Morgantown
City in Monongalia County, 30,236 people.
Police
Sheriff in its county: Monongalia County Sheriff's Office.
A department or FBI code is the place's own when its name is the place's and its FBI population fits the place's people (decisions city-or-town-is-its-police-department, left-out-code-is-its-place). Agencies: FBI NIBRS master file 2025 batch headers; names from the FBI agency list, pulled 2026-09-29.
Where it sits
- County
- Monongalia County
- People
- 30,236
- Census Bureau American Community Survey 5-year estimates, 2020 to 2024
How a case moves here
Morgantown 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 Morgantown Police Department, Morgantown'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 | 89 | 85 | 106 | 66 | 74 | 277 | 277 |
| Murder | 2 | 7 | 2 | 4 | 5 | 13 | 5.9 |
| Rape | 32 | 19 | 35 | 19 | 15 | 79 | 56 |
| Robbery | 6 | 8 | 11 | 6 | 6 | 24 | 12 |
| Aggravated assault | 49 | 51 | 58 | 37 | 48 | 160 | 203 |
| Property crime | 759 | 721 | 685 | 605 | 522 | 2,169 | 1,213 |
| Burglary | 56 | 42 | 44 | 35 | 17 | 128 | 193 |
| Larceny | 682 | 654 | 619 | 559 | 489 | 1,978 | 927 |
| Motor vehicle theft | 21 | 25 | 22 | 11 | 16 | 63 | 93 |
| Arson | 2 | 2 | 5 | 1 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 12 |
Outside the crime index
| Offense | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | Per 100k | West Virginia |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All offenses outside the crime index | 613 | 524 | 638 | 736 | 691 | 2,109 | 2,075 |
| Simple assault and intimidation | 153 | 166 | 222 | 254 | 240 | 682 | 680 |
| Vandalism | 198 | 143 | 155 | 117 | 113 | 478 | 327 |
| Fraud | 91 | 88 | 87 | 108 | 99 | 312 | 162 |
| Drug abuse violations | 100 | 59 | 108 | 182 | 172 | 409 | 646 |
| Weapons: carrying, possessing, etc. | 9 | 14 | 15 | 21 | 12 | 47 | 84 |
| Stolen property: buying, receiving, possessing | 26 | 14 | 12 | 13 | 13 | 51 | 39 |
| Forgery and counterfeiting | 11 | 11 | 10 | 15 | 14 | 40 | 41 |
| Embezzlement | 8 | 7 | 8 | 5 | 5 | 22 | 8.6 |
| Sex offenses (except rape and prostitution) | 3 | 6 | 4 | 10 | 8 | 20 | 33 |
| Prostitution and commercialized vice | 2 | 1 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 3.1 | |||
| Other Group A offenses | 14 | 16 | 17 | 9 | 14 | 46 | 51 |
| Manslaughter by negligence (not in the total) | 1 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 1 |
Offenses Morgantown 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 2025 added together, beside West Virginia's rate over the same years. – means too few for a rate: the count is under 20.
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.