Hialeah crime data continues to defy the city’s reputation problems from years past: 2026 rankings again place it among Florida’s safest cities, even as it remains a dense, working-class community of more than 220,000 people. Here is what the latest numbers actually show.
Hialeah’s 2026 Safety Ranking
WalletHub’s most recent city safety comparison ranks Hialeah as Florida’s second-safest city, behind only Port St. Lucie, and 53rd safest among the 182 U.S. cities studied. The ranking weighs three categories: home and community safety, natural-disaster risk, and financial safety, meaning Hialeah’s score reflects more than just crime statistics.
Crime Rate by the Numbers
Independent crime-mapping data gives Hialeah an overall crime grade of A for 2026, placing it in the “very safe” category. The city’s overall crime rate sits well below the national average, and every one of its eight tracked neighborhoods earned a grade of A or A+ in the most recent analysis. Annual violent-crime figures reported per 100,000 residents show an assault rate of 134.5, less than half the national rate of 282.7, and a murder rate of 3, compared with a national rate of 6.1.
Neighborhood-Level Safety
Safety is not perfectly uniform across the city. The Basin Area neighborhood, for instance, carries its own A+ crime rating with detailed data available for residents comparing it against adjacent areas. Crime-mapping tools that break Hialeah down block by block are useful for residents deciding where in the city to live or park, since citywide averages can mask meaningful differences between neighborhoods.
How Hialeah Compares to Its Own Recent History
Older data offers useful context for how far the city’s reputation has shifted. Based on 2021 figures, the odds of experiencing a violent crime in Hialeah were about 1 in 659, while the odds of property crime were roughly 1 in 67, numbers that were already comparatively low at the time. The 2026 data suggests the trend has continued rather than reversed, with Hialeah holding or improving on its earlier safety standing even as the city’s population has grown.
Income and Demographics Context
Hialeah’s median household income was $55,594 as of 2024 Census data, and the city’s unemployment rate has hovered in the 3.8 to 4.1 percent range in recent reporting, broadly in line with statewide averages. Hialeah remains one of the most heavily Hispanic and Cuban-American cities in the country, a demographic identity closely tied to its community-oriented, lower-crime reputation.
A Note on Hialeah Gardens
Hialeah and Hialeah Gardens are frequently confused but are two entirely separate, independently incorporated cities in Miami-Dade County. Hialeah, incorporated in 1925, covers about 22.8 square miles and is home to more than 220,000 residents, while Hialeah Gardens, incorporated in 1948, is a much smaller city of about 3.7 square miles bordering Hialeah to the west, with roughly 23,000 residents. Safety and demographic statistics for one city should not be assumed to apply to the other.
What This Means for Residents and Visitors
The consistency across multiple independent rankings, WalletHub’s multi-factor safety score, CrimeGrade’s neighborhood-level mapping, and year-over-year FBI-style crime rate reporting, is what makes Hialeah’s low-crime status credible rather than a one-off ranking. That said, no city-wide statistic guarantees safety on every block, which is why the neighborhood-level tools referenced above remain useful for anyone deciding where specifically to live, work, or park within the city.
Crime, while generally low, still occurs, as with any city this size; for a recent example, see this report on an attack in a Hialeah Walmart parking lot. This Hialeah crime overview will be updated as newer FBI or WalletHub data is released.
