Wheeling, WV has a F safety grade (13/100) with a violent crime rate of 983 per 100,000, 179% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · mid-size city
Wheeling (25,951 people) sits in the mid-size municipal band. This page opens with per-100,000 FBI UCR rates, then WV and national benchmarks.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Wheeling, WV carries a PlainCrime F safety grade with violent crime 179% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Wheeling, WV shows violent crime at 982.6 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 1,992.2 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 179% above the U.S. average. PlainCrime assigns grade F from those rates. Figures are voluntary agency submissions joined to population denominators; incomplete coverage can move the number.
Position in the state cohort
At 982.6 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Wheeling ranks 1 of 49 — above 48 of the 48 other West Virginia cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +472.8% against the cohort median of 171.6. 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 33.0% of the 772 Part I offenses reported in Wheeling for 2024, against a median of 9.4% across comparable West Virginia cities — a gap of 23.7 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.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Wheeling's 982.6 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Montgomery (827.1), Huntington (800.3), Moorefield (766.1), Romney (628.9). 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.
Property-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 66.3% of reported property offenses in Wheeling, against a cohort median of 86.2%. The remainder is burglary (145) and motor vehicle theft (29). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 1258.5 per 100,000 in 2020 to 982.6 in 2024 (-21.9%). The highest observed value was 1258.5 in 2020 and the lowest 982.6 in 2024. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property counts dominate Wheeling'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.
Mid-size municipal totals above are reported offenses, not safety advice for any single block. Reporting completeness still varies by year and agency.
Across 13.6 Census sq mi, Wheeling logged 38 property and 18.8 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Wheeling leans on larceny-theft at 44% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 3,212.
Violent offenses are 33% of the municipal total; property offenses still dominate the count.
Wheeling offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (13.6 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 | 517 | 1992.2 |
| Larceny-Theft | 343 | 1321.7 |
| Burglary | 145 | 558.7 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 29 | 111.7 |
| Arson | 1 | 3.9 |
| Violent Crime | 255 | 982.6 |
| Aggravated Assault | 227 | 874.7 |
| Rape | 14 | 53.9 |
| Robbery | 14 | 53.9 |
| Murder | 0 | 0 |
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 | 26,222 | 1258.5 | 2246.2 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 26,081 | 1039.1 | 1825.1 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 26,244 | 1246 | 2415.8 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 26,104 | 992.2 | 2030.3 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 25,951 | 982.6 | 1992.2 |
Wheeling Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Wheeling's 772 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 West Virginia cities closest to Wheeling in population. Their populations run from 10,397 to 30,510, against 25,951 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Wheeling sits at 982.6/100K violent (grade F); the West Virginia cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Wheeling at 982.6/100K violent and 1,992.2/100K property - matched below outside West Virginia (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
982.6/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
1,992.2/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
Out-of-state cities whose violent rate moved a similar share from 2023→2024 (-1% here); level-based peers above are excluded.
In 2024, Wheeling reported 255 violent crimes and 517 property crimes, for a total of 772 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Wheeling's violent crime rate decreased by 1%, and the property crime rate decreased by 1.9%.
The most common crime type in Wheeling is larceny-theft, accounting for 44.4% of all reported crimes (343 incidents in 2024).
Mid-size read: Wheeling figures are FBI UCR CIUS Table 8 (vintage 2024), population-adjusted per 100,000.
Denominators are the reporting-year population on the municipal row. Incomplete years are dropped from rankings. Confirm at FBI Crime Data Explorer and Census.gov QuickFacts.
Disclaimer (mid-size municipal): figures are informational, not advice. FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program is the source. Consult a professional before decisions.
Mid-size rate methodology for how Wheeling's mid-size city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Wheeling, WV 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. Wheeling is scored in the mid-size municipal band (25,951 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.