Curley on dropping crime rates in Seattle: ‘It’s down from a record high’

The Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat wrote that crime throughout Seattle is down. Shootings are down 29%, car theft has declined 25%, robberies are down 15%, and overall violent crime has dropped 12%, all while the city has had the least amount of murders since 2019.

Despite the promising data, KIRO host John Curley wanted to pump the brakes on celebrating the optimistic trends.

“I think as of yesterday, Seattle is up to 19 homicides, and we’re a little bit more than halfway through the year,” Curley said on “The John Curley Show” on KIRO Newsradio. “Normally, homicides are highest when it’s hotter out, and we tend to get more murders from June all the way to probably about the middle of September. So we’re at 19. Could we double that number? Could we be up to possibly at 38 or 40, which would put us again a high above the average of 28?”

Curley cited the average number of 28 homicides as that was the average annual amount from 2013-18, before crime spiked to near record-highs in 2019 in Seattle.

“We still have people shooting and killing one another in the city of Seattle,” Curley said. “Yes, we should celebrate the fact that the numbers have come down. Now, why are they down? This is where it gets a little kind of cloudy and murky. Is it because we have more police? Possibly. Is it because we are now funding, again, more community outreach? Possibly. If you listen to Chief Barnes, he’ll say we’ve taken 9,000 guns off the streets. Could it also be the fact that we’re catching people and we’re putting them in jail? Not necessarily.”

Curley referenced data explaining that homicides in Seattle jumped from a 28.3 average between 2013-18 to an annual average of 51.3 between 2019-2024.

“When you say, crime is down, it’s down from a record high,” Curley said.

Seattle is on pace to see approximately 22% fewer property and violent crimes in 2025, according to the Seattle Police Department’s (SPD) crime dashboard, compared to the 45,884 reported crimes that took place in 2024.

Listen to the full conversation here.

Listen to John Curley weekday afternoons from 3 – 7 p.m. on KIRO Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.