Burien, WA has a D safety grade (28/100) with a violent crime rate of 425 per 100,000, 21% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · large city
At 50,318 residents, Burien is a large city: FBI UCR Table 8 rates (per 100,000) here are read against WA and U.S. averages before the offense-family breakdown.
Data updated 2026-08-24
Burien, WA carries a PlainCrime D safety grade with violent crime 21% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Burien, WA shows violent crime at 425.3 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 3,394.4 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 21% above the U.S. average. PlainCrime assigns grade D from those rates. Figures are voluntary agency submissions joined to population denominators; incomplete coverage can move the number.
Position in the state cohort
At 425.3 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Burien ranks 21 of 164 — above 143 of the 163 other Washington cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +131.3% against the cohort median of 183.9. Cities that did not report, or that reported implausibly low totals, are excluded from this cohort rather than counted as low-crime.
Comparable rate records
The nearest comparable 2024 records to Burien's 425.3 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Grandview (428.2), Bremerton (434.0), Oakville (411.0), SeaTac (410.0). These are same-year agency submissions that pass the same completeness screen, not a claim that the cities have identical conditions. They make the cohort position above checkable against named records instead of a generic state average.
Property-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 51.6% of reported property offenses in Burien, against a cohort median of 73.6%. The remainder is burglary (290) and motor vehicle theft (536). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 460.7 per 100,000 in 2020 to 425.3 in 2024 (-7.7%). The highest observed value was 511.8 in 2021 and the lowest 425.3 in 2024. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property counts dominate Burien's FBI UCR Table 8 municipal row. Per-100,000 rates use the reporting-year population on that row; cities that fail the completeness test stay out of rate rankings. A citywide figure rarely describes any single neighbourhood inside the municipal boundary.
On a large city row, these are citywide reported offense totals - not neighbourhood advice. Conditions vary by place and time; reporting rates differ across jurisdictions.
Across 10 Census sq mi, Burien logged 170.1 property and 21.3 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Burien leans on larceny-theft at 46% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 3,159.
Violent offenses are only 11% of the municipal total - a property-led book.
Burien offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (10 sq mi); mix index is HHI x 10,000 on the offense-type shares above. Distinct from the per-100K rates in the hero.
| Offense | Count | Rate /100K |
|---|---|---|
| Property Crime | 1,708 | 3394.4 |
| Larceny-Theft | 882 | 1752.9 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 536 | 1065.2 |
| Burglary | 290 | 576.3 |
| Arson | 17 | 33.8 |
| Violent Crime | 214 | 425.3 |
| Aggravated Assault | 97 | 192.8 |
| Robbery | 82 | 163 |
| Rape | 33 | 65.6 |
| Murder | 2 | 4 |
Lead series · fell across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · fell · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 51,879 | 460.7 | 4263.8 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 51,584 | 511.8 | 4832.9 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 50,159 | 506.4 | 4164.8 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 50,227 | 467.9 | 3902.3 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 50,318 | 425.3 | 3394.4 |
Burien Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Burien's 1,922 reported offenses (5-year span 2020-2024).
This agency reports via NIBRS, the incident-based system that captures more detail per offense (multiple crimes per incident, victim/offender data) than the older summary counts.
Crime rates read differently at different scales, so these are the Washington cities closest to Burien in population. Their populations run from 41,000 to 58,872, against 50,318 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Burien sits at 425.3/100K violent (grade D); the Washington cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Burien at 425.3/100K violent and 3,394.4/100K property - matched below outside Washington (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
425.3/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
3,394.4/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
Out-of-state cities whose violent rate moved a similar share from 2023→2024 (-9.1% here); level-based peers above are excluded.
In 2024, Burien reported 214 violent crimes and 1,708 property crimes, for a total of 1,922 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Burien's violent crime rate decreased by 9.1%, and the property crime rate decreased by 13%.
The most common crime type in Burien is larceny-theft, accounting for 45.9% of all reported crimes (882 incidents in 2024).
Large-city read: Burien's rates come from the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, CIUS Table 8, vintage 2024.
Incomplete reporters stay out of rate rankings. Cross-check population with Census ACS; state UCR programs for statewide context. Primary verify links: FBI.gov UCR, Census QuickFacts.
Disclaimer (large city): informational crime rates only - not legal, insurance, or personal-safety advice. Source: FBI UCR. Ask a qualified professional before acting.
Large-city rate methodology for how Burien's large city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Burien, WA rates use the reporting-year population on the municipal row.
Bulk download: city crime dataset (CSV/JSON)
Every figure on PlainCrime is rendered directly from FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) source data, no number is typed in by an editor. Burien is scored here as a large city UCR reporter (50,318 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.