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.
Northwest theft from vehicle fell 40% against its multi-year baseline, the strongest single-category move in Seattle this month and the headline signal for August 2026. Delridge other-larceny has been the top-ranked combination for the prior month and remains a backdrop to watch, but the new movement this briefing is in Northwest, where a sharp vehicle-theft drop stands out against an otherwise calm month.
Citywide volume is down 9.7% against the prior 12 months, 46,327 incidents against 51,305 in the year before. The mix is heavily tilted toward sustained declines: 22 sustained-shift signals and 11 below-trend signals across 20 neighborhoods, against just one fresh spike. Vandalism fell in both Greater Duwamish and Northwest, and West Seattle burglary also ran below trend, adding breadth to what is otherwise a quiet month.
The dominant structural story is deceleration. With 11 zero-event signals and only one fresh spike in the entire month, August 2026 reads more as consolidation than reversal. The Northwest theft-from-vehicle drop is new and worth tracking into September to see whether it holds or reverts; the rest of the pattern looks like a continuation of the multi-month downward trend.
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 August 2026 briefing.
Is crime in Seattle down?
Yes. Citywide incident volume is 9.7% lower than the prior 12 months.
Across the trailing 12-month window we tracked 46,327 incidents in NIBRS-aligned categories, compared to 51,305 in the year before, down 4,978 incidents.
Is violent crime in Seattle down?
Yes. Homicide, robbery, aggravated assault, and sexual assault are down 2.7% combined in the trailing 12 months.
That's 5,329 violent incidents in the past year against 5,476 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 9.9% combined in the trailing 12 months.
That's 35,159 property incidents in the past year against 39,041 in the prior year.
What are the safest neighborhoods to stay in Seattle?
- Seward Park — 11.7 incidents per 1,000 residents
- West Seattle — 28.5 incidents per 1,000 residents
- Lake City — 32.1 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?
Rainier Valley: 22.0% fewer incidents than the prior 12 months.
Rainier Valley logged 2,283 incidents in the trailing 12 months against 2,927 the year before.
Which neighborhood in Seattle saw the biggest crime increase?
Queen Anne: 8.3% more incidents than the prior 12 months.
Queen Anne logged 2,896 incidents in the trailing 12 months against 2,675 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 | -7% | -2% | +30% | SPIKE | |
| 02 | Northwest | Theft from Vehicle | -18% | -21% | -40% | DROP | |
| 03 | Greater Duwamish | Vandalism | +27% | -24% | -40% | DROP | |
| 04 | Northwest | Vandalism | -12% | -22% | -24% | DROP | |
| 05 | West Seattle | Burglary | -30% | -3% | -27% | DROP | |
| 06 | Greater Duwamish | Motor Vehicle Theft | 0% | -35% | -46% | DROP | |
| 07 | Beacon Hill | Burglary | +12% | -16% | -24% | DROP | |
| 08 | Delridge | Theft from Vehicle | 0% | -32% | -47% | DROP | |
| 09 | Greater Duwamish | Burglary | +50% | -17% | -28% | DROP | |
| 10 | Northwest | Burglary | +50% | -17% | -33% | DROP | |
| 11 | Lake City | Theft from Vehicle | -24% | -32% | -34% | DROP | |
| 12 | Delridge | Burglary | -41% | -14% | -21% | DROP |
The long arc — eight years of monthly counts
Four neighborhoods worth your time
Delridge
The past 12 months saw 801 incidents — about 30% above the 618 average from prior years.
Read briefing →DROP · THEFT FROM VEHICLENorthwest
The past 12 months saw 388 incidents — about 40% below the 645 average from prior years.
Read briefing →DROP · VANDALISMGreater Duwamish
The past 12 months saw 228 incidents — about 40% below the 379 average from prior years.
Read briefing →DROP · VANDALISMNorthwest
The past 12 months saw 218 incidents — about 24% below the 285 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 August 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.