Williamstown
City in Wood County, 2,980 people.
Police
Sheriff in its county: Wood 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
- Wood County
- People
- 2,980
- Census Bureau American Community Survey 5-year estimates, 2020 to 2024
How a case moves here
Williamstown 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 Williamstown Police Department, Williamstown'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 | 6 | 4 | 1 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 266 | ||
| Murder | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 5.4 | |||||
| Rape | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 55 | |||||
| Robbery | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 11 | |||||
| Aggravated assault | 6 | 4 | 1 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 194 | ||
| Property crime | 6 | 3 | 13 | 5 | 3 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 1,161 |
| Burglary | 1 | 2 | 2 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 182 | ||
| Larceny | 5 | 3 | 9 | 3 | 3 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 896 |
| Motor vehicle theft | 2 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 83 | ||||
| Arson | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 11 |
Outside the crime index
| Offense | 2021* | 2022 | 2023* | 2024 | 2025 | Per 100k | West Virginia |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All offenses outside the crime index | 22 | 11 | 7 | 18 | 11 | 452 | 1,992 |
| Simple assault and intimidation | 6 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 678 |
| Vandalism | 1 | 2 | 2 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 304 | ||
| Fraud | 3 | 1 | 2 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 157 | ||
| Drug abuse violations | 11 | 3 | 11 | 4 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 601 | |
| Stolen property: buying, receiving, possessing | 1 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 36 | ||||
| Forgery and counterfeiting | 1 | 1 | Too few for a rate: the count is under 20. | 39 |
Offenses Williamstown 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, 2022, 2024, 2025 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.
* 2021, 2023: 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.