Walnut Creek, CA has a C safety grade (47/100) with a violent crime rate of 281 per 100,000, 20% below the national average.
At 68,808 residents, Walnut Creek 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.
Walnut Creek, CA carries a PlainCrime C safety grade with violent crime 20% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Walnut Creek, CA shows violent crime at 280.5 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 2,897.9 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 20% below 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.
The verdict
Walnut Creek earns a C safety grade: violent crime runs 20% below the U.S. average, placing it higher-crime than most U.S. cities.
2020–2024 direction
Across 4 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 128.4 per 100,000 in 2020 to 280.5 in 2024 (+118.4%). The highest observed value was 301.0 in 2023 and the lowest 128.4 in 2020. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Walnut Creek's 280.5 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Shafter (279.1), San Dimas (282.6), Cathedral City (283.3), Dixon (283.5). 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.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 8.8% of the 2,187 Part I offenses reported in Walnut Creek for 2024, against a median of 17.1% across comparable California cities — a gap of 8.3 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.
Position in the state cohort
At 280.5 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Walnut Creek ranks 272 of 458 — above 186 of the 457 other California cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is -15.8% 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-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 77.9% of reported property offenses in Walnut Creek, against a cohort median of 69.5%. The remainder is burglary (268) and motor vehicle theft (173). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Property counts dominate Walnut Creek'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.
| Offense | Count | Rate /100K |
|---|---|---|
| Property Crime | 1,994 | 2897.9 |
| Larceny-Theft | 1,553 | 2257 |
| Burglary | 268 | 389.5 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 173 | 251.4 |
| Arson | 2 | 2.9 |
| Violent Crime | 193 | 280.5 |
| Aggravated Assault | 117 | 170 |
| Robbery | 59 | 85.7 |
| Rape | 17 | 24.7 |
| 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 | 70,849 | 128.4 | 2916.1 |
| 2021 | Insufficient reporting | 70,519 | - | - |
| 2022 | Comparable | 69,417 | 227.6 | 3067 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 68,441 | 301 | 2760 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 68,808 | 280.5 | 2897.9 |
Walnut Creek's crime figures on this page originate from Walnut Creek Police Department's submission to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program.
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 Walnut Creek in population. Their populations run from 66,593 to 71,689, against 68,808 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
These California cities report the closest violent-crime rates to Walnut Creek's 280.5/100K (same FBI UCR vintage rules; size peers above are excluded so the two lists stay distinct).
Large-city read: Walnut Creek'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 Walnut Creek's large city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Walnut Creek, 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. Walnut Creek is scored here as a large city UCR reporter (68,808 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.