Crime in Palo Alto, California
Major crime in Palo Alto is 45% above the U.S. rate per resident: 51% lower for persons crimes and 1.7 times for property crimes. Expected major crimes are down 15.0% from a year earlier.
Modeled estimates per resident, not counts of incidents. How we calculated this
Index: crimes per resident compared with the U.S., where 100 is the U.S. rate and 200 is twice it.
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Theft from vehicle stands out most, at 3.4 times the U.S. rate
Expected crimes per year in Palo Alto for each type, and the index against the U.S. rate per resident.
Citywide indexWhere the middle half of residents live
Property crimes
Social disorder
How crime varies across Palo Alto
The middle half of Palo Alto residents live in neighborhoods with a major-crime index between 77 and 126; the typical (median) resident's is 90. The citywide figure (145) is higher than that because crime concentrates in a smaller set of areas.
- 0–503.5%
- 50–10058.4%
- 100–20018.6%
- 200–40010.9%
- 400+8.5%
Share of residents by the index of their census block group, a neighborhood of roughly 600 to 3,000 people.
Highest on weeknights
Major-crime index by time of week, against the U.S. rate for the same hours.
Major crime fell 15.0% in a year; across California it fell 7.4%
Change in expected crimes, with California as a whole in gray. The past year uses the reporting agencies' year-to-date FBI data; 2031 is the model's projection.
Palo Alto against U.S. places with 50,000 to 100,000 residents
103 of the 540 other places of this size have a higher major-crime index than Palo Alto; the middle of the group is 92. The 9 nearest in population:
Major-crime index per resident, U.S. = 100; residents in gray.
Palo Alto has a higher major-crime index than all of its 8 nearest neighbors
The 8 nearest cities and towns we cover, by major-crime index. The closest, Stanford (1 mi), is 47% below Palo Alto's rate.
Major-crime index per resident, U.S. = 100; distances between where residents live, in miles.
Questions about crime in Palo Alto
What are the most common crimes in Palo Alto?
By expected count, the most common persons and property crimes are theft from vehicle (about 610 a year), other larceny (about 560 a year) and shoplifting (about 220 a year). Compared with the U.S., theft from vehicle stands out most: 3.4 times the U.S. rate per resident.
How we calculated this
Each police agency's crimes, as reported to the FBI, are spread across the census block groups it serves using population, jobs, points of interest and, where available, local incident records. Palo Alto's figures add up its 48 block groups. The index compares crimes per resident with the U.S. rate.
- Palo Alto has no published incident records in our data, so its estimate relies on agency totals and neighborhood characteristics.
- 34.1% of residents live in block groups whose estimate has high confidence (80% interval within about 5x).
- Rates are per resident, so places where many people work or visit but few live, such as downtowns, airports and stadiums, can read high.
- Disorderly conduct and trespassing are modeled, because the FBI records them only through arrests.
- Residents: 67,916. Model updated Oct 20, 2026. Release 2026-2026-10-20-2
Full method and validation·Data sources
CrimeMetric. "Crime in Palo Alto, California." Vorp Labs, model updated Oct 20, 2026. https://crimemetric.com/ca/palo-alto
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Get a free API keyNearest cities we publish
Major-crime index, U.S. = 100
- Stanford1 mi77
- East Palo Alto2 mi116
- Menlo Park3 mi70
- West Menlo Park4 mi33
- Mountain View4 mi136
- Atherton4 mi53
- Los Altos Hills4 mi39
- Los Altos5 mi50