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.
Greater Duwamish vandalism is the standout signal this month — a below-trend drop that ranks as the most statistically pronounced move in Seattle's April 2026 briefing. Theft from vehicle in Northwest had been the category lead coming into this period, but with vandalism now the fresher signal across multiple neighborhoods, the briefing pivots there. The Northwest theft-from-vehicle pattern remains in the background as a persistent structural trend.
Citywide volume is down 9.3% against the prior 12 months — 47,751 incidents against 52,640 in the year before. The signal mix this month is tilted heavily toward declines and sustained downward shifts: 11 below-trend signals, 24 sustained-shift signals, and 12 zero-event signals across 20 neighborhoods. Rainier Valley robbery and Delridge robbery both appear in the top five, reinforcing that the downward movement is distributed across categories, not concentrated in one.
With no fresh spikes in the top five and the anomaly mix dominated by drops and sustained shifts, April 2026 reads as a continuation of an established declining trend rather than a new development. Vandalism in Greater Duwamish is the sharpest single move, but the broader picture — 47 total signals, all in the same direction — suggests the structural pattern from prior months is holding. Northwest vandalism also appears in the top five, making it a category worth tracking in May.
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 April 2026 briefing.
Is crime in Seattle down?
Yes — citywide incident volume is 9.3% lower than the prior 12 months.
Across the trailing 12-month window we tracked 47,751 incidents in NIBRS-aligned categories, compared to 52,640 in the year before — down 4,889 incidents.
Is violent crime in Seattle down?
Yes — homicide, robbery, aggravated assault, and sexual assault are down 2.8% combined in the trailing 12 months.
That's 5,329 violent incidents in the past year against 5,484 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 36,258 property incidents in the past year against 40,242 in the prior year.
What are the safest neighborhoods to stay in Seattle?
Seward Park, West Seattle, and Lake City have the lowest crime rates in Seattle — 11.7, 29.3, and 33.7 incidents per 1,000 residents over the trailing 12 months.
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?
Seward Park — 28.0% fewer incidents than the prior 12 months.
Seward Park logged 188 incidents in the trailing 12 months against 261 the year before.
Which neighborhood in Seattle saw the biggest crime increase?
Interbay — 26.2% more incidents than the prior 12 months.
Interbay logged 347 incidents in the trailing 12 months against 275 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 | Northwest | Theft from Vehicle | +4% | -19% | -35% | DROP | |
| 02 | Greater Duwamish | Vandalism | -10% | -27% | -34% | DROP | |
| 03 | Rainier Valley | Robbery | -40% | -23% | -32% | DROP | |
| 04 | Delridge | Robbery | -71% | -47% | -43% | DROP | |
| 05 | Northwest | Vandalism | -15% | -30% | -23% | DROP | |
| 06 | West Seattle | Theft from Vehicle | -2% | -32% | -38% | DROP | |
| 07 | West Seattle | Burglary | +33% | +3% | -21% | DROP | |
| 08 | Greater Duwamish | Motor Vehicle Theft | +10% | -34% | -43% | DROP | |
| 09 | Delridge | Burglary | -5% | -26% | -22% | DROP | |
| 10 | Delridge | Theft from Vehicle | -27% | -32% | -42% | DROP | |
| 11 | Lake City | Burglary | +16% | -20% | -35% | DROP | |
| 12 | Greater Duwamish | Theft from Vehicle | +21% | -32% | -32% | SUSTAINED DROP |
The long arc — eight years of monthly counts
Four neighborhoods worth your time
Northwest
The past 12 months saw 426 incidents — about 35% below the 653 average from prior years.
Read briefing →DROP · VANDALISMGreater Duwamish
The past 12 months saw 251 incidents — about 34% below the 382 average from prior years.
Read briefing →DROP · ROBBERYRainier Valley
The past 12 months saw 96 incidents — about 32% below the 141 average from prior years.
Read briefing →DROP · ROBBERYDelridge
The past 12 months saw 43 incidents — about 43% below the 75 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 April 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.