Most Dangerous Cities in Iowa

FBI UCR Highest-Crime Snapshot: Iowa

Iowa's 37 highest-crime cities for 2024 range from Fort Dodge at the top with a violent crime rate of 1061.1/100K down to Carroll at 39.5/100K — all sitting above most US municipal averages. The list draws on FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program Table 8 submissions and restricts inclusion to cities of 10,000 residents or more so that per-capita rates reflect enough underlying offenses to be statistically meaningful. Across these 37 Iowa cities the average violent crime rate reaches 268.1 per 100,000 residents, a figure that typically exceeds the US national violent crime benchmark by a wide margin.

At the top of the ranking, Fort Dodge recorded 260 violent crimes and 783 property crimes against a reporting population of 24,502 in 2024. That produces a property crime rate of 3195.7 per 100,000 residents alongside the 1061.1/100K violent rate, with both Part I crime categories elevated compared to state and national benchmarks. The five most dangerous Iowa cities on this list are Fort Dodge, Des Moines, Davenport, Sioux City, Waterloo, each submitting Part I offense counts to the FBI UCR Program for 2024.

Elevated per-capita rates can reflect multiple factors beyond raw crime volume: small reporting populations amplify year-to-year rate volatility, transient or tourist populations dilute resident denominators, and municipal boundaries sometimes exclude higher-income suburbs that would otherwise balance the total. UCR figures also reflect offenses reported to and submitted by local law enforcement and can miss unreported crime entirely, so rankings measure visible, recorded crime rather than absolute community conditions. Readers comparing these cities with others across Iowa can use the A-F safety grades page or national rankings to contextualize how 2024 figures stack up against peers nationwide.