Keyser
City in Mineral County, 4,857 people.
Police
Sheriff in its county: Mineral County Sheriff's Office.
A department is the place's own when its name is the place's and its FBI population fits the place's people (decision city-or-town-is-its-police-department). Agencies: FBI NIBRS master file 2025 batch headers; names from the FBI agency list, pulled 2026-09-29.
Where it sits
- County
- Mineral County
- People
- 4,857
- Census Bureau American Community Survey 5-year estimates, 2020 to 2024
How a case moves here
Keyser follows West Virginia law on arrests, release, and courts; the full set covers prosecutors, defense, and jails too.
- Who decides release first
A county magistrate sets bail first, with an on-call magistrate for arrests after hours. Magistrates need not be lawyers. Only the circuit court can release a person charged with an offense punishable by life in prison.
W. Va. Code 62-1C-1W. Va. Code 62-1-5- Time to see a judge
An officer must take an arrested person "without unnecessary delay" before a magistrate of the county where the arrest happened. The law sets no number of hours.
W. Va. Code 62-1-5(a)(1)- Money bail
Magistrates and judges may set money bail.
W. Va. Code 62-1C-1
Read from the statutes and court rules cited, 2026-09-30. Some of this is medium confidence and still being checked. The name of the Supreme Court-approved risk instrument was not found. Whether jailers release on a bail schedule without a magistrate was not found.
Crime
Offenses reported by Keyser Police Department, Keyser's own department. The county sheriff and state police may answer calls here too; their offenses are on their own pages.
The crime index
| Offense | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025* | Per 100k | West Virginia |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Violent crime | 19 | 17 | 5 | 12 | 2 | 273 | 285 |
| Murder | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 6.3 | |||||
| Rape | 1 | 2 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 56 | |||
| Robbery | 1 | 1 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 12 | |||
| Aggravated assault | 18 | 17 | 4 | 9 | 2 | 248 | 210 |
| Property crime | 155 | 178 | 30 | 61 | 3 | 2,187 | 1,262 |
| Burglary | 15 | 35 | 5 | 17 | 1 | 371 | 205 |
| Larceny | 135 | 127 | 23 | 44 | 2 | 1,697 | 957 |
| Motor vehicle theft | 5 | 16 | 2 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 100 | ||
| Arson | 1 | 1 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 14 |
Outside the crime index
| Offense | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025* | Per 100k | West Virginia |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All offenses outside the crime index | 261 | 258 | 68 | 103 | 12 | 3,559 | 2,112 |
| Simple assault and intimidation | 69 | 93 | 42 | 46 | 7 | 1,290 | 678 |
| Vandalism | 30 | 55 | 7 | 10 | 1 | 526 | 342 |
| Fraud | 9 | 8 | 4 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 164 | ||
| Drug abuse violations | 144 | 82 | 18 | 39 | 3 | 1,460 | 664 |
| Weapons: carrying, possessing, etc. | 1 | 3 | 2 | 1 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 85 | |
| Stolen property: buying, receiving, possessing | 3 | 5 | 1 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 40 | ||
| Forgery and counterfeiting | 4 | 5 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 43 | |||
| Embezzlement | 5 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 8.7 | ||||
| Sex offenses (except rape and prostitution) | 1 | 1 | 1 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 33 | ||
| Other Group A offenses | 1 | 1 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 52 |
Offenses Keyser Police Department reported to the FBI in incident detail (NIBRS), each year, the second table by the arrest class each offense falls in. Per 100k: offenses per 100,000 people the department polices, 2021 to 2024 added together, full years only, beside West Virginia's rate over the same years. – means too few for a rate: the count is under 20.
* 2025: reported for part of the year only, so the count is short and the year is left out of the rate.
Source: FBI NIBRS national master files, each agency's offenses and the FBI's population for it. West Virginia: the crime index: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting, CrimeDB's chosen value per year (the state page's figures); outside it: FBI NIBRS, agencies that sent incident detail.