S. average. PlainCrime assigns grade A from those rates. Figures are voluntary agency submissions joined to population denominators; incomplete coverage can move the number.
Small-count caution
Solana Beach reported 13 violent offences in 2024 against a population of 12,592. At this volume one additional or one fewer report moves the per-100,000 rate noticeably, so the figure is better read as a data point than as a precise measurement, and year-to-year swings here are expected.
Position in the state cohort
At 103.2 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Solana Beach ranks 413 of 458 — above 45 of the 457 other California cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is -69.0% against the cohort median of 333.1. Cities that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Solana Beach's 103.2 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Wildomar (102.3), Atherton (104.3), Thousand Oaks (102.2), Rolling Hills Estates (100.5). 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.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 8.1% of the 160 Part I offenses reported in Solana Beach for 2024, against a median of 17.1% across comparable California cities — a gap of 9.0 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.
Property-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 58.5% of reported property offenses in Solana Beach, against a cohort median of 69.5%. The remainder is burglary (35) and motor vehicle theft (26). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 104.9 per 100,000 in 2020 to 103.2 in 2024 (-1.6%). The highest observed value was 211.8 in 2021 and the lowest 103.2 in 2024. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property counts dominate Solana 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.
Based on 13 reported violent incidents in a population of 12,592. At this volume, one additional or one fewer report can shift the rate and letter grade noticeably; small-city crime counts are inherently more volatile year to year than large-city counts, so treat this grade as a data point, not a precise ranking.
Mid-size municipal totals above are reported offenses, not safety advice for any single block. Reporting completeness still varies by year and agency.
Across 3.4 Census sq mi, Solana Beach logged 43.1 property and 3.8 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Solana Beach leans on larceny-theft at 54% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 3,659.
Violent offenses are only 8% of the municipal total - a property-led book.
Solana Beach offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (3.4 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 | 1167.4 |
| Larceny-Theft | 86 | 683 |
| Burglary | 35 | 278 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 26 | 206.5 |
| Arson | 1 | 7.9 |
| Violent Crime | 13 | 103.2 |
| Aggravated Assault | 7 | 55.6 |
| Robbery | 4 | 31.8 |
| Rape | 2 | 15.9 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
Lead series · rose across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · fell · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 13,341 | 104.9 | 1161.8 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 13,220 | 211.8 | 1724.7 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 12,778 | 156.5 | 1839.1 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 12,738 | 164.9 | 1515.2 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 12,592 | 103.2 | 1167.4 |
Solana Beach Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Solana Beach's 160 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 Solana Beach in population. Their populations run from 12,432 to 12,868, against 12,592 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Solana Beach sits at 103.2/100K violent (grade A); the California cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Solana Beach at 103.2/100K violent and 1,167.4/100K property - matched below outside California (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
103.2/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
1,167.4/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
In 2024, Solana Beach reported 13 violent crimes and 147 property crimes, for a total of 160 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Solana Beach's violent crime rate decreased by 37.4%, and the property crime rate decreased by 23%.
The most common crime type in Solana Beach is larceny-theft, accounting for 53.8% of all reported crimes (86 incidents in 2024).
Mid-size read: Solana 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 Solana Beach's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Solana 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. Solana Beach is scored in the mid-size municipal band (12,592 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.