San Diego County crime statistics for 2025 show a retail-crime surge even as overall crime keeps falling: reported shoplifting more than doubled in four years, from 3,796 offenses in 2021 to 7,882 in 2025 — a 107.6 percent increase — while total property crime fell 27.8 percent and violent crime fell 14.9 percent over the same span. Law enforcement agencies across San Diego County reported 39,167 property offenses to the California Department of Justice in 2025, and 58.6 percent of burglaries were commercial, not residential.
Last updated 19 August 2026 · Isaac Roberts, Security Specialist, Guardian National Security (PPO #120268, owner-verified active 2026-08-03)
This 2026 report covers 2025 data — the most recent complete official year available from the California Department of Justice.
San Diego County Crime Statistics at a Glance
- 39,167 property offenses were reported across the county in 2025 — a rate of 1,193.3 per 100,000 residents.
- Shoplifting rose 107.6 percent since 2021, from 3,796 to 7,882 offenses — the only major property category that grew.
- 58.6 percent of burglaries were commercial, not residential — below California’s statewide share of 62.2 percent.
- Of the commercial burglaries with a recorded time of day, 55.0 percent happened at night.
- 16.8 percent of burglaries were cleared — 715 of 4,261 — a higher clearance rate than Orange County (12.5%), the Inland Empire (11.1%) and the California average (10.2%).
- Total property crime fell 27.8 percent and violent crime fell 14.9 percent between 2021 and 2025.
- Population: 3,282,248 (U.S. Census Bureau, Vintage 2025).
Every figure on this page comes from the California Department of Justice’s Crimes and Clearances collection or the U.S. Census Bureau, and every one can be re-derived from the raw files linked in the methodology section.
⚠ Honest demand note. This page is not built to harvest existing search traffic. A Google Search Console pull for gnsguard.com’s top 500 queries by clicks over the trailing 180 days (2026-02-20 to 2026-08-19) returned zero rows for “San Diego County crime statistics” or any close variant, and only three rows containing the word “crime” at all — none San Diego-specific, each at one impression or fewer. Every existing San Diego query on the property is commercial (guard jobs, guard companies, 24-hour security), which belongs to the county and city money pages, not this one.
There is no measurable existing search demand for this page’s phrase on this property today. It is published as a sourced reference asset — the kind of primary-data page that earns citations and links — and it should be judged as that, not as a short-term traffic play. The same honest framing was used on the paired Inland Empire and Orange County statistics pages.
San Diego County Recorded 39,167 Property Offenses in 2025
San Diego County recorded 39,167 property offenses in 2025 across all 31 reporting law enforcement agencies in the county, including city police departments, the Sheriff’s Department, the California Highway Patrol, six university and college police departments, a harbor police department, and three district park agencies. That breaks into 27,521 larcenies, 7,385 vehicle thefts and 4,261 burglaries. Against a population of 3,282,248, the property crime rate was 1,193.3 per 100,000 residents.
| Category | Offenses | Share of property crime | Rate per 100,000 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Larceny-theft | 27,521 | 70.3% | 838.5 |
| Motor vehicle theft | 7,385 | 18.9% | 225.0 |
| Burglary | 4,261 | 10.9% | 129.8 |
| Total property | 39,167 | 100% | 1,193.3 |
Violent crime is counted separately and is not included in any property figure on this page. Agencies reported 10,457 violent offenses in the county in 2025, of which 5,519 — 52.8 percent — were cleared.
San Diego County’s Commercial Burglary Share Sits Below the California Average
San Diego County’s commercial burglary share sits below the California average. Of the 4,261 burglaries reported across the county in 2025, 2,495 were non-residential and 1,766 were residential — a 58.6 to 41.4 split. California as a whole reported 109,596 burglaries in 2025, of which 68,153 — 62.2 percent — were non-residential, so San Diego County’s businesses absorb a somewhat smaller share of burglary risk than the state average, about 3.6 percentage points lower.
