Waterville, OH has a A safety grade (82/100) with a violent crime rate of 133 per 100,000, 62% below the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · small city
Waterville is a small municipal reporter (5,998 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with OH and U.S. context.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Waterville, OH carries a PlainCrime A safety grade with violent crime 62% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Waterville, OH shows violent crime at 133.4 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 583.5 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 62% 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 54.1 per 100,000 in 2020 to 133.4 in 2024 (+146.4%). The highest observed value was 133.4 in 2024 and the lowest 53.5 in 2021. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Small-count caution
Waterville reported 8 violent offences in 2024 against a population of 5,998. At this volume one additional or one fewer report moves the per-100,000 rate noticeably, so the figure is better read as a data point than as a precise measurement, and year-to-year swings here are expected.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Waterville's 133.4 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Boardman (133.9), Delhi Township (134.1), Ravenna (134.1), Norton (132.6). 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 18.6% of the 43 Part I offenses reported in Waterville for 2024, against a median of 10.6% across comparable Ohio cities — a gap of 8.0 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 133.4 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Waterville ranks 148 of 340 — above 192 of the 339 other Ohio cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +17.9% against the cohort median of 113.1. 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 Waterville'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.
Based on 8 reported violent incidents in a population of 5,998. At this volume, one additional or one fewer report can shift the rate and letter grade noticeably; small-city crime counts are inherently more volatile year to year than large-city counts, so treat this grade as a data point, not a precise ranking.
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 5.2 Census sq mi, Waterville logged 6.8 property and 1.5 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Waterville's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (70% of 43 offenses; mix index 5,224).
Violent offenses are 19% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
Waterville offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (5.2 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 | 35 | 583.5 |
| Larceny-Theft | 30 | 500.2 |
| Burglary | 5 | 83.4 |
| Arson | 1 | 16.7 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 0 | 0 |
| Violent Crime | 8 | 133.4 |
| Aggravated Assault | 6 | 100 |
| Rape | 2 | 33.3 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
| Robbery | 0 | 0 |
Lead series · fell across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · rose · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 5,543 | 54.1 | 721.6 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 5,605 | 53.5 | 499.6 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 6,022 | 132.8 | 514.8 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 6,011 | 83.2 | 432.5 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 5,998 | 133.4 | 583.5 |
Waterville Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Waterville's 43 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 Ohio cities closest to Waterville in population. Their populations run from 5,742 to 6,190, against 5,998 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Waterville sits at 133.4/100K violent (grade A); the Ohio cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
In 2024, Waterville reported 8 violent crimes and 35 property crimes, for a total of 43 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Waterville's violent crime rate increased by 60.3%, and the property crime rate increased by 34.9%.
The most common crime type in Waterville is larceny-theft, accounting for 69.8% of all reported crimes (30 incidents in 2024).
Small-city read: Waterville 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 Waterville's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Waterville, OH 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. Waterville is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (5,998 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.