Maybe you've looked at Longview on paper and liked what you saw — affordable homes, a real job base anchored by Eastman Chemical Company and a regional health system, East Texas greenery in every direction. Then you searched "is Longview safe?" and got a wall of numbers that seemed alarming without any context. That's the starting point for most people researching a move here, and it's worth untangling before you draw conclusions.
Longview is a city of 83,236 people in Gregg County, anchored by I-20 through the heart of East Texas's Piney Woods. It isn't a small town anymore — it's a genuine regional center with a real hospital, a university in LeTourneau, and an economic mix that keeps the population stable. That scale matters for crime data: a city this size has commercial corridors, a downtown, industrial zones, and quiet suburban pockets all within the same city limits, and the aggregate crime number blends all of them together.
The city carries a violent crime rate of 3.4 per 1,000 residents and a property crime rate of 25 per 1,000 residents. Those figures sit below the state violent crime rate and above the state property crime rate — a split picture that reflects what Longview actually is: a mid-sized Texas city with some hot-spot commercial areas and some genuinely quiet residential neighborhoods.
This guide breaks down what those numbers mean at street level — which neighborhoods run safer, which areas carry more risk, what the city is doing about it, and what residents actually worry about day to day. For neighborhood character and home prices, see the Longview neighborhoods guide; for cost of living context, see the cost of living page.
How Longview's Crime Rate Compares to State and National Averages
| Measure | Longview | Texas | National | vs. national |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Violent crime (per 1,000) | 3.4 | 4 | 3.7 | 8% lower |
| Property crime (per 1,000) | 25 | 20.7 | 18.4 | 36% higher |
State and national figures — Bureau of Justice Statistics, Crime Known to Law Enforcement, 2024 (tables 2 and 3). City figures — NeighborhoodScout. 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 headline numbers tell a mixed story, and it's worth reading both sides honestly. Longview has a violent crime rate of 3.4 per 1,000 residents — that places the city below both the Texas state rate and the national average. That's a meaningful difference, putting Longview on the safer side of the average for cities its size, at least on the violent crime dimension.
Property crime is the other half of the picture, and here Longview runs higher than the state and national comparisons. A property crime rate of 25 per 1,000 residents exceeds the Texas state rate and the national rate. Larceny-theft, burglary, and vehicle break-ins are the dominant offense categories — which is a different threat profile than violent crime, and one that responds very directly to where you live and park your car.
FBI 2024 data shows Longview's total crime rate near the national average. That same dataset shows the city's total crime rate fell meaningfully in the most recent year tracked, with violent crime declining by a notable margin. The trend is in the right direction, even if the property crime rate still warrants attention.
One number that rarely gets explained in these analyses: crime rates are measured against the resident population, not against everyone who passes through. Longview's commercial corridors along Loop 281 and the retail zones near I-20 generate high volumes of visitor traffic — and incidents that happen there count against the city's resident population of 83,236, which makes those corridors look more dangerous than the neighborhoods that feed them. CrimeGrade.org flags this effect explicitly for Longview: areas with heavy visitor traffic can appear higher-crime even when the residential streets around them feel calm.
Neighborhood-Level Safety: Where Risk Is Lower and Where It's Higher
The city-wide rate is a starting point, not a verdict. Longview's geography matters more than any single number, because the spread from safest to highest-risk neighborhoods is substantial.
The Northeast and Northwest: Two Very Different Stories
Residents and crime analysts consistently point to the northeast side of Longview as the city's safest residential zone. The chance of becoming a victim of violent crime in the northeast is meaningfully lower than in the southern neighborhoods — not a minor distinction, but a difference large enough to matter when you're choosing where to buy.
The northwest tells the opposite story, carrying the highest total incident count in the city. The southwest, by contrast, logs the fewest. These are not interchangeable parts of the same city. CrimeGrade.org is a useful tool for looking up a specific address once you've narrowed your search.