That direction matches the Inland Empire (59.4 percent, also below the state figure) and runs opposite to Orange County, where the commercial share (64.5 percent) sits above the state average. Three neighboring Southern California regions, three different relationships to the same statewide benchmark — which is exactly why a single number for “California” understates how much this varies county to county.
| Area | Total burglary | Non-residential | Residential | Commercial share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| San Diego County | 4,261 | 2,495 | 1,766 | 58.6% |
| Inland Empire | 10,603 | 6,302 | 4,301 | 59.4% |
| Orange County | 5,888 | 3,799 | 2,089 | 64.5% |
| California | 109,596 | 68,153 | 41,443 | 62.2% |
This page does not compare the residential/non-residential split against San Diego County’s own 2021 figures. CA DOJ’s underlying 2021 rows for every reporting agency in the county show an implausible near-total commercial classification (97.2 percent) that year, a data-quality artifact rather than a real one-year swing — so no five-year trend is claimed for this specific split. The 2025-vs-California comparison above uses the same year and the same file for both sides and is not affected.
Most Commercial Burglaries With a Known Time Happen at Night
Most San Diego County commercial burglaries with a recorded time happen at night. Of the 2,495 non-residential burglaries in 2025, agencies logged 1,373 as night and 1,116 as day, leaving 6 with no time recorded. Among the 2,489 that carry a time, 55.0 percent were night burglaries.
The 6 unrecorded cases are just 0.2 percent of all commercial burglaries — a smaller unknown share than either neighboring county reports — so the night figure describes nearly every commercial burglary in the file, not a partial subset. This page does not claim to know how those 6 unrecorded cases would split.
| Time recorded | Burglaries | Share of all commercial | Share of those with a time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Night | 1,373 | 55.0% | 55.2% |
| Day | 1,116 | 44.7% | 44.8% |
| Not recorded | 6 | 0.2% | — |
Residential burglary splits the other way: 773 night against 993 day, with no residential cases left unrecorded. Homes are burgled during the working day more often than at night; businesses are burgled after hours. That is the operational case for overnight coverage at industrial and warehouse sites rather than daytime-only staffing.
San Diego County Clears Burglaries at a Higher Rate Than Its Neighbors
San Diego County clears burglaries at a higher rate than its neighbors. Agencies in the county cleared 715 of 4,261 burglaries in 2025, a clearance rate of 16.8 percent — leaving 3,546 closed without an arrest or exceptional clearance. That is above Orange County’s 12.5 percent, the Inland Empire’s 11.1 percent, and the statewide California figure of 10.2 percent, all computed the same way from the same dataset.
Vehicle theft cleared at 8.2 percent and larceny at 9.8 percent, putting overall property clearance at 10.3 percent. Violent crime clears far more often: 5,519 of 10,457 offenses, or 52.8 percent.
| Offense | Reported | Cleared | Clearance rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Burglary | 4,261 | 715 | 16.8% |
| Motor vehicle theft | 7,385 | 605 | 8.2% |
| Larceny-theft | 27,521 | 2,701 | 9.8% |
| All property | 39,167 | 4,021 | 10.3% |
| Violent | 10,457 | 5,519 | 52.8% |
A higher clearance rate is not the same as a lower crime rate, and this page does not claim it is. The dataset does not split clearances into residential and non-residential, so this page does not report a commercial burglary clearance rate. That figure is not published and is not estimated here.
Shoplifting More Than Doubled While Burglary and Violent Crime Both Fell
Shoplifting in San Diego County rose 107.6 percent between 2021 and 2025, from 3,796 offenses to 7,882 — and it is the only major property category that grew over that period. Shoplifting now accounts for 28.6 percent of all larceny-theft in the county, up from 10.9 percent in 2021.
Every other major category moved the opposite way, and so did violent crime — a different pattern than some neighboring counties, where violent offenses ticked up over the same window. Total property crime fell 27.8 percent, burglary fell 44.1 percent, motor vehicle theft fell 36.9 percent, and violent offenses fell 14.9 percent, from 12,286 to 10,457. A countywide headline of “crime is down” is true here for property and violent crime alike, and wrong for one category: retail operators are the exception to an otherwise favorable five-year trend.
| Year | Property | Burglary | Vehicle theft | Shoplifting | Violent |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 54,262 | 7,618 | 11,712 | 3,796 | 12,286 |
| 2022 | 52,736 | 7,556 | 12,215 | 4,116 | 12,497 |
| 2023 | 50,487 | 6,421 | 12,230 | 5,256 | 12,552 |
| 2024 | 44,248 | 5,649 | 9,920 | 6,270 | 12,190 |
| 2025 | 39,167 | 4,261 | 7,385 | 7,882 | 10,457 |
| Change | −27.8% | −44.1% | −36.9% | +107.6% | −14.9% |
Since 2014’s Proposition 47, California Penal Code section 459.5 has defined shoplifting as its own offense — entering a business during regular hours to steal property worth $950 or less — charged separately from burglary. That statutory definition is what CA DOJ’s shoplifting figure counts, and it has not changed during this five-year window, so the 107.6 percent increase reflects reported offenses, not a definitional shift. Retailers evaluating how guards handle shoplifters in California are dealing with a category that has grown every single year since 2021 in this county.
