County crime profile · 2024 · small county · property-led
Palo Alto County is a small county (8,996 people) in Iowa. FBI Table 10 county totals lead; rates appear only with a verified Census population join.
Data updated 2026-09-05
Palo Alto County, IA reported 67 violent crimes per 100,000 in FBI UCR 2024
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Palo Alto County, IA agencies reported 6 violent and 31 property offenses. That equals about 67 violent and 345 property crimes per 100,000 using a verified Census population join. Table 10 coverage is a voluntary subset of U.S. counties.
Small-count caution
Palo Alto County reported 6 violent offences in 2024 against a population of 8,996. 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.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 133.4 per 100,000 in 2020 to 66.7 in 2024 (-50.0%). The highest observed value was 155.6 in 2022 and the lowest 33.3 in 2021. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Position in the state cohort
At 66.7 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Palo Alto County ranks 28 of 86 — above 58 of the 85 other Iowa counties whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test and carries a matched Census denominator. That is +44.2% against the cohort median of 46.3. Counties 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 16.2% of the 37 Part I offenses reported in Palo Alto County for 2024, against a median of 24.5% across comparable Iowa counties — 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.
Small-county UCR rows are especially sensitive to which agencies filed. Per-100,000 rates use a matched 2020 Census population when available; otherwise counts only. Do not treat the county total as a town-level crime level.
| Category | Count |
|---|---|
| Property Crime | 31 |
| Burglary | 7 |
| Larceny-Theft | 19 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 5 |
| Arson | 1 |
| Violent Crime | 6 |
| Murder | 0 |
| Rape | 0 |
| Robbery | 0 |
| Aggravated Assault | 6 |
Palo Alto County's crime figures on this page originate from Palo Alto County Sheriff's Office'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.
A per-capita rate is easiest to read against places of similar scale, so these are the Iowa counties closest to Palo Alto County in population. Their populations run from 8,634 to 9,388, against 8,996 here. Or launch the side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two jurisdictions directly.
State atlas: Iowa · Compare · Rankings
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, Crime in the United States (CIUS) Table 10.
FBI Table 10 supplies county offense counts but no resident population. Where this page shows a per-100,000 rate, the denominator is a separately matched 2020 U.S. Census Bureau county population; unmatched county rows remain count-only. Statewide comparisons draw on the state UCR program. Verify with FBI.gov UCR and Census.gov QuickFacts.
Read our methodology , how this data is sourced, computed, and verified.
Put this to use
Use the Palo Alto County, IA FBI UCR county record to open cities inside the county, compare the state file, or look up another place.
County Table 10 totals are voluntary agency filings: incomplete coverage is not a county crime measure, and a countywide figure is not a neighbourhood verdict.
Every figure on PlainCrime is rendered directly from FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) source data, no number is typed in by an editor. This page draws directly on FBI Uniform Crime Reporting source data, no figure is typed in by an editor. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.