Surprise, AZ has a A safety grade (81/100) with a violent crime rate of 109 per 100,000, 69% below the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · large city
At 163,202 residents, Surprise is a large city: FBI UCR Table 8 rates (per 100,000) here are read against AZ and U.S. averages before the offense-family breakdown.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Surprise, AZ carries a PlainCrime A safety grade with violent crime 69% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Surprise, AZ shows violent crime at 109.1 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 875.6 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 69% 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.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Surprise's 109.1 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Wickenburg (107.9), Marana (115.7), Litchfield Park (101.7), Bisbee (99.6). 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 109.1 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Surprise ranks 51 of 64 — above 13 of the 63 other Arizona cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is -58.2% against the cohort median of 261.2. Cities that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 145.2 per 100,000 in 2020 to 109.1 in 2024 (-24.9%). The highest observed value was 145.2 in 2020 and the lowest 100.4 in 2023. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 11.1% of the 1,607 Part I offenses reported in Surprise for 2024, against a median of 14.8% across comparable Arizona cities — a gap of 3.7 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 Surprise'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.
On a large city row, these are citywide reported offense totals - not neighbourhood advice. Conditions vary by place and time; reporting rates differ across jurisdictions.
Across 110.5 Census sq mi, Surprise logged 12.9 property and 1.6 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Surprise's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (69% of 1,607 offenses; mix index 5,052).
Violent offenses are only 11% of the municipal total - a property-led book.
Surprise offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (110.5 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 | 1,429 | 875.6 |
| Larceny-Theft | 1,113 | 682 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 162 | 99.3 |
| Burglary | 154 | 94.4 |
| Arson | 12 | 7.4 |
| Violent Crime | 178 | 109.1 |
| Aggravated Assault | 121 | 74.1 |
| Rape | 27 | 16.5 |
| Robbery | 18 | 11 |
| Murder | 12 | 7.4 |
Lead series · fell across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · fell · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 144,620 | 145.2 | 1398.1 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 145,832 | 132.3 | 1490.1 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 154,128 | 119.4 | 1413.1 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 159,346 | 100.4 | 1257.6 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 163,202 | 109.1 | 875.6 |
Surprise Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Surprise's 1,607 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 Arizona cities closest to Surprise in population. Their populations run from 82,639 to 245,237, against 163,202 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Surprise sits at 109.1/100K violent (grade A); the Arizona cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Surprise at 109.1/100K violent and 875.6/100K property - matched below outside Arizona (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
109.1/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
875.6/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
Out-of-state cities whose violent rate moved a similar share from 2023→2024 (+8.7% here); level-based peers above are excluded.
In 2024, Surprise reported 178 violent crimes and 1,429 property crimes, for a total of 1,607 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Surprise's violent crime rate increased by 8.7%, and the property crime rate decreased by 30.4%.
The most common crime type in Surprise is larceny-theft, accounting for 69.3% of all reported crimes (1,113 incidents in 2024).
Large-city read: Surprise's rates come from the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, CIUS Table 8, vintage 2024.
Incomplete reporters stay out of rate rankings. Cross-check population with Census ACS; state UCR programs for statewide context. Primary verify links: FBI.gov UCR, Census QuickFacts.
Disclaimer (large city): informational crime rates only - not legal, insurance, or personal-safety advice. Source: FBI UCR. Ask a qualified professional before acting.
Large-city rate methodology for how Surprise's large city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Surprise, AZ 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. Surprise is scored here as a large city UCR reporter (163,202 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.