Urbandale, IA has a A safety grade (86/100) with a violent crime rate of 89 per 100,000, 75% below the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · mid-size city
Urbandale (47,119 people) sits in the mid-size municipal band. This page opens with per-100,000 FBI UCR rates, then IA and national benchmarks.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Urbandale, IA carries a PlainCrime A safety grade with violent crime 75% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Urbandale, IA shows violent crime at 89.1 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 634.6 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 75% 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 Urbandale's 89.1 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are New Hampton (88.3), Fairbank (88.1), Peosta (91.3), Buffalo (86.3). 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 89.1 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Urbandale ranks 108 of 148 — above 40 of the 147 other Iowa cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is -39.1% against the cohort median of 146.3. 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 104.5 per 100,000 in 2020 to 89.1 in 2024 (-14.7%). The highest observed value was 125.0 in 2023 and the lowest 89.1 in 2024. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 64.9% of reported property offenses in Urbandale, against a cohort median of 76.8%. The remainder is burglary (39) and motor vehicle theft (66). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 12.3% of the 341 Part I offenses reported in Urbandale for 2024, against a median of 15.9% across comparable Iowa cities — a gap of 3.6 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 Urbandale'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 22.5 Census sq mi, Urbandale logged 13.3 property and 1.9 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Urbandale leans on larceny-theft at 57% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 3,856.
Violent offenses are only 12% of the municipal total - a property-led book.
Urbandale offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (22.5 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 | 299 | 634.6 |
| Larceny-Theft | 194 | 411.7 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 66 | 140.1 |
| Burglary | 39 | 82.8 |
| Arson | 1 | 2.1 |
| Violent Crime | 42 | 89.1 |
| Aggravated Assault | 36 | 76.4 |
| Rape | 5 | 10.6 |
| Robbery | 1 | 2.1 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
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 | 44,959 | 104.5 | 1043.2 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 45,201 | 117.3 | 909.3 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 46,284 | 108 | 689.2 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 47,192 | 125 | 733.2 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 47,119 | 89.1 | 634.6 |
Urbandale Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Urbandale's 341 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 Iowa cities closest to Urbandale in population. Their populations run from 27,576 to 66,385, against 47,119 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Urbandale sits at 89.1/100K violent (grade A); the Iowa cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Urbandale at 89.1/100K violent and 634.6/100K property - matched below outside Iowa (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
89.1/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
634.6/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
Out-of-state cities whose violent rate moved a similar share from 2023→2024 (-28.7% here); level-based peers above are excluded.
In 2024, Urbandale reported 42 violent crimes and 299 property crimes, for a total of 341 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Urbandale's violent crime rate decreased by 28.7%, and the property crime rate decreased by 13.4%.
The most common crime type in Urbandale is larceny-theft, accounting for 56.9% of all reported crimes (194 incidents in 2024).
Mid-size read: Urbandale 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 Urbandale's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Urbandale, IA 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. Urbandale is scored in the mid-size municipal band (47,119 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.