People moving from Portland or the wider Puget Sound region often arrive in Longview with a vague anxiety about a mid-size industrial city — and then feel genuinely surprised once they settle in. Longview sits along the Columbia River in Cowlitz County, roughly 45 minutes north of Portland on I-5, and the combination of its timber-industry roots, working-class character, and relatively modest size shapes its safety profile in ways that don't fit the alarmist narrative some relocation forums push. The city is not crime-free. But the data paints a more reassuring picture than the rumor mill suggests.
The headline numbers come from the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting data for 2024, released in September and October 2025. Longview recorded 82 violent crimes and 1,205 property crimes across the full year, producing rates of 2.2 violent crimes and 31.8 property crimes per 1,000 residents. Those figures sit meaningfully below the national city average for violent crime — and they represent a significant improvement over recent years, with overall crime falling 18% in 2024 compared to 2023. That downward trend is real, sustained, and worth understanding before you form an opinion about the city.
Context matters for the property crime number. Washington state ranked among the worst in the nation for property crime in 2024, so Longview is operating in a high-baseline state environment. The 31.8 per 1,000 figure sounds alarming in isolation, but it reflects a state where car break-ins and retail theft are elevated everywhere from Spokane to Bellingham. Within that context, and with larceny and petty theft accounting for the overwhelming majority of incidents, the picture is more nuanced than a raw number conveys.
This guide breaks down Longview's crime statistics by type and trend, maps the safety picture across the city's named neighborhoods, explains what the numbers mean for daily life, and outlines what community-level safety resources exist here — so you can make a grounded decision about whether Longview fits what you're looking for.
Longview's Crime Rates in Context: Violent vs. Property Crime
The single most important distinction to make before reading any crime statistic is the difference between violent crime and property crime. They describe fundamentally different risks — one is about personal safety, the other is mostly about your car and your porch.
Violent Crime: Below Average, and Falling
Longview's violent crime rate of 2.2 per 1,000 residents is below the national city average of 2.6 per 1,000, based on 2024 FBI Uniform Crime Reporting data. It is also below Washington state's 2024 violent crime rate of 3.3 per 1,000 — meaning Longview outperforms both national and state benchmarks on the metric that matters most to personal safety.
The year-over-year change is equally significant. Longview's violent crime rate dropped 23% from 2023 to 2024. That is not a rounding error — it represents a genuine and sustained decline that has continued across the past five years.
Property Crime: Elevated, but Mostly Theft
The property crime rate of 31.8 per 1,000 is the number that gives pause, and it should be taken seriously. Larceny and theft, however, account for 1,028 of the 1,205 property crime reports in 2024 — roughly 85% of all incidents. That means most of what gets counted here is someone stealing something left visible in a car, a package lifted from a porch, or retail shoplifting — not a burglar entering an occupied home.
That breakdown doesn't make property crime acceptable, but it does change how you prepare for it. Locking your car, not leaving valuables visible, and being thoughtful about where you park are the practical responses — not a security system overhaul.
| Metric | Longview (2024) | WA State (2024) | National Average |
|---|---|---|---|
| Violent crime per 1,000 | 2.2 | 3.3 | 2.6 |
| Property crime per 1,000 | 31.8 | 24.7 (est.) | ~20.0 (est.) |
| Year-over-year violent crime change | −23% | — | — |
| Overall crime change (2023→2024) | −18% | — | — |
| Drug crime per 1,000 (CrimeGrade est.) | ~1.1 | — | — |
| Violent crime clearance rate (2024) | 67% | — | ~50% (national est.) |
Violent and property crime figures are FBI Uniform Crime Reporting 2024 data. CrimeGrade.org figures are modeled projections, not FBI-reported counts. WA state property crime estimate derived from USAFacts / FBI UCR 2024.
The 67% violent crime clearance rate is worth flagging. Nationally, about half of violent crimes go unsolved; Longview's Longview Police Department closed two-thirds of its cases. That reflects active investigative follow-through, not a department overwhelmed by caseload.
Neighborhood Safety Map: Where Longview Is Safer — and Where to Be Cautious
Longview's safety picture is not uniform across all eight neighborhoods. The north and west sides of the city consistently show lower incident concentrations; the east-side corridors carry the city's highest crime density. Understanding that divide is more useful than any single city-wide number.
The Safer North and West
The Highlands and Longview Heights areas in the city's north are generally regarded by residents as the quietest and lowest-crime parts of Longview. These neighborhoods tend toward larger lots, more established tree cover, and lower foot-traffic density — all of which correlate with lower property crime exposure.
