Fort Lauderdale, FL Crime Map

Fort Lauderdale Safety by the Numbers

Fort Lauderdale is a city of 181,818 residents that earns an overall crime grade of C-, yet a closer look at its 161 analyzed neighborhoods tells a more nuanced story. Across those neighborhoods, 88% carry an A or B safety rating, meaning the overwhelming majority of the city's geography is genuinely safe by any reasonable standard. Only 6% of neighborhoods fall into the D or F range, a figure that matters enormously when choosing where to live, rent, or invest — but one that should not define how the entire city is understood.

Where Safety Is Strongest

The safest corners of Fort Lauderdale are concentrated in neighborhoods with notably higher household incomes. Cooper City, the largest of the top-rated areas with a population of 7,551, holds an A+ grade and a median household income of $95,143. Friendly Acres earns the same A+ with a median income of $171,821, while Westport ($125,540) and El Dorado Estates ($122,382) round out a cluster of high-performing neighborhoods where residents consistently report low crime exposure. Kapok Estates, though small at just 99 residents, stands out with a median income of $221,140 and an A+ grade — the kind of enclave that skews city-wide averages in meaningful ways.

Neighborhoods With Elevated Risk

Not every part of Fort Lauderdale shares that safety profile. Westwood Park, Lake Aire Palm View, Durrs, and Roosevelt Gardens each carry a grade of F, while Dorsey-Riverbend scores an F+. These neighborhoods account for a small slice of the city's total area, but they contribute disproportionately to Fort Lauderdale's overall C- grade. Understanding where these concentrations exist — rather than treating the city as uniformly risky — is exactly what a neighborhood-level crime map is designed to help with.

How Crime Grades Are Distributed Across the City

Of the 161 neighborhoods analyzed, 119 earned an A grade — that's 73.9% of the city scoring at the highest safety tier. Another 14.3% landed at a B. Together, those two categories account for nearly nine out of ten neighborhoods. The middle ground is thin: just 6.2% of neighborhoods scored a C. The distribution is sharply bimodal, with a large safe majority and a small but significant cluster of high-crime areas dragging down the city-wide average. That gap between the median experience and the worst-case pockets is one of the defining features of Fort Lauderdale's crime landscape.

Property Crime vs. Violent Crime Patterns

Fort Lauderdale's crime profile reflects patterns common to high-tourism, high-density coastal cities. Property crimes — including vehicle break-ins, theft from vacation rentals, and opportunistic burglary — tend to be the dominant concern across mid-grade neighborhoods. Violent crime, by contrast, is more tightly concentrated in the F-rated neighborhoods identified above, rather than spread evenly across the city. Residents in A-rated areas like Martha Bright Farms or Cooper's Place face a fundamentally different risk environment than those in Durrs or Roosevelt Gardens, and the data supports treating those distinctions seriously rather than averaging them away.

Using the Crime Map to Make Better Decisions

For home buyers weighing a $350,886 median home value against neighborhood safety, or renters comparing options near the median rent of $1,353 per month, the interactive crime map provides a level of specificity that city-wide statistics cannot. Commuters can identify which routes pass through higher-risk corridors. Families relocating to the area can compare school-adjacent neighborhoods by grade before signing a lease. Real estate investors can cross-reference crime grades with income data — noting, for example, the strong correlation between A+ ratings and median incomes above $95,000 — to assess long-term neighborhood trajectory. The map does not replace local knowledge, but it makes that knowledge accessible and verifiable in ways that matter when the stakes are high.