Watford City, ND has a C safety grade (56/100) with a violent crime rate of 303 per 100,000, 14% below the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · small city
Watford City is a small municipal reporter (5,949 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with ND and U.S. context.
Data updated 2026-09-05
Watford City, ND is higher-crime than most U.S. cities, and earns a C PlainCrime safety grade, where violent crime runs 14% below the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Watford City, ND shows violent crime at 302.6 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 1,613.7 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 14% 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.
Small-count caution
Watford City reported 18 violent offences in 2024 against a population of 5,949. 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 Watford City's 302.6 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Dickinson (297.1), Mandan (287.3), Minot (318.9), Bismarck (278.0). 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 204.1 per 100,000 in 2020 to 302.6 in 2024 (+48.2%). The highest observed value was 507.9 in 2022 and the lowest 204.1 in 2020. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Position in the state cohort
At 302.6 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Watford City ranks 5 of 23 — above 18 of the 22 other North Dakota cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +102.7% against the cohort median of 149.3. Cities that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 15.8% of the 114 Part I offenses reported in Watford City for 2024, against a median of 12.5% across comparable North Dakota cities — a gap of 3.3 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.
Property counts dominate Watford City'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 18 reported violent incidents in a population of 5,949. 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 8.9 Census sq mi, Watford City logged 10.8 property and 2 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Watford City's 2024 book concentrates in larceny-theft (69% of 114 offenses; mix index 5,108).
Violent offenses are 16% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
Watford City offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (8.9 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 | 96 | 1613.7 |
| Larceny-Theft | 79 | 1328 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 13 | 218.5 |
| Burglary | 4 | 67.2 |
| Arson | 0 | 0 |
| Violent Crime | 18 | 302.6 |
| Aggravated Assault | 14 | 235.3 |
| Rape | 4 | 67.2 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
| Robbery | 0 | 0 |
Lead series · rose across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · rose · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 9,309 | 204.1 | 1031.3 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 9,301 | 225.8 | 1214.9 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 5,513 | 507.9 | 2231.1 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 5,716 | 332.4 | 2746.7 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 5,949 | 302.6 | 1613.7 |
Watford City Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Watford City's 114 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 North Dakota cities closest to Watford City in population. Their populations run from 2,060 to 7,995, against 5,949 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Watford City sits at 302.6/100K violent (grade C); the North Dakota cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
In 2024, Watford City reported 18 violent crimes and 96 property crimes, for a total of 114 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Watford City's violent crime rate decreased by 9%, and the property crime rate decreased by 41.2%.
The most common crime type in Watford City is larceny-theft, accounting for 69.3% of all reported crimes (79 incidents in 2024).
Small-city read: Watford City 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 Watford City's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Watford City, ND rates use the reporting-year population on the municipal row.
Bulk download: city crime dataset (CSV/JSON)
Put this to use
Put the Watford City, ND FBI UCR record to work: compare peers, open the state atlas, or look up another city.
A citywide UCR rate is a starting point, not a neighbourhood verdict: read the full profile and the year coverage notes before drawing conclusions.
Every figure on PlainCrime is rendered directly from FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) source data, no number is typed in by an editor. Watford City is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (5,949 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.