Living · Crime and safety
California City crime rate: is it safe?
What the town’s police department reports to the state each year, set against Kern County and California as rates, what the numbers can and cannot tell you, and what the rating sites’ grades are built on.
Figures checked · state figures to 2025, published July 2026 · 12 sources
At a glance
Is California City safe? The short answer
In 2025, the latest year the state has published, the California City Police Department reported 68 violent crimes and 179 property crimes.1 Against the 13,243 people the state estimated lived in the city,2 that is 5.1 violent crimes for every 1,000 residents, above California’s 4.3 and below Kern County’s 6.4, and 13.5 property crimes, below the state’s 17.8 and below the county’s 18.8.
So the answer depends on the kind of crime. Violent crime here is higher than the state’s and lower than the county’s; property crime is lower than both the state’s and the county’s, and it has fallen by 65% since 2015, with burglaries down from 270 that year to 30 in 2025. Violent crime has not fallen the same way: it has run between 47 and 121 a year throughout.1
Most of the violent crime is aggravated assault: 50 of the 68 in 2025. Across the eleven years from 2015 to 2025 the department reported 9 homicides in all.1
California City crime rate by year, 2015 to 2025
- California City
- Kern County
- California
Violent crimes per 1,000 residents, 2015–2025
Property crimes per 1,000 residents, 2015–2025
Each year’s reported crimes in the city, and the rate per 1,000 residents for the city, Kern County and California. Violent crime is homicide, rape, robbery and aggravated assault; property crime is burglary, motor vehicle theft and theft of any value; arson is counted separately and is in neither. Where several crimes happen in one incident, only the most serious is counted.4
| Year | Crimesin the city | Cityper 1,000 | Kernper 1,000 | Stateper 1,000 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 121 | 8.3 | 5.6 | 4.3 |
| 2016 | 91 | 6.4 | 5.8 | 4.5 |
| 2017 | 88 | 6.0 | 5.6 | 4.5 |
| 2018 | 47 | 3.1 | 5.9 | 4.5 |
| 2019 | 83 | 5.4 | 6.2 | 4.4 |
| 2020 | 90 | 6.0 | 6.9 | 4.4 |
| 2021 | 66 | 4.4 | 7.4 | 4.7 |
| 2022 | 77 | 5.1 | 7.3 | 4.9 |
| 2023 | 89 | 6.0 | 8.3 (without Arvin) | 5.0 |
| 2024 | 79 | 6.0 | 6.8 (without Arvin) | 4.8 |
| 2025 | 68 | 5.1 | 6.4 (without Arvin) | 4.3 |
| Year | Crimesin the city | Cityper 1,000 | Kernper 1,000 | Stateper 1,000 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 516 | 35.6 | 34.7 | 26.4 |
| 2016 | 390 | 27.3 | 37.1 | 25.7 |
| 2017 | 341 | 23.3 | 32.7 | 25.1 |
| 2018 | 393 | 26.1 | 34.0 | 23.9 |
| 2019 | 281 | 18.4 | 32.9 | 23.2 |
| 2020 | 231 | 15.3 | 30.7 | 21.3 |
| 2021 | 178 | 11.9 | 32.2 | 21.8 |
| 2022 | 199 | 13.3 | 32.4 | 23.1 |
| 2023 | 260 | 17.6 | 27.3 (without Arvin) | 22.6 |
| 2024 | 213 | 16.2 | 21.8 (without Arvin) | 20.7 |
| 2025 | 179 | 13.5 | 18.8 (without Arvin) | 17.8 |
The rates divide by the same population estimates the Justice Department uses for its own statewide figures, but by the Department of Finance’s latest revision of them. That is why the state’s rates here differ slightly from the ones the Justice Department published for 2025, 431.1 violent and 1,785.8 property crimes per 100,000 people:4 it divided by the estimate available when it went to press.
How far can the numbers be read?
- Small numbers swing. In a town this size one crime more or less moves the rate by about 0.08 per 1,000. The department reported 47 violent crimes in 2018 and 83 the next year.1 Read the run of years, not one year against another.
- A rate counts crimes, not residents who were victims. Crimes against visitors count, and the town fills up: the Chamber of Commerce says the off-highway riding population grows to more than 10,000 on holiday weekends.7 None of them are in the population the rate is divided by.
- The prison was in the population. In the state’s estimates from 2020 to 2023, between 1,865 and 2,198 of the people counted as living in the city were in group quarters, chiefly the prison,5 which was emptied in November 2023.6 They are part of the population behind the rates for those years.
- Only reported crime is counted. Both the state and the FBI count what is reported to the police. Crime nobody reports is in neither.4
- There is no street-level picture. Both publish by police department, so the figures describe the whole city, from the built-up town to the empty grid, and say nothing about one street against another.18
What do the FBI’s figures say?
