West Liberty, IA has a B safety grade (60/100) with a violent crime rate of 380 per 100,000, 8% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · small city
West Liberty is a small municipal reporter (3,688 on the UCR row). Per-100,000 violent and property rates are shown with IA and U.S. context.
Data updated 2026-08-24
West Liberty, IA carries a PlainCrime B safety grade with violent crime 8% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, West Liberty, IA shows violent crime at 379.6 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 271.1 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 8% above 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.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 58.3% of the 24 Part I offenses reported in West Liberty for 2024, against a median of 15.8% across comparable Iowa cities — a gap of 42.5 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.
Small-count caution
West Liberty reported 14 violent offences in 2024 against a population of 3,688. 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.
Property-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 30.0% of reported property offenses in West Liberty, against a cohort median of 76.8%. The remainder is burglary (7) and motor vehicle theft (0). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Position in the state cohort
At 379.6 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, West Liberty ranks 19 of 148 — above 129 of the 147 other Iowa cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +166.0% against the cohort median of 142.7. Cities that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to West Liberty's 379.6 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Belle Plaine (384.0), Newton (384.3), Sheldon (370.6), Atlantic (368.8). 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 265.4 per 100,000 in 2020 to 379.6 in 2024 (+43.0%). The highest observed value was 379.6 in 2024 and the lowest 162.1 in 2023. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Violent counts are the sharper signal on West Liberty's FBI UCR Table 8 municipal row. Per-100,000 rates use the reporting-year population on that row; incomplete reporters stay out of rate rankings. A citywide figure rarely describes any single neighbourhood inside the municipal boundary.
Based on 14 reported violent incidents in a population of 3,688. 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 1.8 Census sq mi, West Liberty logged 5.7 property and 7.9 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
West Liberty leans on aggravated assault at 54% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 3,958.
Violent offenses are 58% of the municipal total - a violence-heavy book for a small city.
West Liberty offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (1.8 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Violent Crime | 14 | 379.6 |
| Aggravated Assault | 13 | 352.5 |
| Murder | 1 | 27.1 |
| Rape | 0 | 0 |
| Robbery | 0 | 0 |
| Property Crime | 10 | 271.1 |
| Burglary | 7 | 189.8 |
| Larceny-Theft | 3 | 81.3 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 0 | 0 |
| Arson | 0 | 0 |
Lead series · rose across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · fell · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 3,768 | 265.4 | 610.4 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 3,732 | 241.2 | 509.1 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 3,796 | 263.4 | 421.5 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 3,702 | 162.1 | 162.1 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 3,688 | 379.6 | 271.1 |
West Liberty Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind West Liberty's 24 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 West Liberty in population. Their populations run from 3,399 to 3,895, against 3,688 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
In 2024, West Liberty reported 14 violent crimes and 10 property crimes, for a total of 24 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, West Liberty's violent crime rate increased by 134.2%, and the property crime rate increased by 67.2%.
The most common crime type in West Liberty is aggravated assault, accounting for 54.2% of all reported crimes (13 incidents in 2024).
Small-city read: West Liberty 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 West Liberty's small city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 West Liberty, 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. West Liberty is scored as a small-city UCR reporter (3,688 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.