Crime rate & statistics
Denver Crime Rate & Safety Statistics
Where Denver lands against national benchmarks for violent and property crime, and how to read those numbers without overreacting.
Key indices
Denver crime at a glance
Index values are scaled so that 100 equals the U.S. average.
Your odds
Estimated victimization risk
Calibrated against national benchmark rates and expressed as everyday odds.
Trend
Is crime rising or falling in Denver?
Reported incidents per month over the most recent year of data.
Context
How to read these numbers
By the headline measure, Denver reports more crime than the typical American city — a profile shared by many booming Western metros with a busy downtown and a steady flow of visitors and commuters. Dig past the headline, though, and the story is lopsided: property offenses, with vehicle theft leading the pack, account for the bulk of the volume, while the gravest violent crimes stay penned into a handful of corridors rather than touching most neighborhoods at all.
To make Denver comparable to anywhere else, we convert its crime levels into estimated incidents per 100,000 people and pair each category with a benchmark index. On that index, the national norm is pegged at 100 — so a reading of 140 points to roughly 40% more of that offense than the average U.S. community, while 75 means about a quarter less. We also restate the figures as a simple annual chance (a “1 in N” likelihood) and assign letter grades drawn from the same nationwide curve, so an A in Denver means the same thing as an A anywhere.