Compare two police agencies

Name two agencies and see what each reported to the FBI, how many people each serves and the rate that works out to, side by side. It shows both sets of numbers and leaves the judgment to you.

Informational only, not professional advice. A rate for a police agency says nothing certain about any one home, street or school.

How the comparison is worked out

reported crimes ÷ population × 100,000 = reported crime rate

Each column is worked out on its own, exactly as on the agency's page: the crimes the agency reported to the FBI for 2025, divided by the population the FBI lists for it, times 100,000. Nothing is adjusted to make the two agencies more alike. The figures come from the FBI Crime Data Explorer, as refreshed by the FBI in September 2026. The full method and its limits are on the lookup page.

Limits of a side-by-side

A rate is shown only for an agency that reported all 12 months and has a population in the FBI's data. Otherwise the cell says what is missing.
Only two agencies at a time, and never sorted by rate. The FBI cautions against ranking places with its data; see UCR Statistics: Their Proper Use.
A small agency's rate swings on one or two crimes, so a small town next to a big city is a weak comparison.
Agencies can overlap. A sheriff's office and a city department in the same county are not two halves of one total.

Last reviewed: September 2026

Questions people ask

Can I use this to tell which of two places is safer?

No. It shows what each police agency reported to the FBI and the rate that works out to. Two places can differ in how many people commute in, how willing people are to report crimes and how the agency records them, and none of that is in the rate. Treat a gap between two rates as a question to look into, not as an answer.

Why is there no rate for one of the agencies?

CrimeTally shows a rate only when the agency reported all 12 months of the year to the FBI and the FBI lists a population for it. If either is missing, the page shows what was reported and says what is missing. It never fills the gap with an estimate.

Why can't I compare more than two agencies?

A longer list sorted by rate is a ranking, and the FBI warns against ranking places with its data. Two agencies side by side, with the inputs for both on the page, keeps the comparison honest.

Are the two populations counted the same way?

Both are the FBI's population figure for the area each agency polices in that year. A city police department's figure is usually the city's residents. A sheriff's office figure usually covers only the parts of the county that no city department polices.