Night-time safety · Seattle · data through November 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 49% to 73% 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 incidents after dark

Neighborhood	6pm–6am	Share	Index
1 Denny Triangle	2,921	52%	8/100
2 First Hill	2,790	57%	9/100
3 Central Business District	2,736	51%	8/100
4 Yesler Terrace	2,356	52%	9/100
5 Pike-Market	2,100	49%	10/100
6 International District	1,996	51%	11/100
7 Belltown	1,979	50%	11/100
8 Broadway	1,643	57%	15/100
9 Pioneer Square	1,628	54%	13/100
10 Lower Queen Anne	1,246	57%	19/100
11 South Lake Union	1,236	55%	18/100
12 Minor	1,134	60%	20/100
13 University District	1,023	55%	21/100
14 University Heights	980	54%	22/100
15 Atlantic	729	54%	27/100
16 West Woodland	682	58%	31/100
17 Ballard	646	59%	32/100
18 Fremont	638	63%	34/100
19 Stevens	540	53%	35/100
20 South Delridge	535	53%	38/100
21 Mann	497	58%	36/100
22 Greenwood	488	59%	37/100
23 Roosevelt	465	54%	38/100
24 Licton Springs	458	60%	38/100
25 East Queen Anne	456	60%	41/100

Changes most after dark

Ranked by the share of reported incidents that fall between 6pm and 6am, against a Seattle median of 58%. 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	73%	163	76/100
Briarcliff	70%	152	78/100
Broadview	68%	114	81/100
Windermere	67%	152	79/100
Phinney Ridge	67%	303	64/100
Southeast Magnolia	67%	231	70/100
Alki	67%	198	70/100
Highland Park	67%	239	67/100
Ravenna	66%	378	60/100
Arbor Heights	66%	92	84/100
North Queen Anne	66%	511	50/100
Bryant	65%	293	64/100

Least night-weighted

Where what gets reported is most concentrated in daylight hours.

Neighborhood	Night share	Incidents
Madison Park	49%	176
Pike-Market	49%	4,243
University of Washington	50%	790
Industrial District	50%	191
Belltown	50%	3,950
Rainier Beach	50%	349
Sand Point	50%	216
Central Business District	51%	5,398

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 49% to 73% 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 2,921 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: 73% of what is reported there happens between 6pm and 6am, against a Seattle median of 58%. 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.

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.