Seattle, WA has a F safety grade (0/100) with a violent crime rate of 775 per 100,000, 120% above the national average.
FBI UCR 2024 · per-capita rates · very large city
At 760,058 residents, Seattle is a very 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
Seattle, WA carries a PlainCrime F safety grade with violent crime 120% above the U.S. average
According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program for 2024, Seattle, WA shows violent crime at 775.1 per 100,000 residents and property crime at 5,007.6 per 100,000. Violent crime runs 120% above the U.S. average. PlainCrime assigns grade F from those rates. Figures are voluntary agency submissions joined to population denominators; incomplete coverage can move the number.
Position in the state cohort
At 775.1 reported violent offenses per 100,000 residents in 2024, Seattle ranks 5 of 164 — above 159 of the 163 other Washington cities whose 2024 submission passes this site’s completeness test. That is +321.5% 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 Seattle's 775.1 violent-crime rate per 100,000 are Spokane (674.9), Lakewood (648.1), Tukwila (926.8), Vancouver (582.3). 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.
Share of the state cohort
The 43,952 Part I offenses reported here are 23.8% of the 184,366 reported across all 164 comparable Washington cities in 2024. A city this large moves the statewide municipal total on its own, so state-level changes should be read against its population of 760,058 rather than as a uniform shift.
2020–2024 direction
Across 5 comparable reporting years, the rate moved from 635.1 per 100,000 in 2020 to 775.1 in 2024 (+22.0%). The highest observed value was 849.5 in 2022 and the lowest 635.1 in 2020. Years whose submission failed the completeness test are left out of this comparison rather than plotted as change.
Property-offense composition
Larceny-theft is 57.6% of reported property offenses in Seattle, against a cohort median of 73.6%. The remainder is burglary (8,756) and motor vehicle theft (7,400). Composition differences of this size usually track what kinds of places and property are present in a jurisdiction.
Offense mix
Violent offenses are 13.4% of the 43,952 Part I offenses reported in Seattle for 2024, against a median of 9.2% across comparable Washington cities — a gap of 4.2 points. Offense mix is shaped by which agencies report and how incidents are classified as well as by the underlying offenses, so it describes the reported record rather than a settled difference in conditions.
Property counts dominate Seattle'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 very large city row, these are citywide reported offense totals - not neighbourhood advice. Conditions vary by place and time; reporting rates differ across jurisdictions.
Across 84 Census sq mi, Seattle logged 453.1 property and 70.1 violent offenses per square mile in 2024.
Seattle leans on larceny-theft at 50% of reported offenses, with a moderate mix index of 3,255.
Violent offenses are only 13% of the municipal total - a property-led book.
Seattle offense mix (2024)
Density uses Census Gazetteer land area (84 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 | 38,061 | 5007.6 |
| Larceny-Theft | 21,905 | 2882 |
| Burglary | 8,756 | 1152 |
| Motor Vehicle Theft | 7,400 | 973.6 |
| Arson | 153 | 20.1 |
| Violent Crime | 5,891 | 775.1 |
| Aggravated Assault | 3,810 | 501.3 |
| Robbery | 1,677 | 220.6 |
| Rape | 352 | 46.3 |
| Murder | 52 | 6.8 |
Lead series · rose across 5 comparable years · FBI UCR
Secondary series · rose · 2020-2024 · FBI UCR
| Year | Coverage | Population | Violent Rate | Property Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Comparable | 771,517 | 635.1 | 4926.9 |
| 2021 | Comparable | 787,749 | 757.3 | 5173.7 |
| 2022 | Comparable | 729,691 | 849.5 | 5776.3 |
| 2023 | Comparable | 753,786 | 792.1 | 5072.9 |
| 2024 | Comparable | 760,058 | 775.1 | 5007.6 |
Seattle Police Department filed the 2024 UCR row behind Seattle's 43,952 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 Seattle in population. Their populations run from 103,762 to 229,529, against 760,058 here. Or use our side-by-side compare tool to benchmark two cities directly.
Seattle sits at 775.1/100K violent (grade F); the Washington cities below are the nearest matches after size peers are removed.
Seattle at 775.1/100K violent and 5,007.6/100K property - matched below outside Washington (≥10k pop, latest UCR vintage; not the in-state lists above).
775.1/100K here; nearest out-of-state matches.
5,007.6/100K here; violent-rate peers above excluded.
Out-of-state cities whose violent rate moved a similar share from 2023→2024 (-2.1% here); level-based peers above are excluded.
In 2024, Seattle reported 5,891 violent crimes and 38,061 property crimes, for a total of 43,952 reported offenses.
From 2023 to 2024, Seattle's violent crime rate decreased by 2.1%, and the property crime rate decreased by 1.3%.
The most common crime type in Seattle is larceny-theft, accounting for 49.8% of all reported crimes (21,905 incidents in 2024).
Large-city read: Seattle'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 (very 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 Seattle's very large city row is sourced and ranked.
Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program CIUS Table 8 municipal crime rates · 2024 Seattle, 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. Seattle is scored here as a very large city UCR reporter (760,058 on the row). See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.