Is Carrollton, Texas Safe? Safest Neighborhoods & Other Stats (2026)

How Carrollton's Crime Rate Compares to Texas and the Nation

State and national figures — Bureau of Justice Statistics, Crime Known to Law Enforcement, 2024 (tables 2 and 3). City figures — NeighborhoodScout (FBI crime data analysis). City rates come from a different reporting series than the state and national benchmarks, so read the comparison as a direction, not a precise multiple.

The comparison table below — rendered from the same data that powers this guide — tells the clearest version of the story. Carrollton carries a violent crime rate of 1.4 per 1,000 residents, which sits well below both the Texas state rate of 4 per 1,000 and the national rate of 3.7 per 1,000 tracked in federal crime reporting data for 2024. On property crime, the gap is similarly wide: a property crime rate of 13 per 1,000 residents against a Texas state rate of 20.7 per 1,000 and a national rate of 18.4 per 1,000.

Those comparisons matter because Texas as a whole is not a low-crime state. Outperforming the state average here is not a technicality — it reflects a real difference in day-to-day conditions. Carrollton is a genuinely safer-than-average place to live by the measures that matter most to people deciding where to put down roots.

Within the violent crime count, aggravated assault makes up the largest share at 135 incidents in 2024, followed by robbery at 30 and rape at 17. Carrollton recorded 1 murder in 2024 — a homicide rate of 0.7 per 100,000 residents, which ranks among the lower figures for mid-size Texas cities. These are not numbers that call for alarm; they are numbers that call for context, and the context is favorable.

Property crime tells a similar story. Larceny-theft dominates, accounting for roughly 66% of all reported Part I offenses in 2024 — the 2024 breakdown was 1,283 larceny-theft incidents, 270 motor vehicle thefts, and 203 burglaries. That skew toward theft-of-opportunity rather than violence is the pattern of a community-stable city rather than a high-crime one. It also points to the practical precaution that matters most: securing your vehicle and your garage.

What Property Crime Actually Looks Like in Carrollton

The dominant crime type in Carrollton is larceny-theft, and the vast majority of it is opportunistic. Unsecured vehicles, unlocked garages, and retail parking lots are where most incidents originate. This is not unique to Carrollton — it is the pattern for virtually every city in the Dallas-Fort Worth corridor — but it shapes how you should think about daily precautions.

Motor vehicle theft is the category where residents most often say they were surprised after moving here. Cars and catalytic converters are the targets of choice across the DFW metro, and Carrollton is not exempt. Parking in a well-lit area, locking doors consistently, and not leaving valuables visible are genuinely effective here because so much of what happens is casual and opportunistic rather than organized.

Burglary numbers have trended in a direction that most long-time residents describe as manageable. The 203 burglary incidents recorded in 2024 across a city this size work out to a property crime rate of 13 per 1,000 residents — well below the Texas figure of 20.7 per 1,000. If you are relocating from a higher-crime environment, the shift will be immediately noticeable. If you are moving from a genuinely low-crime small town, Carrollton will feel like a city — because it is one.

The practical upshot: Carrollton's property crime picture argues for basic urban vigilance, not for anxiety. Deadbolts, motion-sensor lighting, and not leaving your garage door open are the relevant precautions — the kind of habits that translate from any suburban city in a major metro.

Neighborhood-by-Neighborhood Safety Picture

Carrollton's neighborhoods are not uniform, and the crime map reflects that. Crime map analysis as of January 2026 found that 93.1% of Carrollton's areas earn an A-level crime grade, with all neighborhoods falling within the A or B categories. That is an unusually clean distribution for a city this size.

The north side of the city — anchored by neighborhoods like Castle Hills, Coyote Ridge, and Indian Creek — reads consistently quieter. Castle Hills is built around modern residential infrastructure and a community-oriented atmosphere that residents frequently cite when describing what drew them north. Indian Creek combines suburban calm with convenient access to major routes, including the Sam Rayburn Tollway, and is known for active community involvement and well-maintained streets. Coyote Ridge, built around a golf club, carries a quieter and more upscale character.

The Gates of Prestonwood and Country Place areas also sit in the quieter residential tier. These are established subdivisions with the kind of long-term owner stability that tends to suppress opportunistic crime over time.

