County crime profile · 2024 · very large county · property-led
Polk County, IA
At 492,401 residents, Polk County is a very large county in Iowa. FBI UCR county totals below are read before any per-100,000 rate (Census denominator when matched).
Polk County, IA reported 13 violent crimes per 100,000 in FBI UCR 2024
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Polk County, IA agencies reported 63 violent and 593 property offenses. That equals about 13 violent and 120 property crimes per 100,000 using a verified Census population join. Table 10 coverage is a voluntary subset of U.S. counties.
2024 UCR year
63 violent offenses
13/100K violent rate
What the 2024 FBI UCR record shows for Polk County, IA
Position in the state cohort
Polk County reported a lower violent-crime rate than most comparable Iowa counties
At 12.8 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Polk County ranks 77 of 86 — above 9 of the 85 other Iowa counties whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test and carries a matched Census denominator. That is -72.4% 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.
2020–2024 direction
The reported violent-crime rate ended the window lower
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 24.4 per 100,000 in 2020 to 12.8 in 2024 (-47.5%). The highest observed value was 24.4 in 2020 and the lowest 12.8 in 2024. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Offense mix
The reported mix leans further toward property offenses than the state cohort
Violent offenses are 9.6% of the 656 Part I offenses reported in Polk County for 2024, against a median of 24.5% across comparable Iowa counties — a gap of 14.9 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-offense composition
Larceny-theft dominates the property total more than it does across the cohort
Larceny-theft is 80.8% of reported property offenses in Polk County, against a cohort median of 56.6%. The remainder is burglary (54) and motor vehicle theft (60). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
On a very large county row, county figures aggregate every participating agency inside the county. Participation is voluntary. Per-100,000 rates use a separately matched 2020 U.S. Census county population, never a Table 10 field; unmatched counties stay count-only. A large county line encloses very different communities.
Crime Breakdown (2024) · property-led · very large county
Category
Count
Property Crime
593
Burglary
54
Larceny-Theft
479
Motor Vehicle Theft
60
Arson
2
Violent Crime
63
Murder
4
Rape
4
Robbery
6
Aggravated Assault
49
Reporting Agency
Polk County Sheriff's Office NIBRS-participating
Polk County's crime figures on this page originate from Polk 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.
Similar-Size Counties in Iowa
A per-capita rate is easiest to read against places of similar scale, so these are the Iowa counties closest to Polk County in population. Their populations run from 105,941 to 230,299, against 492,401 here. Or launch the
side-by-side compare tool
to benchmark two jurisdictions directly.
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.
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.