Neighborhood Profiles
| Neighborhood | Safety Profile | Crime Pattern Notes | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spring Hill | Lower risk | Consistently fewer assault and drug-offense clusters vs. central and southern Longview; suburban distance from commercial corridors helps | Families Quiet |
| Pine Tree | Lower risk | Suburban, largely residential; incident rates reflect the quieter northeast pattern | Families Schools |
| Whispering Pines | Lower to moderate risk | Residents describe tree-lined streets and a quiet feel; residential pocket character associated with lower crime exposure | Families Walkable |
| Northcutt Heights | Moderate risk | Established residential area; mixed patterns consistent with older inner-ring neighborhoods | First-Time Buyers |
| Eastgate | Moderate to higher risk | Proximity to commercial corridors influences incident counts; property crime more prevalent than violent | Value |
| North Longview / Judson Road Corridor | Higher property crime risk | Elevated burglary and theft rates; commercial activity along the corridor amplifies incident counts | Commuters |
| Greggton | Higher risk | Higher rates of property crime and some violent offenses; consistent with denser, older urban-core patterns | Renters |
| Downtown Longview | Higher risk | Highest overall incident concentration; property crime and some violent offenses driven by commercial density and foot traffic | Walkable |
Downtown's higher incident count is partly a function of what downtown is — the most visited commercial corridor in the city — rather than a signal that residents there are constantly at risk. That said, choosing to live in or immediately adjacent to the downtown core carries a measurably different risk profile than choosing Spring Hill or Pine Tree.
What the Crime Data Doesn't Tell You: The Local Reality
Residents surveyed on Nextdoor describe Longview overall as a safe place to live. The concerns they raise most often are speeding, potential scams, and road construction — not violent crime. That gap between the aggregate numbers and the day-to-day experience is real, and it matters for anyone deciding on a neighborhood.
The Commercial Corridor Effect
A meaningful share of Longview's property crime originates in commercial zones — parking lots, strip centers, and the retail corridors that draw shoppers from across Gregg County and beyond. When a car gets broken into in a shopping center parking lot, it counts against Longview's resident population of 83,236. That's not a reason to dismiss the number, but it is a reason to separate "crime near the retail corridor" from "crime in the residential neighborhood two blocks over."
Suburbs that sit farther from the commercial spine — Spring Hill being the clearest example — simply see fewer of these incidents by virtue of geography. If proximity to major retail is a priority, understand that you're also choosing proximity to higher property crime exposure. That's the compromise, and it's worth weighing consciously rather than discovering it after the fact.
What Surprises People After Six Months
New residents from smaller Texas towns occasionally arrive expecting a quieter pattern and find the property crime statistics jarring — not because anything happened to them, but because they weren't expecting to think about car security or leaving valuables visible. Residents in Spring Hill and the Pine Tree area rarely mention this; residents who settled near the Loop 281 corridor mention it more often. The lesson is that Longview's safety experience is highly location-dependent in a way that a city this size tends to compress in the aggregate numbers.
The Seasonal Reality
East Texas summers draw outdoor activity to parks, the Longview Arboretum and Nature Center, and the Paul Boorman Trail — and those high-traffic periods correlate with upticks in vehicle break-ins at trailhead and park parking areas. It's not a reason to avoid those spaces, but seasoned residents know not to leave anything visible in a parked car during peak summer weekends.
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What the City Is Doing About Crime
Longview isn't passive about its crime picture, and the city's recent investments are worth understanding if you're deciding whether this is a place moving in the right direction.
Expanding the Police Outreach Services Team
In October 2025, the Longview City Council accepted a $250,000 COPS Hiring Program grant from the U.S. Department of Justice to fund two new full-time officers in the Police Outreach Services Team (POST). The POST model focuses on individuals experiencing homelessness and mental health crises — two populations that, in most mid-sized cities, generate a disproportionate share of calls for service. The city simultaneously approved embedding two qualified mental health professionals with first responders, funded for two years through a federal mental health grant. Both moves reflect a broader recognition that traditional policing alone doesn't resolve the underlying conditions that drive certain crime patterns.