The department also reports to the FBI, whose Crime Data Explorer publishes its figures year by year.8 The two sets of counts agree once they are counted the same way: the FBI includes arson in property crime and the state does not, so the table below adds the state’s arson count to its property figures. Up to 2020 they match exactly. Since the department began reporting to the FBI incident by incident in August 2022, they have differed by no more than 3 crimes a year.81
| Year | Violent | Property | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| State | FBI | State+ arson | FBI | |
| 2015 | 121 | 121 | 517 | 517 |
| 2016 | 91 | 91 | 390 | 390 |
| 2017 | 88 | 88 | 343 | 343 |
| 2018 | 47 | 47 | 393 | 393 |
| 2019 | 83 | 83 | 284 | 284 |
| 2020 | 90 | 90 | 238 | 238 |
| 2021 | 66 | none | 179 | none |
| 2022 | 77 | 76 | 201 | 202 |
| 2023 | 89 | 90 | 261 | 264 |
| 2024 | 79 | 80 | 218 | 221 |
| 2025 | 68 | 66 | 180 | 181 |
The FBI has no figures for the department for 2021, and its 2021 figures for the whole state cover only about 26% of California’s population.8 It also divides by its own population figure, 12,745 for 2025 against the state’s 13,243, so its rate for the city comes out a little different: 5.2 violent crimes per 1,000 against 5.1.82
Why do the rating sites’ grades differ?
Search for whether California City is safe and the first answers are grades from relocation sites. The two that say where their figures come from name the FBI, so they rest on the same police reports as the tables above; what differs is what they compare the town with, which year they use, and what they add.
- Niche gives the city a C− for crime and safety.9 It says the grade weighs violent and property crime rates from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program together with residents’ reviews of how safe they feel.10
- NeighborhoodScout gives a crime index of 13, where 100 is safest, and a “1 in 44” chance of becoming a victim, from the FBI’s figures for 2024.11 That chance is not measured: it is the year’s 300 reported crimes set against about 13,200 residents, as if every crime had a different resident as its victim.
- BestPlaces scores violent crime at 36.5 and property crime at 51.5 on its own scale of 1 (low) to 100 (high), against national averages of 22.7 and 35.4.12 We could not read how the scale is built or which year it describes. Its property score puts the town above the national average; the FBI’s own figures have put the city’s property crime below the national rate in every year it has figures for since 2019.8
Sources
Every count and rate above comes from these, checked on the date at the top of the page. The rates are computed from the counts and populations the sources publish, never estimated. If something here is wrong, tell us and it will be fixed.
- 1.Crimes and Clearances (including Arson), 1985–2025. California Department of Justice, OpenJustice, 2026.Crimes reported by each law enforcement agency, by year. California City is the California City Police Department's row; Kern County is the sum of every agency in the county.
- 2.E-4 Population Estimates for Cities, Counties, and the State, 2021–2026, with 2020 Census Benchmark. California Department of Finance, May 2026.1 January populations of California City, Kern County and California for 2021 to 2025.
- 3.E-4 Population Estimates for Cities, Counties, and the State, 2011–2020, with 2010 Benchmark. California Department of Finance, 7 May 2021.1 January populations for 2015 to 2020.
- 4.Crime in California 2025. California Department of Justice, 1 July 2026.The statewide totals and rates (Table 1), the population estimates behind them (Table 53), and the agencies that could not report a full year, among them Arvin's police department in Kern County (page 5).
- 5.E-5 Population and Housing Estimates for Cities, Counties, and the State, 2020–2026. California Department of Finance, May 2026.Splits each year's estimate into people living in households and people in group quarters (institutions such as prisons), and counts housing units.
- 6.California City Detention Facility. Wikipedia.The state moved the last inmates out of the prison in November 2023.
- 7.OHV. California City Chamber of Commerce.
- 8.Crime Data Explorer: California City Police Department (ORI CA0151100). Federal Bureau of Investigation, Uniform Crime Reporting Program, data refreshed 15 September 2026.Choose Agency, California, California City Police Department. The FBI's own counts and the population it divides them by, with the national rate plotted alongside.
- 9.California City Crime Rates and Statistics. Niche.Crime & Safety grade C−. Read from a search engine's summary: the site refuses automated requests.
- 10.About Crime and Safety Grade. Niche.The grade weighs violent and property crime rates from the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program together with residents' reviews. Read from a search engine's summary.
- 11.California City, CA Crime Rates and Statistics. NeighborhoodScout.Crime index 13, where 100 is safest; 80 violent and 220 property crimes, 22.77 per 1,000 residents in all; a 1 in 44 chance of becoming a victim. From the FBI's figures for 2024, released in October 2025.
- 12.California City, CA Crime. Sperling's BestPlaces.Violent crime 36.5 and property crime 51.5 on a scale of 1 (low) to 100 (high), against US averages of 22.7 and 35.4. Read from a search engine's summary: the site refuses automated requests.