Night-time safety · Seattle · data through August 2026

Is Seattle safe at night?

55% of Seattle's reported incidents happen between 6pm and 6am, and 26% of them fall between midnight and 6am. That share swings from 46% to 76% depending on which neighborhood you are in — which is the whole point: the question worth asking is not whether Seattle 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 Denny Triangle	2,314	52%	8/100
2 First Hill	2,211	57%	9/100
3 Central Business District	2,137	50%	8/100
4 Yesler Terrace	1,856	51%	9/100
5 Pike-Market	1,636	49%	10/100
6 International District	1,580	51%	11/100
7 Belltown	1,530	50%	11/100
8 Broadway	1,320	57%	15/100
9 Pioneer Square	1,270	54%	13/100
10 South Lake Union	991	55%	18/100
11 Lower Queen Anne	979	56%	19/100
12 Minor	876	59%	21/100
13 University District	809	55%	21/100
14 University Heights	777	55%	22/100
15 West Woodland	592	59%	30/100
16 Atlantic	546	52%	27/100
17 Ballard	544	60%	30/100
18 Fremont	534	64%	33/100
19 Stevens	427	53%	35/100
20 South Delridge	421	53%	38/100
21 Greenwood	400	58%	36/100
22 East Queen Anne	387	61%	40/100
23 Roosevelt	386	54%	37/100
24 Mann	374	56%	37/100
25 Westlake	361	59%	41/100

Changes most after dark

Ranked by the share of reported incidents that fall between 6pm and 6am, against a Seattle median of 57%. 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
Sunset Hill	76%	138	75/100
Alki	73%	146	71/100
Briarcliff	71%	120	78/100
Broadview	70%	97	81/100
Arbor Heights	69%	68	85/100
Phinney Ridge	69%	252	63/100
Wedgwood	69%	136	76/100
Seaview	68%	175	70/100
Mid-Beacon Hill	67%	140	75/100
Gatewood	67%	169	72/100
Southeast Magnolia	67%	190	69/100
North Queen Anne	66%	424	49/100

Least night-weighted

Where what gets reported is most concentrated in daylight hours.

Neighborhood	Night share	Incidents
Rainier Beach	46%	279
Rainier View	47%	89
Madison Park	47%	137
Industrial District	48%	153
Roxhill	49%	703
Riverview	49%	117
Pike-Market	49%	3,326
Belltown	50%	3,086

Common questions

Is Seattle safe to walk at night?

55% of Seattle's reported incidents happen between 6pm and 6am, and 26% 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 46% to 76% here. The useful question is which neighborhood and which route, not whether a whole city is safe.

Which neighborhood in Seattle has the most reported crime at night?

Denny Triangle, with roughly 2,314 reported incidents between 6pm and 6am — 52% 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?

Sunset Hill is the most night-concentrated in Seattle: 76% of what is reported there happens between 6pm and 6am, against a Seattle median of 57%. 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 SPD 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 SPD 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 Seattle Police Department (via Seattle Open Data) 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 the Seattle City GIS Neighborhood Map Atlas — 94 neighborhoods grouped into 20 districts (so Capitol Hill and West Seattle, which are districts, appear as section headings). Because Seattle's dense downtown far outweighs its residential neighborhoods, the index is calibrated to the citywide median so a typical neighborhood reads mid-scale. Time-of-day charts use SPD incident timestamps, severity-weighted. Pages regenerate as new data is published.