Vehicles Are the Target in 15,660 San Diego County Offenses
Vehicles were the target in 15,660 San Diego County offenses in 2025. That is 7,385 completed motor vehicle thefts plus 8,275 larcenies that targeted a vehicle without taking it — 6,165 thefts from a vehicle and 2,110 thefts of vehicle parts or accessories. Vehicle-target larceny alone is 30.1 percent of all larceny in the county.
These are counted under separate offense headings in the source data and are added here only because they describe the same target; they are not combined anywhere in CA DOJ’s own tables, and the 15,660 total is this page’s arithmetic, stated so it can be checked. Vehicle theft fell 36.9 percent since 2021, relevant to anyone weighing parking lot coverage or vehicle patrol for a San Diego County property.
Just Under Six in Ten San Diego County Burglaries Involve Forcible Entry
Just under six in ten San Diego County burglaries involve forcible entry. Of the 4,261 burglaries reported across the county in 2025, 2,492 were recorded as forcible entry and 1,769 as unlawful entry without force — a 58.5 to 41.5 split. The two categories sum exactly to the burglary total, so every reported burglary falls into one or the other.
That 41.5 percent unlawful-entry share is the highest of the three Southern California regions GNS has built a statistics page for — above the Inland Empire (25.3 percent) and Orange County (29.0 percent) — meaning San Diego County’s forcible-versus-unlawful split is the most even of the three, not the most lopsided. California law defines burglary broadly, as entering a structure with the intent to commit theft or any felony (California Penal Code section 459), regardless of whether force was used to get in; CA DOJ’s forcible/unlawful split is a reporting classification layered on top of that legal definition, not a separate offense.
More than two in five San Diego County burglaries required no force at all, which is why verifying that doors, gates, and access points are actually secured — not just present — is a standard duty on a Guardian National Security post order, alongside the core guard services a site contracts.
Shoplifting and Vehicle-Target Theft Dominate San Diego County Larceny
Shoplifting and vehicle-target theft dominate San Diego County larceny. Of 27,521 larceny-theft offenses in 2025, shoplifting accounted for 7,882 and thefts targeting vehicles for a further 8,275. The nine published subcategories sum exactly to the larceny total, with no residual or unclassified remainder.
| Subcategory | Offenses | Share of larceny |
|---|---|---|
| All other larceny | 7,921 | 28.8% |
| Shoplifting | 7,882 | 28.6% |
| Theft from a motor vehicle | 6,165 | 22.4% |
| Vehicle parts and accessories | 2,110 | 7.7% |
| Bicycles | 2,000 | 7.3% |
| Theft from a building | 1,290 | 4.7% |
| Pocket-picking | 54 | 0.2% |
| Purse-snatching | 78 | 0.3% |
| Coin-operated machines | 21 | 0.1% |
| Total larceny-theft | 27,521 | 100% |
“All other larceny” and shoplifting are nearly tied for the largest line, at 28.8 and 28.6 percent, and CA DOJ does not break the “all other” category down further, so this page does not speculate about its contents. The three named categories a security program can actually influence — shoplifting, theft from vehicles, and theft from buildings — together account for 15,337 offenses, or 55.7 percent of all San Diego County larceny. Retailers dealing with the shoplifting increase documented above may also find how organized retail crime operates useful context, even though that page’s figures are Los Angeles-specific and are not used as a source anywhere on this page.
San Diego, Chula Vista and Oceanside Report the Most Property Crime by Volume
San Diego, Chula Vista and Oceanside report the most property crime by volume among San Diego County’s cities. The City of San Diego alone recorded 21,692 property offenses in 2025, followed by Chula Vista at 2,915 and Oceanside at 2,570 — together the three largest cities account for 69.4 percent of countywide property crime, which is expected given San Diego is by far the county’s largest city.
