Sunset Beach, NC has a A safety grade (81/100) with a violent crime rate of 107 per 100,000, 70% below the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · small city
Sunset Beach is a small municipal reporter (4,660 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with NC and U.S. context.
Data updated 2026-09-05
Sunset Beach, NC is close to the national middle for violent crime, and earns an A PlainCrime safety grade, where violent crime runs 70% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Sunset Beach, NC shows violent crime at 107.3 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 965.7 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 70% 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 48.9 per 100,000 in 2020 to 107.3 in 2024 (+119.5%). The highest observed value was 107.3 in 2024 and the lowest 22.3 in 2023. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Small-count caution
Sunset Beach reported 5 violent offences in 2024 against a population of 4,660. 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 Sunset Beach's 107.3 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Archdale (107.1), Mount Holly (107.6), Cramerton (108.0), Valdese (106.3). 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 107.3 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Sunset Beach ranks 157 of 206 — above 49 of the 205 other North Carolina cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is -62.4% 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.
Property counts dominate Sunset 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 5 reported violent incidents in a population of 4,660. 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.
Small-city offense counts above are voluntary UCR submissions, not neighbourhood advice. Year-to-year swings can look large when the population base is modest.
Across 6.8 Census sq mi, Sunset Beach logged 6.7 property and 0.7 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Sunset Beach's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (72% of 50 offenses; mix index 5,608).
Violent offenses are only 10% of the municipal total - a property-led book.
Sunset Beach offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (6.8 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 | 45 | 965.7 |
| Larceny-Theft | 36 | 772.5 |
| Burglary | 9 | 193.1 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 0 | 0 |
| Arson | 0 | 0 |
| Violent Crime | 5 | 107.3 |
| Aggravated Assault | 5 | 107.3 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
| Rape | 0 | 0 |
| Robbery | 0 | 0 |
Lead series · rose across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · rose · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 4,092 | 48.9 | 855.3 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 4,236 | 70.8 | 1227.6 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 4,322 | 92.5 | 1156.9 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 4,484 | 22.3 | 847.5 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 4,660 | 107.3 | 965.7 |
Sunset Beach Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Sunset Beach's 50 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 Sunset Beach in population. Their populations run from 4,542 to 4,732, against 4,660 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Sunset Beach sits at 107.3/100K violent (grade A); the North Carolina cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
In 2024, Sunset Beach reported 5 violent crimes and 45 property crimes, for a total of 50 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Sunset Beach's violent crime rate increased by 381.2%, and the property crime rate increased by 13.9%.
The most common crime type in Sunset Beach is larceny-theft, accounting for 72.0% of all reported crimes (36 incidents in 2024).
Small-city read: Sunset Beach is sourced from FBI UCR Table 8 for 2024; rates use that row's population.
Small-city rows use the same per-100,000 formula; a few unreported years can leave gaps in the trend table. Verify the agency's submission on FBI.gov UCR.
Disclaimer (small city): UCR counts here are informational only. They are not a victimization probability. Source: FBI UCR Program.
Small-city rate methodology for how Sunset Beach's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Sunset Beach, NC rates use the reporting-year population on the municipal row.
Bulk download: city crime dataset (CSV/JSON)
Put this to use
Put the Sunset Beach, 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. Sunset Beach is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (4,660 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.