Vista, CA has a B safety grade (61/100) with a violent crime rate of 316 per 100,000, 10% below the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · large city
At 98,290 residents, Vista is a large city: FBI UCR Table 8 rates (per 100,000) here are read against CA and U.S. averages before the offense-family breakdown.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Vista, CA carries a PlainCrime B safety grade with violent crime 10% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Vista, CA shows violent crime at 316.4 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 863.8 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 10% below the U.S. average. PlainCrime assigns grade B 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 Vista's 316.4 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Monrovia (316.2), Alameda (317.0), Exeter (314.7), Milpitas (313.6). 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.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 26.8% of the 1,160 Part I offenses reported in Vista for 2024, against a median of 17.1% across comparable California cities — a gap of 9.7 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 336.3 per 100,000 in 2020 to 316.4 in 2024 (-5.9%). The highest observed value was 386.8 in 2023 and the lowest 316.4 in 2024. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Position in the state cohort
At 316.4 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Vista ranks 238 of 458 — above 220 of the 457 other California cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is -5.0% against the cohort median of 333.1. Cities that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
Property counts dominate Vista'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 19 Census sq mi, Vista logged 44.8 property and 16.4 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Vista leans on larceny-theft at 47% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 3,037.
Violent offenses are 27% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
Vista offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (19 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 | 849 | 863.8 |
| Larceny-Theft | 543 | 552.4 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 184 | 187.2 |
| Burglary | 122 | 124.1 |
| Arson | 7 | 7.1 |
| Violent Crime | 311 | 316.4 |
| Aggravated Assault | 250 | 254.3 |
| Robbery | 50 | 50.9 |
| Rape | 9 | 9.2 |
| Murder | 2 | 2 |
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 | 102,600 | 336.3 | 1181.3 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 101,397 | 352.1 | 1262.4 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 98,802 | 383.6 | 1485.8 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 97,457 | 386.8 | 1209.8 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 98,290 | 316.4 | 863.8 |
Vista Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Vista's 1,160 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 California cities closest to Vista in population. Their populations run from 96,077 to 101,377, against 98,290 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Vista sits at 316.4/100K violent (grade B); the California cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Vista at 316.4/100K violent and 863.8/100K property - matched below outside California (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
316.4/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
863.8/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
Out-of-state cities whose violent rate moved a similar share from 2023→2024 (-18.2% here); level-based peers above are excluded.
In 2024, Vista reported 311 violent crimes and 849 property crimes, for a total of 1,160 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Vista's violent crime rate decreased by 18.2%, and the property crime rate decreased by 28.6%.
The most common crime type in Vista is larceny-theft, accounting for 46.8% of all reported crimes (543 incidents in 2024).
Large-city read: Vista'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 Vista's large city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Vista, 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. Vista is scored here as a large city UCR reporter (98,290 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.