Composition varies more than volume. Chula Vista posted the highest commercial burglary share among the five largest cities at 68.3 percent, and Oceanside followed at 62.9 percent. Escondido ran close to the countywide figure at 60.1 percent, and the City of San Diego itself came in at 54.8 percent. El Cajon was the outlier: at 49.2 percent commercial, it is the only one of the five largest cities where burglary runs residential-majority rather than commercial-majority. GNS does not currently publish a dedicated city page for Chula Vista or El Cajon, so neither name is hyperlinked here.
| City | Property offenses | Burglary | Commercial burglary | Commercial share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| San Diego | 21,692 | 2,050 | 1,123 | 54.8% |
| Chula Vista | 2,915 | 347 | 237 | 68.3% |
| Oceanside | 2,570 | 442 | 278 | 62.9% |
| Escondido | 2,087 | 223 | 134 | 60.1% |
| El Cajon | 1,233 | 130 | 64 | 49.2% |
These are the five largest cities by property-crime volume, not a ranking of danger — a larger city reports more of everything. Four of the five still show burglary running commercial-majority; El Cajon does not, and this page states that plainly rather than rounding it into the general pattern.
A Few Small Agencies Report an All-Commercial Burglary Profile
Four San Diego County law enforcement agencies reported an all-commercial burglary profile in 2025: the San Diego Harbor Police, whose 33 burglaries were entirely non-residential; San Diego Coast District Park and Recreation, with 10; San Diego Community College District police, with 6; and Palomar College police, with 1. All four patrol jurisdictions — a working harbor, state park land, and two college campuses — that contain little or no housing, which is why their numbers land at 100 percent commercial rather than reflecting anything unusual about enforcement.
The San Diego County Sheriff’s Department runs only slightly below the countywide pattern. It reported 282 burglaries across its unincorporated and contract-city jurisdictions in 2025, and 156 of them — 55.3 percent — were commercial, about 3.2 percentage points below the 58.6 percent countywide figure. That is a modest gap, not a dramatic one; this page does not overstate it.
| Agency | Commercial burglary | Total burglary | Commercial share |
|---|---|---|---|
| San Diego Harbor Police | 33 | 33 | 100% |
| San Diego Coast District Park and Recreation | 10 | 10 | 100% |
| San Diego Community College District | 6 | 6 | 100% |
| Palomar College | 1 | 1 | 100% |
These are counts of reported offenses, not rates, and all four agencies above report far fewer total burglaries than any city police department in the county. They are included because the 100 percent figure is real, not because the volume is meaningful on its own.
What the San Diego County Crime Statistics Mean for Property Owners
Three findings in these San Diego County crime statistics change how a commercial site should be covered. First, shoplifting has more than doubled since 2021 even as most other crime categories fell — the one category moving in the wrong direction. Second, commercial burglary with a known time skews to night, while residential skews to day. Third, even though San Diego County clears burglaries at a higher rate than its Southern California neighbors, that still means fewer than one in six close with an arrest.
That third figure is the one that matters most commercially. A 16.8 percent clearance rate is the best of the three regions GNS has published statistics for, and it is still not a plan. Clearance is what happens after a loss; deterrence and detection at the point of entry are the only controls a property owner actually governs, which is the argument for on-site presence at retail centers, construction sites and apartment and gated communities during the hours the data says entry occurs.
Guardian National Security covers San Diego County from San Diego, Oceanside, Chula Vista and the surrounding cities, and publishes rates openly: unarmed guards $25–40 per hour, armed guards $35–65 per hour, mobile patrol $45–70 per hour, event security $30–60 per hour — with a price-match guarantee on any comparable licensed quote.
Methodology and Source Notes
The San Diego County crime statistics on this page come from the California Department of Justice Crimes and Clearances (including Arson), 1985–2025 file, published July 2026 through OpenJustice. Figures were produced by filtering that file to rows where Year = 2025 and County is San Diego County, then summing the named columns across all 31 reporting agencies.
These are UCR summary counts, not NIBRS incident records. California agencies report monthly offense totals under the FBI’s summary Uniform Crime Reporting definitions, described in CA DOJ’s own OpenJustice methodology notes. That is a different measure from the incident-level NIBRS data some individual cities publish, and the two must never be added together or compared directly — which is why the figures here cannot be set against our Los Angeles property crime statistics, which are built from LAPD NIBRS records.