West Longview earns a B− grade for violent crime from CrimeGrade.org's modeled projections, ranking in the 61st percentile for safety nationally — meaning it is safer than the majority of comparable U.S. neighborhoods on that measure. Mint Valley, tucked in the city's southwest corner, records the fewest total crime incidents annually, partly because it sits away from the high-traffic commercial corridors where most opportunistic theft concentrates.
Downtown and the East-Side Corridors
Downtown Longview and the Columbia Heights area near the industrial east side see higher incident concentrations. This follows a pattern common to mid-size cities with active port and freight operations: more foot traffic, more commercial activity, and more transient movement all elevate property crime exposure in these zones.
That doesn't make Downtown or Columbia Heights inherently dangerous in the violent-crime sense. The downtown civic core has seen ongoing investment and hosts regular community activity. But if your tolerance for opportunistic property crime is low, these are the neighborhoods where vigilance is highest.
| Neighborhood | General Safety Profile | Primary Risk Type | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| Highlands | Among city's lowest-crime areas | Minimal reported incidents | Families Quiet |
| Longview Heights | Low incident concentration | Minimal reported incidents | Families Schools |
| Mint Valley | Fewest total incidents in city | Low across all categories | Nature Quiet |
| West Longview | B− violent crime (CrimeGrade, modeled) | Low property, low violent | First-Time Value |
| Beacon Hill | Moderate; elevated streets near commercial zones | Property crime exposure | Commuter |
| Columbia Valley Gardens | Moderate; mixed residential and transit corridors | Opportunistic property crime | Renter |
| Columbia Heights | Higher incident concentration | Property crime, some violent | Value |
| Downtown/City Center | Highest incident density in city | Property crime; commercial zone risk | Walkable |
CrimeGrade.org grades are modeled projections based on reported incident data, not direct FBI counts. Neighborhood-level characterizations are drawn from CrimeGrade.org projected 2025 data and resident-reported patterns.
One thing newcomers consistently underestimate: a neighborhood's proximity to a commercial strip matters more than its proximity to Downtown. The stretches along Ocean Beach Highway and Washington Way see more opportunistic theft than quieter residential streets just a few blocks off those corridors.
What the Trend Line Actually Tells You
A single year's crime statistics can be misleading. What separates a meaningful shift from statistical noise is whether the trend holds across multiple years — and in Longview's case, it does.
Five Years of Consistent Decline
Both violent and property crime have fallen in Longview over the past five years. The sharpest single-year drop came in 2024: overall crime fell 18% compared to 2023, with violent crime specifically dropping 23%. That is not a one-year blip caused by an unusually quiet period — it reflects a multi-year direction.
For someone deciding on a neighborhood, a declining trend line is arguably more useful than an absolute number. A city with a higher rate that is falling fast is a different bet than a city with a lower rate that is creeping upward. Longview is in the former camp, and that trajectory matters.
The Drug Crime Story Cuts the Other Way — Favorably
One of the more surprising data points: Longview's drug-related crime rate of approximately 1.1 per 1,000 residents earns an A grade from CrimeGrade.org's modeled projections, placing the city in the 85th percentile for drug-crime safety — meaning it is safer than 85% of comparable U.S. cities on this metric. For a city with a visible unhoused population near parts of the commercial core, that figure is counterintuitive to newcomers who conflate visible poverty with drug crime statistics.
What this suggests is that Longview's property crime problem is largely economic and opportunistic — theft driven by circumstance — rather than the kind of drug-market violence that produces higher violent crime rates in some comparable Pacific Northwest cities.
What Six Months Here Will Teach You
People who move to Longview from larger metro areas often arrive braced for a rough transition, and then feel genuinely settled within a few months. The friction point that catches most newcomers off guard is not violent crime — it's property crime against vehicles. Catalytic converter theft and smash-and-grab incidents from car interiors are the recurring complaints on neighborhood Facebook groups, particularly in areas near the Ocean Beach Highway corridor and the commercial stretches around 15th Avenue. That's a management problem, not a reason to rule out a neighborhood entirely, but it's worth knowing before you decide where to park.
Looking to buy in Longview? Estimate your payment.
Enter your numbers to see an estimated monthly mortgage payment.
Estimate only. Excludes HOA fees and mortgage insurance. The interest rate above is a starting point, not a quoted rate — replace it with your own to see real numbers. Insurance is a flat placeholder, not a Longview quote.
Community Safety Resources and What They Signal
How a police department engages with the public between incidents says something about how it operates during them. Longview's department runs two programs worth knowing about.
The Citizens' Academy
The Longview Police Department runs a 10-week Citizens' Academy in partnership with the Kelso Police Department and the Cowlitz County Sheriff's Office. The 2026 session began March 4. The program is designed to give residents a direct look at how local law enforcement operates — investigations, patrol procedures, dispatch — and it draws residents from across the city, not just from neighborhoods with active community associations.
