Crime in Seattle, Washington
Major crime in Seattle is 3.1 times the U.S. rate per resident: 2.2 times for persons crimes and 3.3 times for property crimes. Expected major crimes are about flat from a year earlier.
How we did this
We start from police agencies' crime reports to the FBI (estimated where an agency doesn't report), model how they spread across the census block groups each agency serves, then add up Seattle's 535 block groups. Numbers are estimates with a range of uncertainty, not counts of individual incidents.
Rates are per resident, so areas where many people work or visit but few live, such as downtowns, airports and stadiums, can look high. More on the method
Index: crimes per resident compared with the U.S., where 100 is the U.S. rate and 200 is twice it.
Burglary is highest, at 6.1 times the U.S. rate
Expected crimes per year in Seattle for each type, and the index against the U.S. rate per resident.
Citywide indexWhere the middle half of residents live
Property crimes
Social disorder
How crime varies across Seattle
Half of Seattle residents live in neighborhoods with a major-crime index between 134 and 377, and half live where it is below 223. The citywide figure (311) is higher than that because crime concentrates in a smaller set of areas.
- 0–501.0%
- 50–1008.6%
- 100–20034.6%
- 200–40034.2%
- 400+21.5%
Share of residents by the index of their census block group, a neighborhood of roughly 600 to 3,000 people.
Highest at night
Major-crime index by time of week, against the U.S. rate for the same hours.
Trend and outlook
Change in expected crimes. The past year uses the reporting agencies' year-to-date FBI data; 2031 is the model's projection.
Seattle against U.S. places with 500,000 to 1 million residents
2 of the 25 other places of this size have a higher major-crime index than Seattle; the middle of the group is 190. The 9 nearest in population:
Major-crime index per resident, U.S. = 100; residents in gray.
How we calculated this
Each police agency's crimes, as reported to the FBI, are spread across the census block groups it serves using population, jobs, points of interest and, where available, local incident records. Seattle's figures add up its 535 block groups. The index compares crimes per resident with the U.S. rate.
- Seattle's published incident records inform the estimate for every neighborhood.
- 87.5% of residents live in block groups whose estimate has high confidence (80% interval within about 5x).
- Disorderly conduct and trespassing are modeled, because the FBI records them only through arrests.
- Residents: 797,520. Model updated Oct 20, 2026. Release 2026-2026-10-20-2
Full method and validation·Data sources
CrimeMetric. "Crime in Seattle, Washington." Vorp Labs, model updated Oct 20, 2026. https://crimemetric.com/wa/seattle
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Major-crime index, U.S. = 100
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- Las Vegas, NV868 mi141
- Los Angeles, CA957 mi161
- Denver, CO1,023 mi273
- San Diego, CA1,060 mi116
- Phoenix, AZ1,110 mi153
- El Paso, TX1,377 mi83