Taft, CA has a D safety grade (30/100) with a violent crime rate of 471 per 100,000, 34% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · small city
Taft is a small municipal reporter (6,801 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with CA and U.S. context.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Taft, CA carries a PlainCrime D safety grade with violent crime 34% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Taft, CA shows violent crime at 470.5 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 2,705.5 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 34% above the U.S. average. PlainCrime assigns grade D 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 Taft's 470.5 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Redwood City (472.1), Avenal (468.4), Pico Rivera (468.1), Banning (467.1). 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 470.5 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Taft ranks 150 of 458 — above 308 of the 457 other California cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +43.2% against the cohort median of 328.5. 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 4 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 506.8 per 100,000 in 2020 to 470.5 in 2024 (-7.2%). The highest observed value was 784.0 in 2022 and the lowest 470.5 in 2024. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property counts dominate Taft'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.
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 15.3 Census sq mi, Taft logged 12 property and 2.1 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Taft leans on larceny-theft at 57% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 3,807.
Violent offenses are only 15% of the municipal total - a property-led book.
Taft offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (15.3 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 | 184 | 2705.5 |
| Larceny-Theft | 124 | 1823.3 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 31 | 455.8 |
| Burglary | 29 | 426.4 |
| Arson | 3 | 44.1 |
| Violent Crime | 32 | 470.5 |
| Aggravated Assault | 23 | 338.2 |
| Rape | 6 | 88.2 |
| Robbery | 3 | 44.1 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
The chart omits 2021 rather than drawing an unsupported zero or partial-coverage dip. The table preserves the year and marks the gap.
Lead series · rose across 4 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · fell · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 9,274 | 506.8 | 2372.2 |
| 2021 | Insufficient reporting | 8,418 | - | - |
| 2022 | Comparable | 8,674 | 784 | 3205 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 6,830 | 527.1 | 3338.2 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 6,801 | 470.5 | 2705.5 |
Taft Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Taft's 216 reported offenses (4-year span 2020-2024, with internal gaps).
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 Taft in population. Their populations run from 6,368 to 7,317, against 6,801 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Taft sits at 470.5/100K violent (grade D); the California cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
In 2024, Taft reported 32 violent crimes and 184 property crimes, for a total of 216 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Taft's violent crime rate decreased by 10.7%, and the property crime rate decreased by 19%.
The most common crime type in Taft is larceny-theft, accounting for 57.4% of all reported crimes (124 incidents in 2024).
Small-city read: Taft 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 Taft's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Taft, 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. Taft is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (6,801 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.