The FBI’s own Crime Data Explorer documents this national UCR-to-NIBRS transition in more detail; it was not used as a source for any figure on this page because county-level drill-down there requires programmatic access this build did not use.
Every figure was derived twice, by different routes. Each headline number was computed from the annual file using Python’s csv.DictReader, summed by field, and then recomputed independently by reading the separate by-month file with a plain csv.reader and column-index lookups — a different code path and a different level of aggregation (agency-month rows rather than agency-year rows). All twenty tested figures matched exactly, across five years of the trend table. Internal subtotals also reconcile: residential plus non-residential burglary equals total burglary, forcible plus unlawful entry equals total burglary, the nine larceny subcategories sum to larceny-theft, and burglary plus vehicle theft plus larceny equals total property crime.
Raw file: Crimes and Clearances 1985–2025 (CSV). Definitions and reporting rules: CA DOJ context document (revised June 2026). Population: U.S. Census Bureau Vintage 2025 county population estimates, cross-referenced against the Bureau’s Population Estimates Program page, using the 2025 estimate for the county. California’s shoplifting statute is codified at Penal Code section 459.5; burglary generally is defined at Penal Code section 459.
Limits of this data. These are offenses reported to police; unreported crime is not counted. The Bureau of Justice Statistics separately estimates unreported crime through victimization surveys, a different methodology this page does not use or cite figures from. “San Diego County” here means every agency reporting to CA DOJ with a county of San Diego, which includes the California Highway Patrol, university and college police departments, a harbor police department and district park agencies alongside city police and the sheriff’s department.
Clearance rates are not published split by residential and non-residential, so no commercial clearance rate is claimed. The San Diego Association of Governments separately publishes its own regional criminal justice research; its figures are not used as a source anywhere on this page and are noted here only so readers know an independent regional dataset exists.
San Diego County Crime Statistics: Frequently Asked Questions
How much crime is there in San Diego County?
Law enforcement agencies in San Diego County reported 39,167 property offenses and 10,457 violent offenses in 2025. Against a population of 3,282,248, that is a property crime rate of 1,193.3 per 100,000 residents. The figures come from the California Department of Justice.
Property crime breaks into 27,521 larcenies, 7,385 motor vehicle thefts and 4,261 burglaries. All 31 reporting agencies in the county are included, from city police and the sheriff’s department to university, college and harbor police departments and district park agencies. These are offenses reported to police under FBI summary reporting definitions, so unreported crime is not counted anywhere in the totals.
Are businesses or homes burglarized more often in San Diego County?
Businesses are burglarized somewhat more often than homes in San Diego County, based on the California Department of Justice’s 2025 data. Of 4,261 burglaries reported across the county that year, 2,495 were non-residential and 1,766 were residential — a 58.6 to 41.4 split in favor of commercial targets.
That share runs below the statewide figure of 62.2 percent, in the same direction as the Inland Empire (59.4 percent) and opposite Orange County, where the commercial share (64.5 percent) runs above the state average. Among San Diego County’s largest cities, Chula Vista posted the highest commercial share at 68.3 percent, while El Cajon was the only one of the five where burglary ran residential-majority, at 49.2 percent commercial.
Is crime rising or falling in San Diego County?
San Diego County property and violent crime are both falling, with one exception. Total property offenses dropped 27.8 percent between 2021 and 2025, from 54,262 to 39,167, while violent crime fell 14.9 percent and burglary fell 44.1 percent over the same five years.
Shoplifting is the exception and moved the opposite way, rising 107.6 percent from 3,796 offenses in 2021 to 7,882 in 2025 — now 28.6 percent of all larceny-theft, up from 10.9 percent. A countywide summary of falling crime is accurate for property and violent offenses alike, and misleading for retail operators specifically.
Do security guards reduce crime in San Diego County?
No published San Diego County dataset measures the effect of security guards on crime, so no percentage reduction is claimed here. The California Department of Justice’s Crimes and Clearances data reports offenses and clearances by agency and county; it does not track whether a property carried private security, so no causal figure can be derived from it.
What the data does establish is where and when commercial burglary concentrates — 55.0 percent of commercial burglaries with a known time happen at night, and nearly six in ten burglaries countywide involve forcible entry, meaning access-point security has direct relevance. Guardian National Security states this plainly rather than attaching an invented percentage to guard coverage.
