Most Dangerous Neighborhoods in Seattle (2024)

Seattle's open crime data doesn't include a reliable neighborhood-level population figure, so these SPD neighborhoods are ranked by reported incident volume, not a population-adjusted safety rate. A higher ranking here means more severity-weighted reported incidents relative to other Seattle SPD neighborhoods.

Volume, not a safety rate. SPD neighborhood (MCPP) resident population is not reliably available for a per-100k rate, so no safety grade is published for any zone (see /crime-rate/methodology §6.6). The geographic unit is the SPD neighborhood (MCPP) (a policing/analysis boundary, not a resident-population neighborhood). relativeIndex ranks each zone by its VIOLENCE-WEIGHTED reported-incident volume (violent incidents weighted 3x property) against the other Seattle zones — it is NOT population-adjusted and must not be read as a safety rate. Offenses are grouped into three coarse buckets (violent / property / other) via a keyword classifier.

No area has zero risk

A high Crime Index score means lower reported crime relative to other US cities — it is not a guarantee of safety. Reported crime is not the same as actual crime. Research on the gap between crime that occurs and crime that gets reported to police — often called the "dark figure" of crime — estimates that roughly 40% of violent crime and about a third of property crime go unreported each year. Every index built on official statistics, including this one, necessarily undercounts real crime. That gap is exactly why homicide — the offense with the smallest dark figure — anchors the calculation instead of a more commonly reported but less reliable category like theft.

Scores on this page reflect FBI-reported data for 2024. See the full methodology →

Safest neighborhoods in Seattle

Read the full methodology

Back to Crime Rate in Seattle

Ranked highest to lowest reported volume