Crime in Polk County, Iowa (2024)
Law-enforcement agencies headquartered in Polk County reported 12,645 offenses to the FBI in 2024: 1,949 violent crimes and 10,655 property crimes, plus 41 arsons — among 11 reporting agencies.
Per 100,000 residents
Against a 2024 population of 513,511 (Census estimates). A floor: agencies that did not report contribute nothing.
Offenses by category
| Offense | Offenses | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Murder & nonnegligent manslaughter | 14 | 0.1% |
| Rape | 180 | 1.4% |
| Robbery | 190 | 1.5% |
| Aggravated assault | 1,565 | 12.4% |
| Burglary | 1,277 | 10.1% |
| Larceny-theft | 7,880 | 62.3% |
| Motor vehicle theft | 1,498 | 11.8% |
| Arson | 41 | 0.3% |
How to read these numbers
Counts are offenses reported by law-enforcement agencies to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting program for 2024(Return A master file, which incorporates the FBI's own NIBRS-to-SRS conversion for agencies that report incident-based data). Nothing here is estimated: an agency that did not report contributes nothing, so totals are floors, not universes.
County figures use headquarters-county assignment: an agency's offenses count in the county where it is headquartered. Sheriff and state-police activity can span county lines; a county's figure is best read as "offenses reported by agencies based here." Counties where reporting agencies cover less than half of the policed population get no page; between 50% and 80% the page carries a visible partial-coverage notice.
Rates per 100,000 residentsuse Census Population Estimates (PEP) for the same year as the crime data. They appear only where the population served by agencies headquartered in a county is within 10% of the population that lives there. Where a police force covers several counties — the NYPD polices five boroughs from its Manhattan headquarters — the two geographies disagree, and a rate would be wrong by several times over in both directions. Those counties show counts without a rate rather than a number that looks authoritative and isn't.
Because non-reporting agencies contribute nothing, every rate here is a floor: the true rate is at least this high. Rates are most comparable between places with similar reporting coverage, which each page states.
Violent crime = murder + rape + robbery + aggravated assault. Property crime = burglary + larceny-theft + motor vehicle theft. Arson is tracked separately (from the FBI's de-duplicated SRS/NIBRS arson data) and is excluded from the property composite, following FBI practice. Aggravated assault excludes simple assault.
These figures will not match the FBI's published national estimates(which impute for non-reporting agencies) or the 12-month quarterly trend windows elsewhere on this site — different universes, both documented.