Community Prevention Programs
The Longview Police Department runs a formal Neighborhood Watch program — not just a name, but an organized structure for resident participation in crime prevention. The city supports a broader prevention coalition that includes youth mentoring, poverty-reduction initiatives, and a unity and diversity committee. Annual events like National Night Out are part of the same fabric.
These aren't cosmetic programs. They reflect a city that understands its crime challenges are partly social in origin and is investing in prevention alongside enforcement. Whether that strategy produces results takes years to measure, but the trajectory on violent crime — declining notably in the most recent year tracked — suggests the approach is doing something.
What This Means for Residents
For someone choosing a neighborhood in Longview, the practical implication is that the city's institutional response to crime is active and multi-pronged. You're not moving into a city that has given up on the problem. The neighborhood you choose still matters enormously — but you're choosing within a city that is investing in the conditions that make neighborhoods safer over time.
Practical Safety Guidance for Choosing a Neighborhood
Numbers and trends are useful, but most people want a more direct answer: where should I look, and what should I avoid? Here's the honest version.
If Low Crime Risk Is the Priority
Spring Hill is the clearest answer. It sits outside the central commercial corridors, incident mapping consistently shows lower assault and drug-offense clusters there compared to the southern and central parts of the city, and its suburban character keeps it insulated from the spillover that affects closer-in neighborhoods. Pine Tree and Whispering Pines carry a similar profile — quieter residential streets, fewer incidents per year, and the kind of neighborhood texture where residents describe their concerns in terms of speeding rather than break-ins.
The northeast quadrant broadly outperforms the rest of the city on violent crime risk. If you're comparing neighborhoods and safety is a primary criterion, orienting your search toward the northeast gives you the best odds on the data available.
If You're Drawn to the More Urban Areas
Downtown Longview and Greggton offer a different kind of Longview experience — walkable, historically layered, close to the Gregg County Historical Museum and the Longview Museum of Fine Arts. The catch is a measurably higher property crime environment. That doesn't make them wrong choices, but it means being deliberate about vehicle security, exterior lighting, and understanding the block-level variation that exists even within those areas.
Research Habits That Actually Help
Before settling on any specific neighborhood, pull the crime map from CrimeGrade.org for that area — it shows incident concentration at a finer grain than city-wide averages allow. Talk to people on Nextdoor in the specific neighborhood, not Longview as a whole. And pay attention to the difference between incidents that happen at a commercial location versus incidents in the surrounding residential blocks — those are not the same environment, even when they carry the same zip code.
For a full look at how neighborhoods compare on character, housing type, and fit for different buyers, the Longview neighborhoods guide goes deeper on each area. Safety is one dimension of a neighborhood; the complete picture includes the schools, the commute, and what daily life actually looks like — and those angles are worth examining alongside the crime data rather than in isolation.
Local Expert Takeaway: Longview has a violent crime rate of 3.4 per 1,000 residents — that's the part most search results bury, because it comes in below both the Texas state rate and the national average. A property crime rate of 25 per 1,000 residents is the real concern, and it's concentrated in predictable places: the downtown commercial core, the Greggton area, and the North Longview corridor near Judson Road. Spring Hill, Pine Tree, and Whispering Pines consistently come out as the safer residential choices, and the northeast quadrant broadly outperforms the rest of the city on violent crime risk. The city is actively investing in both enforcement and prevention — the 2025 DOJ grant and the POST expansion are real structural moves, not PR. If you're choosing between neighborhoods, pull a block-level crime map for the specific streets you're considering, not just the neighborhood name.
Quick Takeaways & FAQs
✅ Longview has a violent crime rate of 3.4 per 1,000 residents, which sits below the Texas state rate and the national average — a fact that often surprises people who only see the property crime headline.
⚠️ Longview has a property crime rate of 25 per 1,000 residents, running above state and national averages, concentrated in commercial corridors and older urban-core neighborhoods rather than the suburban residential areas where most families settle.
📍 Spring Hill and the Pine Tree area consistently show the lowest incident counts in Longview, while Downtown and Greggton carry the highest — the city's safety picture varies more by neighborhood than the single citywide rate suggests.
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