Sweetwater, TX has a C safety grade (40/100) with a violent crime rate of 501 per 100,000, 42% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · mid-size city
Sweetwater (10,180 people) sits in the mid-size municipal band. This page opens with per-100,000 FBI UCR rates, then TX and national benchmarks.
Data updated 2026-09-05
Sweetwater, TX is among the highest-crime cities in the country, and earns a C PlainCrime safety grade, where violent crime runs 42% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Sweetwater, TX shows violent crime at 501 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 1,119.8 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 42% 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 201.6 per 100,000 in 2020 to 501.0 in 2024 (+148.6%). The highest observed value was 638.3 in 2021 and the lowest 201.6 in 2020. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Position in the state cohort
At 501.0 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Sweetwater ranks 64 of 686 — above 622 of the 685 other Texas cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +180.0% against the cohort median of 178.9. 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 Sweetwater's 501.0 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Mesquite (501.3), Center (504.6), Hutchins (496.8), Henderson (495.2). 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 30.9% of the 165 Part I offenses reported in Sweetwater for 2024, against a median of 14.3% across comparable Texas cities — a gap of 16.6 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 Sweetwater'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 11.1 Census sq mi, Sweetwater logged 10.3 property and 4.6 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Sweetwater leans on larceny-theft at 47% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 2,928.
Violent offenses are 31% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
Sweetwater offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (11.1 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 | 114 | 1119.8 |
| Larceny-Theft | 77 | 756.4 |
| Burglary | 27 | 265.2 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 10 | 98.2 |
| Arson | 4 | 39.3 |
| Violent Crime | 51 | 501 |
| Aggravated Assault | 32 | 314.3 |
| Rape | 12 | 117.9 |
| Robbery | 5 | 49.1 |
| Murder | 2 | 19.6 |
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 | 10,419 | 201.6 | 1382.1 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 10,497 | 638.3 | 1952.9 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 10,420 | 585.4 | 1410.7 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 10,310 | 523.8 | 1134.8 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 10,180 | 501 | 1119.8 |
Sweetwater Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Sweetwater's 165 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 Texas cities closest to Sweetwater in population. Their populations run from 9,997 to 10,330, against 10,180 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Sweetwater sits at 501/100K violent (grade C); the Texas cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Sweetwater at 501/100K violent and 1,119.8/100K property - matched below outside Texas (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
501/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
1,119.8/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
In 2024, Sweetwater reported 51 violent crimes and 114 property crimes, for a total of 165 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Sweetwater's violent crime rate decreased by 4.4%, and the property crime rate decreased by 1.3%.
The most common crime type in Sweetwater is larceny-theft, accounting for 46.7% of all reported crimes (77 incidents in 2024).
Mid-size read: Sweetwater 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 Sweetwater's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Sweetwater, TX rates use the reporting-year population on the municipal row.
Bulk download: city crime dataset (CSV/JSON)
Put this to use
Put the Sweetwater, TX 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. Sweetwater is scored in the mid-size municipal band (10,180 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.