Spruce Pine, NC has a A safety grade (78/100) with a violent crime rate of 91 per 100,000, 74% below the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · small municipal
Spruce Pine's UCR row covers a small municipal population (2,189). Rates below are per 100,000 and sit next to NC and U.S. averages.
Data updated 2026-09-05
Spruce Pine, NC is safer than most U.S. cities, and earns an A PlainCrime safety grade, where violent crime runs 74% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Spruce Pine, NC shows violent crime at 91.4 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 1,507.5 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 74% 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
Spruce Pine reported 2 violent offences in 2024 against a population of 2,189. 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.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Spruce Pine's 91.4 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Boone (89.9), Southport (89.0), Leland (96.5), Ocean Isle Beach (98.1). 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 91.4 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Spruce Pine ranks 167 of 206 — above 39 of the 205 other North Carolina cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is -68.0% against the cohort median of 285.1. 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 5.7% of the 35 Part I offenses reported in Spruce Pine for 2024, against a median of 11.6% across comparable North Carolina cities — a gap of 5.8 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 counts dominate Spruce Pine'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 2 reported violent incidents in a population of 2,189. 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.
On a small municipal row, small denominators make rates sensitive to a handful of incidents. Figures are reported totals, not neighbourhood advice.
Across 4.1 Census sq mi, Spruce Pine logged 8.1 property and 0.5 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Spruce Pine's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (66% of 35 offenses; mix index 4,776).
Violent offenses are only 6% of the municipal total - a property-led book.
Spruce Pine offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (4.1 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 | 33 | 1507.5 |
| Larceny-Theft | 23 | 1050.7 |
| Burglary | 6 | 274.1 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 4 | 182.7 |
| Arson | 0 | 0 |
| Violent Crime | 2 | 91.4 |
| Rape | 2 | 91.4 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
| Robbery | 0 | 0 |
| Aggravated Assault | 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 | 2,133 | 0 | 421.9 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 2,115 | 0 | 236.4 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 2,227 | 0 | 134.7 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 2,230 | 89.7 | 807.2 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 2,189 | 91.4 | 1507.5 |
Spruce Pine Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Spruce Pine's 35 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 North Carolina cities closest to Spruce Pine in population. Their populations run from 2,116 to 2,353, against 2,189 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Spruce Pine sits at 91.4/100K violent (grade A); the North Carolina cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
In 2024, Spruce Pine reported 2 violent crimes and 33 property crimes, for a total of 35 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Spruce Pine's violent crime rate increased by 1.9%, and the property crime rate increased by 86.8%.
The most common crime type in Spruce Pine is larceny-theft, accounting for 65.7% of all reported crimes (23 incidents in 2024).
Micro-municipal read: Spruce Pine's FBI UCR Table 8 row (2024) is the only source for the rates above.
With a small population base, per-100,000 rates amplify sparse counts. Incomplete submissions are excluded from rankings. See FBI.gov UCR for the raw Table 8 file.
Disclaimer (small municipal): small-base rates are especially easy to misread. Informational only - not advice. Source: FBI UCR Program.
Micro-municipal rate methodology for how Spruce Pine's small municipal row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Spruce Pine, NC rates use the reporting-year population on the municipal row.
Bulk download: city crime dataset (CSV/JSON)
Put this to use
Put the Spruce Pine, NC 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. Spruce Pine is scored as a small municipal UCR reporter (2,189 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.