Methodology

How the grades work

Data sources

Incident data comes from the City of Miami Police Department’s official open-data incident feed (datahub-miamigis.opendata.arcgis.com), covering all reported crime incidents from 2025 through September 29, 2026. Population comes from the US Census 2020 block counts. Boundaries are the City of Miami’s official MPD police zones. Data was last refreshed October 1, 2026; we refresh monthly.

The formula

For each neighborhood we compute, over the trailing 12 months:

• Overall rate — reported incidents per 1,000 residents
• Violent rate — murder, rape and sexual assault, robbery, and aggravated assault per 1,000 residents
• Composite score — violent rate × 0.7 + overall rate × 0.3

Neighborhoods are ranked by composite score and graded on percentile bands: top 10% = A, to 30% = B+, to 50% = B, to 70% = C, to 90% = D, bottom 10% = F. Grades compare Miami neighborhoods to each other — an F does not mean it is unsafe to walk there, and an A does not mean crime never happens.

Honest limitations

• Reported incidents only. Crimes that are never reported to MPD are not in the data, and reporting rates differ by neighborhood and offense type.
• Daytime population isn’t counted. Areas with few residents but heavy visitor traffic (downtown, nightlife strips, parks) show inflated per-resident rates. We flag neighborhoods under 3,000 residents.
• Incident ≠ conviction. The feed records reports, not case outcomes.
• Block coordinates are approximate. MPD anonymizes locations to the block level.
• City of Miami only. Miami Beach, Coral Gables, Hialeah and unincorporated Miami-Dade have their own police departments and are not covered.
• Areas are police zones, named for the neighborhoods inside them. MPD assigns every incident to a zone from its real address. Each zone is named after the city-mapped neighborhoods holding at least 20% of its residents, so a zone and a neighborhood of the same name may not line up exactly.
• No year-over-year trend yet. MPD’s public feed starts January 2025. Trends appear once there are two full years to compare.

What this is — and isn’t

SafeNeighborhoods is an informational research tool for people making their own housing, travel, and investment decisions. It is not legal, real-estate, or lending advice; it is not a prediction of risk to any individual; and it must not be used to make decisions about tenants, borrowers, or employees. Housing decisions are governed by the Fair Housing Act — this site grades places, never people.