What Southern California cities are the safest? Here are the top picks.

CBS News Los Angeles

A new report by SafeWise has named multiple cities in Southern California the safest spots to live in the state.

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The list includes 20 different cities and 16 are in Orange County, San Bernardino County and Riverside County.

"From those we surveyed, 50% of Californians feel a high daily level of concern for their safety—but that's a 19% decline year over year," said Rebecca Edwards, lead safety reporter at SafeWise.

SafeWise researches several factors when identifying a safe city, including the latest FBI crime report, crime rates and population.

The top four crimes California residents are concerned about are violent crime, package theft, property crime and gun violence. According to the report, 64% of Californians said they are highly concerned about violent crime happening to them, which is the third highest in the United States.

There were 77 cities in California that met criteria to be considered "safe," Rancho Santa Margarita topped the list, with a violent crime rate of 0.4 and a property crime rate of 4.8 incidents per 1,000 residents.

Rancho Santa Margarita and Yorba Linda both reported zero murders and all the cities listed below reported less than three violent crimes per 1,000 residents.

Safest cities in California 2024

1. Rancho Santa Margarita

2. Aliso Viejo

3. Yorba Linda

4. Laguna Niguel

5. Mission Viejo

6. Lake Forest

7. Lincoln

8. Poway

9. Rocklin

10. Irvine

11. Santee

12. San Marcos

13. San Clemente

14. Elk Grove

15. Encinitas

16. Murrieta

17. Fontana

18. Menifee

19. Cypress

20. Clovis

Amy Maetzold

Amy Maetzold is a digital producer at CBS Los Angeles. She started her journalism career in Wisconsin where she was a producer at NBC15 and Spectrum News 1. Before coming to KCAL, Amy covered news in Santa Barbara at KEYT, winning a group Emmy Award for team coverage on the Alisal Fire.