County crime profile · 2024 · very large county · property-led
San Diego County, CA
At 3,298,634 residents, San Diego County is a very large county in California. FBI UCR county totals below are read before any per-100,000 rate (Census denominator when matched).
San Diego County, CA reported 38 violent crimes per 100,000 in FBI UCR 2024
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, San Diego County, CA agencies reported 1,265 violent and 2,453 property offenses. That equals about 38 violent and 74 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
1,265 violent offenses
38/100K violent rate
What the 2024 FBI UCR record shows for San Diego County, CA
Position in the state cohort
San Diego County reported a lower violent-crime rate than most comparable California counties
At 38.3 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, San Diego County ranks 49 of 56 — above 7 of the 55 other California counties whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test and carries a matched Census denominator. That is -70.5% against the cohort median of 129.8. Counties that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
Property-offense composition
Burglary and vehicle theft carry more of the property total than they do across the cohort
Larceny-theft is 50.4% of reported property offenses in San Diego County, against a cohort median of 66.2%. The remainder is burglary (448) and motor vehicle theft (768). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Offense mix
Violent offenses make up an unusually large share of the reported mix
Violent offenses are 34.0% of the 3,718 Part I offenses reported in San Diego County for 2024, against a median of 29.6% across comparable California counties — a gap of 4.5 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.
2020–2024 direction
The reported violent-crime rate ended the window lower
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 43.5 per 100,000 in 2020 to 38.3 in 2024 (-11.8%). The highest observed value was 77.6 in 2021 and the lowest 38.3 in 2024. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
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
2,453
Burglary
448
Larceny-Theft
1,237
Motor Vehicle Theft
768
Arson
30
Violent Crime
1,265
Murder
9
Rape
45
Robbery
128
Aggravated Assault
1,083
Reporting Agency
San Diego County Sheriff's Office NIBRS-participating
San Diego County's crime figures on this page originate from San Diego 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 California
A per-capita rate is easiest to read against places of similar scale, so these are the California counties closest to San Diego County in population. Their populations run from 1,682,353 to 3,186,989, against 3,298,634 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.