Historic Downtown Carrollton reads differently from the residential north. The square itself — centered on the A.W. Perry Homestead Museum and the surrounding commercial blocks — is a civic gathering point, not a high-crime zone. But older commercial corridors adjacent to any historic downtown attract more foot traffic and more of the petty crime that comes with it. It is not a place to avoid; it is a place to be city-aware.

The Koreatown corridor along Old Denton Road is the city's most culturally dense commercial zone. In May 2026, a workplace-dispute shooting in this area resulted in three deaths. The incident was rooted in a specific financial conflict between a business associate and his victims — it was not a random public-safety breakdown — and the accused shooter was taken into custody. It was a serious and tragic event. It was also not a signal of a broader pattern in neighborhood crime rates. Residents and business owners in the corridor said as much in the weeks that followed. The corridor remains one of the most active and community-anchored parts of Carrollton; the incident should be understood for what it was rather than used as a proxy for the area's overall safety picture.

For anyone doing deeper research before settling on a neighborhood, the Carrollton neighborhoods guide walks through the character of each area in detail.

How the Carrollton Police Department Engages With Residents

One useful signal for how seriously a city takes community safety is whether its police department reaches out to residents — and Carrollton's department does, in specific and accessible ways.

The Citizen Police Academy is an 11-week program, free to any resident or worker in the city, that covers law enforcement duties and crime prevention in detail. It runs weekly and is designed to close the gap between residents and the officers who serve them. Graduates of the program don't just walk away with information — the alumni association stays active through child fingerprinting events, bike safety rodeos, and community crime prevention work. It is a more sustained civic investment than most cities this size maintain.

Residents aged 50 and older have an additional touchpoint: officers from the department host a free monthly lunch with a safety-tip focus. That kind of regular, low-stakes contact between police and community members is exactly what long-term residents say makes Carrollton feel different from cities where the department is less visible day to day.

The department also benefits from the stability that comes with Carrollton being a city that has not experienced the rapid, destabilizing growth that has made policing harder in some neighboring communities. At 134,562 residents, the city is large enough to fund professional services and small enough that community policing remains meaningful rather than theoretical.

None of this is a guarantee of any particular outcome. It is context for evaluating how seriously a city's institutions take the safety of the people who live there — and on that measure, Carrollton scores well.

What to Look for When Evaluating a Specific Block

City-level statistics are the starting point, not the ending point. Carrollton's numbers are favorable, but the honest answer to 'Is this specific street safe?' requires block-level investigation, and no city-level rate gives you that.

The most useful tool for Carrollton specifically is the city's own crime map, which the police department publishes and updates regularly. It shows incident clustering at a granular enough level that you can see whether a particular area has recurring patterns — and in most of Carrollton's residential north, the maps are quiet enough to be reassuring. The commercial corridors along I-35E and the Old Denton Road stretch show more activity, which tracks with any high-traffic commercial zone in a metro this size.

One thing that surprises people after six months in Carrollton: the car-related crime feels more present than the overall property crime rate suggests, specifically because it concentrates in apartment complex parking lots and big-box retail areas. If your neighborhood research takes you near a high-density rental corridor, it is worth spending time in that specific area rather than relying on the city-wide figure alone.

When evaluating a neighborhood, the practical checklist is straightforward: look at the city's crime map at the block level, talk to neighbors directly, and pay attention to whether the streets are maintained and the properties are owner-occupied. In Carrollton's quieter residential subdivisions — Castle Hills, Indian Creek, Coyote Ridge, Gates of Prestonwood — those signals read clearly positive. In the transitional zones near busy commercial corridors, they require a closer look.

For context on how Carrollton's overall cost structure and home prices interact with neighborhood selection, the cost of living guide covers the full picture.

Quick Takeaways & FAQs

✅ Carrollton carries a violent crime rate of 1.4 per 1,000 residents, sitting well below both the Texas state rate of 4 per 1,000 and the national rate of 3.7 per 1,000.

⚠️ Property crime — primarily larceny-theft and motor vehicle theft — is the more relevant daily concern, particularly near apartment parking lots and retail corridors along the commercial strips.

📍 The Carrollton Police Department runs a free 11-week Citizen Police Academy open to any resident or city worker, with an active alumni network that stays involved in community crime prevention year-round.

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