Night-time safety · Washington, D.C. · data through September 2026

Is Washington, D.C. safe at night?

44% of Washington, D.C.'s reported incidents happen between 6pm and 6am, and 15% of them fall between midnight and 6am. That share swings from 19% to 61% depending on which neighborhood you are in — which is the whole point: the question worth asking is not whether Washington, D.C. is safe after dark, but where and by which route.

These figures describe when reported incidents happen, not how dangerous a street is. Somewhere with a night-time crowd reports more after dark because more people are there — that is a fact about footfall as much as about risk, and it is why the tables below show the count and the share side by side.

Most reported reported incidents after dark

Neighborhood	6pm–6am	Share	Index
1 Cardozo/Shaw	567	50%	23/100
2 Logan Circle/Shaw	560	49%	24/100
3 Mount Vernon Square	471	43%	25/100
4 Columbia Heights	460	41%	24/100
5 Dupont Circle	441	48%	29/100
6 Truxton Circle	432	47%	27/100
7 Le Droit Park	412	54%	30/100
8 Mount Vernon Triangle	396	45%	28/100
9 Downtown	394	42%	28/100
10 Howard University	386	56%	32/100
11 Pleasant Plains	385	43%	28/100
12 Lanier Heights	383	37%	26/100
13 Adams Morgan	378	40%	28/100
14 North Capitol Street	377	44%	29/100
15 Connecticut Avenue/K Street	372	49%	32/100
16 Near Northeast	360	41%	29/100
17 Chinatown	343	41%	30/100
18 Mount Pleasant	340	39%	29/100
19 Park View	281	48%	37/100
20 Penn Quarter	280	39%	33/100
21 West End	245	46%	41/100
22 Petworth	234	47%	41/100
23 Eckington	222	48%	41/100
24 Stanton Park	212	35%	38/100
25 Carver	210	45%	41/100

Changes most after dark

Ranked by the share of reported incidents that fall between 6pm and 6am, against a Washington, D.C. median of 45%. A high share is not a high total — a quiet neighborhood whose few incidents mostly happen at night sits near the top — so the count is shown beside it.

Neighborhood	Night share	Incidents	Index
Buzzard Point	61%	149	68/100
South Central	57%	143	70/100
Howard University	56%	695	32/100
Monumental Core	56%	16	95/100
Langdon	55%	193	63/100
Fort McNair	54%	101	76/100
Le Droit Park	54%	761	30/100
Burleith/Hillandale	53%	155	71/100
Congress Heights	53%	223	54/100
Brentwood	53%	369	47/100
Lincoln Heights	53%	236	56/100
Southwest/Waterfront	52%	354	48/100

Least night-weighted

Where what gets reported is most concentrated in daylight hours.

Neighborhood	Night share	Incidents
Wesley Heights	19%	56
Barnaby Woods	22%	38
North Portal Estates	23%	24
Georgetown Reservoir	24%	27
Colonial Village	25%	42
Tenleytown	26%	184
Chevy Chase	27%	167
American University Park	27%	140

Common questions

Is Washington, D.C. safe to walk at night?

44% of Washington, D.C.'s reported incidents happen between 6pm and 6am, and 15% fall in the small hours between midnight and 6am. That is a description of when incidents are reported, not a verdict on the city: the figure varies far more between neighborhoods than it does between cities, from 19% to 61% here. The useful question is which neighborhood and which route, not whether a whole city is safe.

Which neighborhood in Washington, D.C. has the most reported crime at night?

Cardozo/Shaw, with roughly 567 reported incidents between 6pm and 6am — 50% of its total. Somewhere busy usually tops this list because more people are out, so read it alongside the daytime picture on its own page rather than on its own.

Which neighborhood changes most after dark?

Buzzard Point is the most night-concentrated in Washington, D.C.: 61% of what is reported there happens between 6pm and 6am, against a Washington, D.C. median of 45%. A high share does not mean a high total — a quiet neighborhood whose few incidents mostly happen at night will rank high here — which is why the table shows the count beside it.

How does SafeRoute use this at night?

The app scores each walking route against the same DC Police data, and can weight it toward the time you are actually walking rather than a flat all-day average. It also shows how much of each route runs on lit streets, and lets you share a walk and check in on arrival.

Methodology

Every incident reported to the DC Metropolitan Police carries an occurrence time, which is bucketed into daytime (6am–6pm), evening (6pm–midnight) and the small hours (midnight–6am), split weekday against weekend, and weighted by severity so violence counts for more than shoplifting. A neighborhood's night share is the weighted proportion falling between 6pm and 6am; its night count is that share applied to its total. The city-wide chart weights each neighborhood by its own volume, so a busy centre is not averaged against a quiet suburb as though they were the same size.

Each incident reported to the DC Metropolitan Police (via Open Data DC) is weighted by severity — violence counts for more than shoplifting. For every neighborhood we sum weighted incidents within 1 km of its center, and normalize against citywide crime rates onto a 0–100 index, higher = safer. Boundaries are DCGIS's 132 named neighborhoods, grouped by the 8 city wards. Time-of-day charts use MPD report timestamps, severity-weighted. Locations are published at block level for privacy. Pages regenerate as new data is published.