Crime in Cary, North Carolina
Major crime in Cary is 52% below the U.S. rate per resident: 80% lower for persons crimes and 45% lower for property crimes. Expected major crimes are down 24.3% 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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Every crime type in Cary is near or below the U.S. rate
Expected crimes per year in Cary 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 Cary
The middle half of Cary residents live in neighborhoods with a major-crime index between 16 and 53; the typical (median) resident's is 30. The citywide figure (49) is higher than that because crime concentrates in a smaller set of areas.
- 0–5068.6%
- 50–10025.8%
- 100–2003.5%
- 200–4001.1%
- 400+0.9%
Share of residents by the index of their census block group, a neighborhood of roughly 600 to 3,000 people.
Lowest on Friday and Saturday nights
Major-crime index by time of week, against the U.S. rate for the same hours.
Major crime fell 24.3% in a year; across North Carolina it fell 9.0%
Change in expected crimes, with North Carolina as a whole in gray. The past year uses the reporting agencies' year-to-date FBI data; 2031 is the model's projection.
Cary against U.S. places with 100,000 to 250,000 residents
248 of the 268 other places of this size have a higher major-crime index than Cary; the middle of the group is 109. The 9 nearest in population:
Major-crime index per resident, U.S. = 100; residents in gray.
Cary has a higher major-crime index than 3 of its 8 nearest neighbors
The 8 nearest cities and towns we cover, by major-crime index. The closest, Morrisville (3 mi), is 2.9 times Cary's rate.
Major-crime index per resident, U.S. = 100; distances between where residents live, in miles.
Questions about crime in Cary
What are the most common crimes in Cary?
By expected count, the most common persons and property crimes are shoplifting (about 508 a year), theft from vehicle (about 388 a year) and other larceny (about 233 a year). Compared with the U.S., shoplifting stands out most: 11% below 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. Cary's figures add up its 86 block groups. The index compares crimes per resident with the U.S. rate.
- Cary has no published incident records in our data, so its estimate relies on agency totals and neighborhood characteristics.
- 32.7% 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: 179,006. Model updated Oct 20, 2026. Release 2026-2026-10-20-2
Full method and validation·Data sources
CrimeMetric. "Crime in Cary, North Carolina." Vorp Labs, model updated Oct 20, 2026. https://crimemetric.com/nc/cary
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Major-crime index, U.S. = 100
- Morrisville3 mi138
- Apex5 mi44
- Holly Springs9 mi30
- Raleigh11 mi148
- Fuquay-Varina14 mi34
- Garner14 mi180
- Durham14 mi237
- Chapel Hill15 mi138