Tehachapi, CA has a F safety grade (21/100) with a violent crime rate of 574 per 100,000, 63% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · mid-size city
Tehachapi (10,275 people) sits in the mid-size municipal band. This page opens with per-100,000 FBI UCR rates, then CA and national benchmarks.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Tehachapi, CA carries a PlainCrime F safety grade with violent crime 63% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Tehachapi, CA shows violent crime at 574.2 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 2,549.9 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 63% above the U.S. average. PlainCrime assigns grade F 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 Tehachapi's 574.2 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Selma (573.8), Maywood (576.1), Tulare (571.9), Dinuba (579.5). 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 574.2 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Tehachapi ranks 99 of 458 — above 359 of the 457 other California cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +74.8% 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 435.0 per 100,000 in 2020 to 574.2 in 2024 (+32.0%). The highest observed value was 574.2 in 2024 and the lowest 429.6 in 2023. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 80.2% of reported property offenses in Tehachapi, against a cohort median of 69.5%. The remainder is burglary (13) and motor vehicle theft (39). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Property counts dominate Tehachapi'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 10.3 Census sq mi, Tehachapi logged 25.5 property and 5.7 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Tehachapi's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (65% of 321 offenses; mix index 4,623).
Violent offenses are 18% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
Tehachapi offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (10.3 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 | 262 | 2549.9 |
| Larceny-Theft | 210 | 2043.8 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 39 | 379.6 |
| Burglary | 13 | 126.5 |
| Arson | 1 | 9.7 |
| Violent Crime | 59 | 574.2 |
| Aggravated Assault | 41 | 399 |
| Robbery | 10 | 97.3 |
| Rape | 8 | 77.9 |
| 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 · fell across 4 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · rose · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 12,873 | 435 | 2602.3 |
| 2021 | Insufficient reporting | 12,596 | - | - |
| 2022 | Comparable | 13,212 | 461.7 | 2248 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 12,104 | 429.6 | 2255.5 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 10,275 | 574.2 | 2549.9 |
Tehachapi Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Tehachapi's 321 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 Tehachapi in population. Their populations run from 10,164 to 10,583, against 10,275 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Tehachapi sits at 574.2/100K violent (grade F); the California cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Tehachapi at 574.2/100K violent and 2,549.9/100K property - matched below outside California (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
574.2/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
2,549.9/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
In 2024, Tehachapi reported 59 violent crimes and 262 property crimes, for a total of 321 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Tehachapi's violent crime rate increased by 33.7%, and the property crime rate increased by 13.1%.
The most common crime type in Tehachapi is larceny-theft, accounting for 65.4% of all reported crimes (210 incidents in 2024).
Mid-size read: Tehachapi 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 Tehachapi's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Tehachapi, 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. Tehachapi is scored in the mid-size municipal band (10,275 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.