Corrales, Rio Rancho and Bernalillo rank among New Mexico’s safest cities
Corrales, Rio Rancho and Bernalillo landed in New Mexico’s top 10 safest cities, but Corrales still saw violent crime tick up to 2.3 per 1,000 people.
Corrales, Rio Rancho and Bernalillo all landed in New Mexico’s top 10 safest cities, a ranking that can shape how homebuyers, insurers and business owners view Sandoval County. SafeWise based its 2026 list on 2024 FBI crime report statistics and population data, and said cities missing from the report either fell below its population threshold or did not submit a complete FBI crime report.
The ranking is a boost in public perception, but it is not a guarantee of safety. SafeWise says its city lists are meant to compare relative risk and highlight places with low per-capita crime rates, while New Mexico still carries one of the toughest public-safety profiles in the country. In SafeWise’s 2026 State of Safety survey, about 54% of New Mexico respondents said they worry about their safety every day, and the state posted a violent-crime rate of 8.78 incidents per 1,000 people and a property-crime rate of 38.56 per 1,000, the highest property-crime rate in the nation.
Corrales ranked third statewide even as its numbers moved slightly higher. The village’s violent-crime rate rose from 1.2 per 1,000 people in 2025 to 2.3 in 2026, and property crime edged up from 3.8 to 3.9. Fred Hashimoto, who became Corrales mayor on Jan. 2, 2026, after winning the 2025 election, praised the ranking and pointed to the village’s low-crime reputation, calm residents, strong police department and larger property sizes in a June 5 message. He also used that message to underscore the broader backdrop: New Mexico ranked No. 1 in property crimes and No. 2 in violent crimes in 2024.
Rio Rancho placed fifth, and its crime trend moved in the opposite direction. Both violent and property crime fell from the previous year, fitting a broader decline in reported offenses tracked by the Rio Rancho Police Department’s 2024 annual report, which showed offenses falling from 8,681 in 2022 to 7,283 in 2024, even as the city kept growing. Bernalillo also joined the top-10 group, ranking eighth in a separate 2026 list that described its crime rate as 91% lower than the New Mexico average. Jack Torres, who won a fifth term as Bernalillo mayor in March 2026, now heads a town that is being held up alongside Corrales and Rio Rancho as evidence that Sandoval County’s core communities are outperforming much of the state on the measures SafeWise tracks.
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