Seattle Crime Rate Trends
Data sourced from the Seattle Police Department (SPD) Open Data portal and analyzed by Public Analyst.ai: 20 neighborhoods, 10 incident categories, twelve months of trailing comparison. Browse the rankings, scan the multi-year trends, or open a neighborhood-level breakdown.
Delridge other larceny rose 29% against its multi-year baseline, the sharpest single-category move in Seattle this month and the first time this combination has topped the citywide rankings. No prior-month lead was carrying over: this is a fresh signal with no established run behind it.
Citywide volume is down 7.8% against the prior 12 months, 46,439 incidents against 50,351. The mix leans heavily toward sustained declines and below-trend readings: 18 sustained-shift signals and 12 below-trend signals across 20 neighborhoods, against just one fresh spike. Downtown homicide was a rare-event signal, low absolute counts but outside the expected range. Northwest recorded drops in both theft from vehicle and vandalism, two distinct categories in the same neighborhood moving the same direction.
The structural direction in Seattle remains downward, and the 43 total signals this month are dominated by categories holding below their prior-year levels. Delridge other larceny is the exception to watch: a single month above baseline is not a trend, but if it persists into October it moves from a one-month signal to something more durable.
Seattle Crime Frequently Asked Questions
Trailing 12 months vs the prior 12 months, computed from the same NIBRS-aligned categories used everywhere else on the page. Updated each September 2026 briefing.
Is crime in Seattle down?
Yes. Citywide incident volume is 7.8% lower than the prior 12 months.
Across the trailing 12-month window we tracked 46,439 incidents in NIBRS-aligned categories, compared to 50,351 in the year before, down 3,912 incidents.
Is violent crime in Seattle down?
Yes. Homicide, robbery, aggravated assault, and sexual assault are down 2.5% combined in the trailing 12 months.
That's 5,318 violent incidents in the past year against 5,453 in the prior year. See the by-category section below for the per-bucket breakdown.
Is property crime in Seattle down?
Yes. Burglary, theft from vehicle, larceny, motor vehicle theft, and arson are down 7.7% combined in the trailing 12 months.
That's 35,279 property incidents in the past year against 38,233 in the prior year.
What are the safest neighborhoods to stay in Seattle?
- Seward Park — 13.5 incidents per 1,000 residents
- West Seattle — 28.7 incidents per 1,000 residents
- Lake City — 31.6 incidents per 1,000 residents
The three safest neighborhoods in Seattle, ranked by trailing-12-month incidents per 1,000 residents.
Computed as NIBRS-aligned trailing-12-month incident totals divided by the latest ACS 5-year residential population, expressed per 1,000 residents. Restricted to neighborhoods with at least 1,000 residents so park-only and industrial geographies, where visitor populations are not reflected in the residential denominator, are excluded.
Which neighborhood in Seattle saw the biggest crime drop?
Delridge: 20.0% fewer incidents than the prior 12 months.
Delridge logged 1,918 incidents in the trailing 12 months against 2,397 the year before.
Which neighborhood in Seattle saw the biggest crime increase?
Interbay: 7.7% more incidents than the prior 12 months.
Interbay logged 320 incidents in the trailing 12 months against 297 the year before.
The denominators behind the numbers
Seattle is a hilly, water-bounded city on an isthmus between Puget Sound and Lake Washington, with the Lake Washington Ship Canal cutting east-west through the middle. The L_HOOD level of the City Clerk's Neighborhood Map Atlas is the standard analytical neighborhood unit; smaller S_HOOD names roll up into them.
ACS 2024 5-year estimates, county-level (King County). King County is broader than Seattle city — county-level medians (rent, home value, household income, age) lean slightly different from a Seattle-city-only median. Per-tract counts (population, households, housing units) sum only the tracts that fall inside the city.
City-level only. We deliberately do not juxtapose these with neighborhood-level crime data — see the methodology for why.
Dense, transit-served core (Downtown, Capitol Hill, U District, South Lake Union) tied together by the 1 Line spine; the rest of the city is mostly mid-density single-family with arterial commercial strips. The Ship Canal and Lake Washington split travel patterns east-west; I-5 runs the full north-south length.
SPD reports through NIBRS and publishes its full incident-level feed on Seattle Open Data with a ~7-day reporting buffer. Our category mapper translates SPD's NIBRS Group A offense codes into the same UCR Part 1 buckets used elsewhere on the site, so cross-city comparisons stay apples-to-apples.
Every neighborhood, color-coded
Largest moves this month
| # | Neighborhood | Category | MoM | YoY 12mo | vs baseline | 90-day trend | Signal |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Delridge | Other Larceny | -11% | -4% | +29% | SPIKE | |
| 02 | Downtown | Homicide | — | — | — | RARE EVENT | |
| 03 | Greater Duwamish | Vandalism | -20% | -26% | -41% | DROP | |
| 04 | Northwest | Theft from Vehicle | -25% | -21% | -41% | DROP | |
| 05 | Northwest | Vandalism | +33% | -23% | -25% | DROP | |
| 06 | Lake City | Robbery | 0% | -50% | -49% | DROP | |
| 07 | Greater Duwamish | Burglary | -11% | -16% | -29% | DROP | |
| 08 | Beacon Hill | Burglary | -52% | -12% | -25% | DROP | |
| 09 | Delridge | Theft from Vehicle | -42% | -28% | -47% | DROP | |
| 10 | Lake City | Theft from Vehicle | -6% | -32% | -36% | DROP | |
| 11 | Greater Duwamish | Motor Vehicle Theft | -16% | -30% | -44% | DROP | |
| 12 | West Seattle | Burglary | -33% | +0% | -26% | DROP |
The long arc — eight years of monthly counts
Four neighborhoods worth your time
Delridge
The past 12 months saw 801 incidents — about 29% above the 620 average from prior years.
Read briefing →RARE EVENT · HOMICIDEDowntown
1 incident in the past 90 days. No prior occurrence in the analysis window.
Read briefing →DROP · VANDALISMGreater Duwamish
The past 12 months saw 222 incidents — about 41% below the 378 average from prior years.
Read briefing →DROP · THEFT FROM VEHICLENorthwest
The past 12 months saw 380 incidents — about 41% below the 643 average from prior years.
Read briefing →Hour-of-day, day-of-week, and seasonality
Distribution of bucketed incidents citywide across the full analysis window. Useful for routine context — shopping-strip thefts vs. late-night assaults read very differently when you can see when each typically happens.
All 20 Seattle neighborhoods
Crime rate trends and September 2026 briefings for every tracked neighborhood. Alphabetical.
- Ballard crime rate
- Beacon Hill crime rate
- Capitol Hill crime rate
- Cascade crime rate
- Central Area crime rate
- Delridge crime rate
- Downtown crime rate
- Greater Duwamish crime rate
- Interbay crime rate
- Lake City crime rate
- Magnolia crime rate
- North Central crime rate
- Northeast crime rate
- Northgate crime rate
- Northwest crime rate
- Queen Anne crime rate
- Rainier Valley crime rate
- Seward Park crime rate
- University District crime rate
- West Seattle crime rate
How We Calculate Seattle Crime Trends
Open about how we define spikes, what we exclude as noise, where the data comes from, and how often the model is wrong.