The practical value of this for someone evaluating Longview: a department willing to run this kind of program is typically one that is not operating in crisis mode. Overwhelmed departments don't run public engagement programs. It's a soft signal, but a real one.
The Cadet Program
The department's Cadet Program brings in youth and adult volunteers who work alongside sworn officers during community events — the July Go 4th Celebration along the Columbia River waterfront, Crime Prevention Fairs, and similar public gatherings. Cadets are visible participants, not ride-along observers, and the program has a track record of converting participants into community advocates.
For parents with teenagers, this program is worth knowing about independently of its safety implications. It gives young people structured exposure to public service in a city where that kind of pipeline is not always obvious.
What to Actually Do Before Choosing a Street
No city guide substitutes for street-level research. Before settling on a specific block in any Longview neighborhood, it is worth spending time on the Cowlitz County Sheriff's Office public crime log and checking the Longview Police Department's public incident reports, which are available through the city's official site at mylongview.com. CrimeGrade.org's neighborhood-level maps, while based on modeled projections rather than raw FBI counts, give a useful visual sense of incident density by block cluster. Cross-referencing those tools with a drive through the area at different times of day — including evening — will tell you more than any aggregate statistic.
The Honest Assessment: Who Will Feel Safe in Longview, and Who Won't
Safety is partly objective and partly perceptual — and those two things don't always align. Longview's data profile is measurably better than its reputation among people who have never lived here. But that doesn't mean everyone will experience it the same way.
Where Longview Earns Its Safety Reputation
Families settling in the Highlands, Longview Heights, or Mint Valley areas are moving into neighborhoods that would not stand out as high-risk in any Pacific Northwest city. Violent crime at 2.2 per 1,000 — below both state and national averages — is the number that governs personal safety, and that figure holds across most of the city's residential north and west sides. The 23% year-over-year decline in violent crime, sustained within a five-year downward trend, gives that figure added weight.
Longview also performs well on the metrics that often predict future safety trajectories: a high violent crime clearance rate (67%), a drug crime rate in the 85th percentile nationally, and an active community policing posture. These are leading indicators, not just lagging statistics.
Where Longview Requires Honest Adjustment
If you are moving from a low-crime suburban environment and your baseline expectation is minimal property crime of any kind, Downtown Longview and the Columbia Heights corridor will require adjustment. These areas carry the city's highest incident density, and the commercial-zone property crime that concentrates there is a real and recurring feature of life, not an anomaly.
The other honest note: Washington state's overall property crime environment is genuinely elevated — third worst in the nation in 2024. Longview is not immune to that state context, and anyone moving here from a lower-baseline state should calibrate expectations accordingly. The city is better than the state average on violent crime; it is not better than the national average on property crime, and it would be misleading to suggest otherwise.
What Longview is, accurately: a city where the safety picture is improving, where the most serious crimes are below average, where opportunistic property crime requires active management rather than alarm, and where neighborhood choice within the city matters more than the city-wide headline number. That framing is more useful than either the alarmist version or the promotional one.
Local Expert Takeaway: Longview's violent crime rate is below both the state and national averages, and it dropped 23% in a single year — that trend is real and multi-year, not a statistical quirk. The property crime number (31.8 per 1,000) looks high but is overwhelmingly driven by larceny and theft, not burglary or confrontational crime. The practical divide within the city runs north-to-south: Highlands, Longview Heights, and Mint Valley are the quietest residential options, while the Downtown corridor and east-side stretches near the commercial strips require more vigilance about what you leave in your car. If you're weighing two specific streets in different neighborhoods, the CrimeGrade.org block-level map and Longview PD's public incident log at mylongview.com will give you a more accurate picture than any city-wide average.
Quick Takeaways & FAQs
✅ Longview's violent crime rate of 2.2 per 1,000 residents sits below both the Washington state average and the national city average, and fell 23% year-over-year in 2024 — a genuine multi-year improvement backed by FBI Uniform Crime Reporting data.
⚠️ Property crime at 31.8 per 1,000 is elevated and reflects Washington state's status as one of the worst states in the nation for property crime — opportunistic theft, especially from vehicles along commercial corridors, is the most common complaint from residents.
📍 Within Longview, the north side — particularly Highlands and Longview Heights — and the southwest Mint Valley area record the city's lowest crime concentrations; the east-side corridors and Downtown carry the highest incident density and require the most active awareness.
Is Longview, WA a safe place to live?
Which neighborhoods in Longview, WA have the lowest crime?
Is crime in Longview getting better or worse?
How does Longview's crime rate compare to the rest of Washington state?
What kind of crime is most common in Longview, WA?
Moving to Washington?
Tell us what you need help with and we'll connect you with local resources.
