This is the City With the Most Property Crime in California

Property crime is a category of non-violent offenses comprising three subcategories: burglary, larceny theft, and motor vehicle theft. According to the FBI, a total of 6.9 million property crimes were committed in the United States in 2019. The total value of goods stolen — ranging from clothing and jewelry to firearms and motor vehicles — is estimated $14.3 billion.

Adjusting for population, there were a total of 2,110 property crimes for every 100,000 people in the United States in 2019. Of course, crime is a highly local phenomenon, and as a result, property crime rates vary substantially from state to state and city to city.

Oakland is home to only about 1% of California’s total population, yet 3% of all property crimes in the state are committed there. There were 6,421 property crimes reported for every 100,000 people in Oakland in 2019, more than triple the state property crime rate of 1,847 per 100,000.

The city’s high property crime rate is driven by cases of larceny and motor vehicle theft. However, nearly two dozen other California cities have higher burglary rates than Oakland.

To determine the cities with the most property crime in every state, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed property crime data from the FBI’s 2019 Uniform Crime Report. We ranked cities based on the number of property crimes reported per 100,000 residents. We considered all cities, towns, villages, and Census designated places home to at least 20,000 people in our analysis. Alabama and Hawaii did not have sufficient crime data at the city level and were excluded from our analysis. Data on poverty rate came from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey and are five-year averages for 2019.