Seattle saw fewer crimes last year, police chief reports

SEATTLE — Crime across Seattle fell 18% last year compared with 2024, with double-digit drops in homicides, nonfatal shootings, burglaries and stolen vehicles, Seattle police Chief Shon Barnes said Monday at an invite-only review of 2025’s crime stats.

He said he's encouraged by the downward trajectory of 2025’s crime numbers. Still, he told city and county officials who packed a meeting room at the Northwest African American Museum, “This is not a victory lap. This is the first lap in a long marathon toward public safety.”

He linked the dramatic drop in crime with another data point: Seattle police officers last year recovered 1,523 firearms, including nearly 1,200 handguns, a number that was 74% higher than the 875 guns taken off the streets in 2024.

“I believe that removing firearms from those who should not possess them is directly connected to the reductions we’re seeing in violent crime — or at least every firearm recovered represents one less opportunity for someone to be affected by gun violence,” he said.

Before launching into a discussion about crime stats and the Seattle Police Department’s crime prevention initiatives for this year, Barnes acknowledged the “deep pain” being felt in the community over the shooting deaths of three young people within 48 hours of each other last week.

Two Rainier Beach High School students were gunned down at a bus stop near the school on Friday afternoon and Barnes said he and other members of the Police Department spent the weekend working closely with Seattle Public Schools officials to support students, teachers and families as kids prepared to return to class.

Barnes, a former teacher and school resource officer, said he knows firsthand the difficulties students and teachers face in the aftermath of a shooting at or near a school.

Early Sunday, a man was fatally shot and three other people were injured when a fight after a party led to gunfire at the Sinking Ship parking garage in Pioneer Square.

“Our community has become too familiar, I think, with mourning young lives — what I always call, ‘loss of potential,’” Barnes said.

No arrests have been made in either shooting. As of Monday, the victims' names had not been released by the King County medical examiner's office.

A dramatic decline in homicides

According to Barnes, homicides were down 36% in 2025, when 37 people were killed — including three fatal shootings by Seattle police officers — versus 58 in 2024.

The number represents a welcome respite from 2023, one of the deadliest years on record, when 69 people were killed. That number has been reached only twice before, first in the early 1960s, then in the mid-90s.

More cases are getting resolved, too. Barnes said homicide detectives cleared 32 cases last year, putting the clearance rate at 86% — well above the department’s 2024 clearance rate of 57% and national clearance rate of 61% for that year.

Cases are considered “cleared” if someone is arrested and charged, or a suspect is identified but cannot be immediately arrested because of exceptional circumstances, like the death of a suspect. A homicide can also be cleared if there is compelling evidence a person killed another in self-defense or defense of others.

Two of last year's homicides fell into the latter category.

Barnes said analysts in the department’s Real Time Crime Center, who review footage from 62 surveillance cameras installed last summer along the Aurora Avenue corridor, downtown and the Chinatown International District, assisted in investigations into 17 homicides, resulting in 10 arrests.

Last year showed other promising statistics: Nonfatal shootings where someone was hit were down 36% last year compared with 2024. The number of stolen vehicles and burglaries were down 24% and 18%, respectively, according to Barnes.

Aggravated assaults — which are assaults committed with a weapon or that result in serious injury — were down 8% and the incidents of property being stolen out of vehicles was down 7%, Barnes said.

While talking about vehicle prowls, Barnes said police received reports of 206 firearms being stolen from cars last year, “a daunting statistic” that had him reiterating, “cars are not gun safes … they should never be used as gun safes.”

Communitywide response

Barnes said addressing gun violence requires a governmentwide and communitywide response and “every neighborhood, every partner, every system” — including courts, prosecutors and corrections officers — plays a role in reducing violent crime.

As for the Police Department, Barnes said it implemented a threshold for responding to crime in the city last year, specifically to significant incidents, a category that includes homicides, shootings, aggravated assaults, robberies, burglaries, stolen vehicles and vehicle prowls.

Anytime there are four significant incidents reported within a quarter-mile radius over seven days, it automatically triggers creation of a crime bulletin or dispatch of a special emphasis patrol, increased patrol activity, community education and investigative action, he said.

Barnes said creating the crime analysis threshold, hiring and retaining more officers, and working with other city departments to improve security at parks during summer months have all contributed to lowering both violent and property crime, even as Seattle has grown by more than 110,000 residents over the past decade.

Looking ahead to 2026, Barnes said police response times are improving and the department is doing more proactive policing.

He pointed to the recent arrest of a rape suspect as an example: Officers who took the victim’s report didn’t just hand it off to a detective but instead returned to the neighborhood, located the vehicle and confirmed with the Real Time Crime Center it was the same one captured by surveillance cameras on the day of the rape. They then conducted a traffic stop and arrested the man, Barnes said.

“Why he was back in the neighborhood, I can only assume was to find more victims. He did not. He found police doing their job,” Barnes said.

The downward trend in crime last year in Seattle was largely mirrored in cities across the country. The Criminal Justice Council, a nonpartisan, Washington D.C.-based think tank, found there were 21% fewer homicides in 2025 compared with 2024, based on data from 35 cities, not including Seattle.

The council's 2025 year-end report, released last month, found 11 of 13 crime offenses that were studied fell year over year, with nine of the categories declining by 10% or more.

“I understand that the road to public safety is not straight,” Barnes said. “There’s going to be peaks and valleys. There's going to be turns and things you don’t see. But we are committed.”