Cities With the Most Car Theft (2025)
Car theft rates swing more from city to city than almost any other offense the FBI tracks — driven by factors like vehicle mix, parking density, and local recovery-and-reporting practices. This ranks every city we track (population 50,000+) by reported motor vehicle thefts per 100,000 residents for 2025, using FBI Crime Data Explorer figures, so you can see where a parked car carries the highest reported risk.
The national reported motor vehicle theft rate for 2025 is 191.7 per 100,000 residents. Of the 759 cities we track, 118 cities report a motor vehicle theft rate more than double that national average. See the full methodology for how rates are calculated from FBI Crime Data Explorer reports.
Top 25 cities by motor vehicle theft rate
Ranked by reported motor vehicle theft incidents per 100,000 residents, highest first. Population 50,000+ cities only.
| # | City | Rate per 100k | Population | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Oakland, CA | 1447.7 | 444,211 | F |
| 2 | Kansas, MO | 1194.1 | 518,039 | F |
| 3 | St Louis, MO | 1186.2 | 274,819 | F |
| 4 | Minneapolis, MN | 1147.3 | 428,057 | F |
| 5 | Dayton, OH | 1125.3 | 136,047 | F |
| 6 | Philadelphia, PA | 1023.4 | 1,562,379 | F |
| 7 | Detroit, MI | 971.4 | 642,155 | F |
| 8 | Lynwood, CA | 934.3 | 62,826 | D |
| 9 | Compton, CA | 933.5 | 90,092 | F |
| 10 | Huntington Park, CA | 919.5 | 51,552 | D |
| 11 | Cleveland, OH | 919.3 | 363,659 | F |
| 12 | Pueblo, CO | 919.1 | 110,981 | F |
| 13 | Memphis, TN | 900.7 | 606,629 | F |
| 14 | Milwaukee, WI | 863.1 | 559,717 | F |
| 15 | Dallas, TX | 837.8 | 1,331,217 | D |
| 16 | Tacoma, WA | 821.7 | 230,369 | F |
| 17 | Rochester, NY | 812.1 | 206,391 | D |
| 18 | Kansas, KS | 811.1 | 156,815 | F |
| 19 | Inglewood, CA | 790.0 | 101,651 | E |
| 20 | Antioch, CA | 780.8 | 119,234 | E |
| 21 | Paramount, CA | 776.9 | 50,586 | D |
| 22 | San Leandro, CA | 758.5 | 85,567 | D |
| 23 | Denver, CO | 756.8 | 733,212 | F |
| 24 | Richmond, CA | 753.8 | 115,149 | E |
| 25 | Hayward, CA | 747.8 | 157,399 | D |
At the other end of the same 759-city field, these 5 report the lowest motor vehicle theft rate per 100,000 residents.
No area has zero risk
A high Crime Index score means lower reported crime relative to other US cities — it is not a guarantee of safety. Reported crime is not the same as actual crime. Research on the gap between crime that occurs and crime that gets reported to police — often called the "dark figure" of crime — estimates that roughly 40% of violent crime and about a third of property crime go unreported each year. Every index built on official statistics, including this one, necessarily undercounts real crime. That gap is exactly why homicide — the offense with the smallest dark figure — anchors the calculation instead of a more commonly reported but less reliable category like theft.
Scores on this page reflect FBI-reported data for 2025. See the full methodology →