County crime profile · 2024 · large county · property-led
At 54,086 residents, Watauga County is a large county in North Carolina. FBI UCR county totals below are read before any per-100,000 rate (Census denominator when matched).
Data updated 2026-07-13
Watauga County, NC reported 35 violent crimes per 100,000 in FBI UCR 2024
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Watauga County, NC agencies reported 19 violent and 134 property offenses. That equals about 35 violent and 248 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
Watauga County reported 19 violent offences in 2024 against a population of 54,086. 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.
Position in the state cohort
At 35.1 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Watauga County ranks 73 of 77 — above 4 of the 76 other North Carolina counties whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test and carries a matched Census denominator. That is -71.9% against the cohort median of 125.2. 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 12.4% of the 153 Part I offenses reported in Watauga County for 2024, against a median of 18.0% across comparable North Carolina counties — a gap of 5.6 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
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 37.0 per 100,000 in 2020 to 35.1 in 2024 (-5.0%). The highest observed value was 64.7 in 2021 and the lowest 27.7 in 2022. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
On a 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.
| Category | Count |
|---|---|
| Property Crime | 134 |
| Burglary | 39 |
| Larceny-Theft | 81 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 14 |
| Arson | 1 |
| Violent Crime | 19 |
| Murder | 3 |
| Rape | 3 |
| Robbery | 0 |
| Aggravated Assault | 13 |
Watauga County's crime figures on this page originate from Watauga 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 North Carolina counties closest to Watauga County in population. Their populations run from 48,622 to 60,203, against 54,086 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.
Read our methodology , how this data is sourced, computed, and verified.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 10 county crime · 2024 Watauga County, NC figures cover participating agencies only.
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.