Crime in San Diego, California
Major crime in San Diego is 16% above the U.S. rate per resident: 25% higher for persons crimes and 14% higher for property crimes. Expected major crimes are up 2.6% from a year earlier.
How we did this
We start from police agencies' crime reports to the FBI (estimated where an agency doesn't report), model how they spread across the census block groups each agency serves, then add up San Diego's 945 block groups. Numbers are estimates with a range of uncertainty, not counts of individual incidents.
Rates are per resident, so areas where many people work or visit but few live, such as downtowns, airports and stadiums, can look high. More on the method
Index: crimes per resident compared with the U.S., where 100 is the U.S. rate and 200 is twice it.
Motor vehicle theft is highest, at 1.6 times the U.S. rate
Expected crimes per year in San Diego 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 San Diego
Half of San Diego residents live in neighborhoods with a major-crime index between 36 and 106, and half live where it is below 62. The citywide figure (116) is higher than that because crime concentrates in a smaller set of areas.
- 0–5039.7%
- 50–10033.3%
- 100–20014.8%
- 200–4008.2%
- 400+4.0%
Share of residents by the index of their census block group, a neighborhood of roughly 600 to 3,000 people.
Highest on Friday and Saturday nights
Major-crime index by time of week, against the U.S. rate for the same hours.
Trend and outlook
Change in expected crimes. The past year uses the reporting agencies' year-to-date FBI data; 2031 is the model's projection.
San Diego against U.S. places with 1 million or more residents
12 of the 12 other places of this size have a higher major-crime index than San Diego; the middle of the group is 161. The 9 nearest in population:
Major-crime index per resident, U.S. = 100; residents in gray.
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. San Diego's figures add up its 945 block groups. The index compares crimes per resident with the U.S. rate.
- San Diego's published incident records inform the estimate for every neighborhood.
- 39.2% of residents live in block groups whose estimate has high confidence (80% interval within about 5x).
- Disorderly conduct and trespassing are modeled, because the FBI records them only through arrests.
- Residents: 1,417,463. Model updated Oct 20, 2026. Release 2026-2026-10-20-2
Full method and validation·Data sources
CrimeMetric. "Crime in San Diego, California." Vorp Labs, model updated Oct 20, 2026. https://crimemetric.com/ca/san-diego
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Major-crime index, U.S. = 100
- Los Angeles115 mi161
- Las Vegas, NV259 mi141
- Phoenix, AZ296 mi153
- San Jose411 mi161
- San Francisco455 mi180
- El Paso, TX631 mi83
- Denver, CO830 mi273
- Seattle, WA1,060 mi311