Enter your zip code to instantly see crime maps, crime statistics, and crime rates for any city or zip code in the United States.
Crime Grade's data is actually much more granular than zip codes, but we use zip codes to direct you to the right place on the map.
Many other sites will try to tell you where the “safest places” in a state are. They are only able to map crime down to the city, though, often using FBI data. This effectively means they don't know. Read below to understand why this matters.
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Which Zip Codes Are Most Dangerous?
Answering the question of where the most dangerous zip codes are is actually more difficult than you might think. The average zip code with a Crime Grade of F in all categories has 5,265 residents living within it. That's interesting only because the average zip code (excluding zip codes with 0 residents) has 9,765 residents. In general, this means that the crimes per capita may be higher because because fewer people live in the zip code. Looking deeper, it does appear that the makeup of a zip code has a great deal to do with it. High-crime zip codes on average were 50% more likely to have an airport and had more than twice as many parks and retail establishments as the average zip code. In other words, many of these “most dangerous” zip codes only appear so because more people pass through or visit the zip code, while very few people actually live there. Here are some of the highest-crime per person zip codes where the population is higher, along with the reason why crime rates may be deceptively high:
- 10128, NY: Includes the Reservoir section of New York's Central Park, and a large section of retail and commercial.
- 85281, AZ: The ASU campus, most of “downtown” Tempe, and a fair amount of retail lining S Rural Road are all containing in this zip code.
- 90006, CA: Includes a large swath of retail outside of Los Angeles lining Western, Olympic, and Vermont. The areas to the east have higher crime rates, but are far less populated.
- 10023, NY: On the other side of Central Park, the geographically small zip is part of the Upper West Side. People do live here, but it's also home to plenty of retail establishments and some of the most popular restaurants in New York.
- 94109, CA: Polk Gulch in San Francisco. It's perhaps not the safest part of the city, but the crime grades are even worse thanks to the large number of retail shops and restaurants, especially down Polk Street.
- 10011, NY: Between Midtown and Lower Manhattan is a place where plenty of people live, but almost every building has retail at the base.
- 89119, NV: This unfortunately-shaped zip code includes McCarran International Airport (the main airport for Vegas), then reaches west to include the Luxor, Excalibur, Mandalay Bay, and other casinos. Northeast from here a finger stretches out to include tens of thousands of residents. It's not the safest place in the city, but due to the high-profile airports and casinos in the boundary it ranks as one of the most dangerous zip codes in the US.
- 60637, IL: The University of Chicago is mostly to blame for the inflation, but the zip also includes half of both Washington Park and Jackson Park.
- 90057, CA: The areas surrounding MacArthur park definitely feel a little rough, but head north and you'll find nice neighborhoods in the same zip that start at $750k and reach well past $2 million.
- 89030, NV: This is an area in Las Vegas not known for its class and safety, but our maps show some the zip includes low-crime areas, which turn out to be newly-developed gated communities.
The above illustrates why Crime Grade's level of detail in mapping is necessary to understand the reality. Other sites that map by zip code are simply not sufficient, as none of the nuance described above would be visible. Crime Grades go all the way down to a block, and these differences are evident on all of our maps. At any rate, the zip codes above are places where people actually live with higher crime rates. What they all have in common are attractions and retail establishments that are heavily trafficked during the day. Even though people live there — usually in larger apartment buildings — the daytime population far exceed the “night-time” population of people who actually live there. And of course where there are people, there will be crime.
If we were to look at the most dangerous places overall regardless of population, we'd find places like 96155 in eastern California. The area is home to Little Round Top, the Sierra-at-Tahoe Resort, and exactly five permanent residents. A dozen crimes throughout the year sends their crime rate per person through the roofs to more than one per person. While the area is actually very safe, it's still valid for the data to consider the crime rate per person as high when the population is so low. This is why we urge you to look at the map of crimes per person, total crime, and then to keep an open mind considering where tourists and commuters might visit. The data may be valid, but taken without context it can lead you to incorrect conclusions.
Which Zip Codes Are Safest?
Once again, this isn't as intuitive as it may seem. There are many zip codes where the reported and expected number of crimes is effectively 0. These are mostly rural areas with just a few hundred people or less, so it's not hard to imagine how very few crimes would be committed and reported to police. In expected and direct opposition to the above, the safest areas are places where no one visits during the day.
- 11758, NY: Even though this zip in Massapequa earns an overall A+ in every category, we do show some areas with B and C grades to the north of Sunrise Highway. The zip codes on the north side of the island tell a similar story, just with slightly higher home values.
- 20171, VA: This exclusive area in Herndon would have picked up a worse grade if the zip had been drawn just a little differently to include Dulles International Airport or the retail areas in Chantilly. As it is, though, the area is almost exclusively high-end residential single family homes.
- 07726, NJ: Large newer homes on big lots to the south and east in Manalapan outweigh the Crime Grade of a few blocks to the northeast where houses are older, retail thrives, and crime is somewhat more prevalent.
- 84093, UT: This area of Sandy, UT includes Creek Road mansions and upper bench monstrosities. On Crime Grade's maps, however, you can see slightly lighter shades of green near 1300 E on the northeast side of the zip code where the merely successful live. This zip is a short drive from the Crime Grade office.
- 19473, PA: The main street of Schwenksville does feature a little crime, but the areas around are rural areas Google hasn't even bothered mapping. Not included in calculations for this zip code is a bright red square where a state prison sits.
- 01007, MA: Belchertown isn't far from Boston, but feels like a different world. Grading the zip code without looking at the map, you'd miss the fact that there are moderate levels of crime where Main Street meets State Street: no analogy intended.
- 04097, ME: By our mapping there's almost no projected crime in this North Yarmouth zip code, but only because it excludes areas of note: Dry Mills, Freeport, and West Durham centers are not quite so safe.
- 47143, IN: Memphis (Indiana) is mostly notable for a truck stop. Once again our map shows no crime in the zip code proper, but some blocks with higher crime in surrounding city centers.
- 76253, TX: You can actually count the buildings (about 32, including sheds and garages) in this tiny Myra zip code. Why someone decided to draw a zip code this small is unclear, but it's the most populous Texas zip code that scored all A+ grades. This highlights how arbitrary zip codes can be, and why Crime Grades for a zip code are not as meaningful as the individual block.
- 14127, NY: Orchard Park is where people move when they're tired of Buffalo and everything that comes with a city. Even within this haven, however, slices of B- crime grades exist.
Just as with the “most dangerous” zip codes, there are high-crime areas within low-crime zip codes. Thus it is necessary to map to a greater level of detail, like Crime Grade does.
It would be impressive if you'd heard of any of these places outside your own state. Sandy, UT is by far the largest city mentioned by population. All of these zips are areas where tourists never go. Office space and retail are limited, and homes and apartments make up the majority of each zip code. Technically the crime rate is lower in such places, but perhaps not for the reasons most people think.
How We Get Crime Beyond the Zip Code
If gathering granular crime data were easy, everyone would be doing it. We have spent countless hours refining, filtering, and cleansing our data. We've spent so much time in crime databases we've been able to spot common errors. We can tell police departments where their common reporting errors cause issues.
Not all police departments report on data or cooperate with data requests. This is where Crime Grade takes data processing to a new level. We gather available data and combine it with over 180 variables about the block and its surrounding characteristics. Our proprietary method of using machine learning determines which variables matter most in relation to all other variables. We're then able to project crime for the entire country with unparalleled accuracy. Only when side-by-side maps of actual crime data and our projections look the same are we satisfied that we've done our job. We're improving our data collection and processing all the time to continue to deliver the simplest, most accurate, and most intuitive information to you.