Seattle Crime Rate Trends
The city, by the numbers we publish each month: 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 is the sharpest signal in March 2026 — a fresh spike standing out against a month otherwise defined by declines. No prior combo held the top position coming into this briefing, so this is a clean lead with no recurring backdrop to displace.
Citywide volume is down 9.5% against the prior 12 months — 48,024 incidents against 53,049. The signal mix reflects that broader decline: 22 sustained-shift signals and 10 below-trend readings, against just 1 spike across 20 neighborhoods. Northwest theft-from-vehicle and Greater Duwamish vandalism both ran below trend, reinforcing the pattern of broad, distributed improvement.
The Delridge other-larceny spike is one month old — too short to read as structural. The dominant story in March is still the citywide pullback, with 12 zero-event signals and the vast majority of movement pointing downward. If the Delridge signal repeats in April, it becomes a trend worth tracking; for now, the briefing is largely a confirmation that the multi-month decline holds.
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 March 2026 briefing.
Is crime in Seattle down?
Yes — citywide incident volume is 9.5% lower than the prior 12 months.
Across the trailing 12-month window we tracked 48,024 incidents in NIBRS-aligned categories, compared to 53,049 in the year before — down 5,025 incidents.
Is violent crime in Seattle down?
Yes — homicide, robbery, aggravated assault, and sexual assault are down 4.0% combined in the trailing 12 months.
That's 5,340 violent incidents in the past year against 5,560 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 36,471 property incidents in the past year against 40,491 in the prior year.
Which neighborhood in Seattle saw the biggest crime drop?
Lake City — 27.7% fewer incidents than the prior 12 months.
Lake City logged 1,050 incidents in the trailing 12 months against 1,452 the year before.
Which neighborhood in Seattle saw the biggest crime increase?
Interbay — 16.7% more incidents than the prior 12 months.
Interbay logged 343 incidents in the trailing 12 months against 294 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 2023 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 | |z| | 90-day trend | Signal |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Delridge | Other Larceny | +3% | +9% | 3.54 | SPIKE | |
| 02 | Northwest | Theft from Vehicle | -31% | -18% | 4.60 | DROP | |
| 03 | Greater Duwamish | Vandalism | +40% | -27% | 3.72 | DROP | |
| 04 | Rainier Valley | Robbery | +233% | -29% | 3.17 | DROP | |
| 05 | West Seattle | Burglary | -57% | -1% | 3.08 | DROP | |
| 06 | West Seattle | Theft from Vehicle | +42% | -34% | 2.94 | DROP | |
| 07 | Delridge | Burglary | -5% | -33% | 2.85 | DROP | |
| 08 | Lake City | Burglary | +73% | -29% | 2.76 | DROP | |
| 09 | Delridge | Robbery | — | -44% | 2.73 | DROP | |
| 10 | Beacon Hill | Burglary | -12% | -23% | 2.64 | DROP | |
| 11 | Greater Duwamish | Motor Vehicle Theft | -9% | -32% | 2.54 | DROP | |
| 12 | Greater Duwamish | Theft from Vehicle | +26% | -33% | 7.38 | SUSTAINED DROP |
The long arc — eight years of monthly counts
Four neighborhoods worth your time
Delridge
The past 12 months saw 784 incidents — about 29% above the 606 average from prior years.
Read briefing →DROP · THEFT FROM VEHICLENorthwest
The past 12 months saw 435 incidents — about 34% below the 654 average from prior years.
Read briefing →DROP · VANDALISMGreater Duwamish
The past 12 months saw 258 incidents — about 33% below the 383 average from prior years.
Read briefing →DROP · ROBBERYRainier Valley
The past 12 months saw 95 incidents — about 33% below the 141 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 March 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
Every signal, every forecast, documented
Open about how we define spikes, what we exclude as noise, where the data comes from, and how often the model is wrong.