Is Kenmore, Washington Safe? Safest Neighborhoods & Other Stats (2026)

Kenmore Crime Rates vs. State and National Benchmarks

The Numbers in Plain English

Kenmore's violent crime rate of 0.65 per 1,000 residents is not a rounding error. The FBI's 2024 national rate is 3.59 per 1,000 — meaning Kenmore comes in at roughly one-fifth that figure. For a city of about 24,000 people on the northeastern edge of the Seattle metro, that is a meaningful gap, not a marginal one.

Property crime, at 10 per 1,000, tells a more complicated story. On a raw national comparison it looks elevated — the U.S. average sits considerably below that figure. But property crime cannot be read in isolation in Washington state. The state's 2024 property crime rate of 2,467–2,498 per 100,000 ranked third worst in the country, driven heavily by motor vehicle theft in urban and suburban corridors. Kenmore's 10 per 1,000 (1,000 per 100,000) is still dramatically below the state average of roughly 2,480 per 100,000.

* State property crime figure converted from per-100,000 to per-1,000 for comparison. FBI 2024 data released October 2025 (NeighborhoodScout) and September 2025 (AreaVibes).

The Trend Line Is Moving in the Right Direction

Year-over-year declines of 16% in violent crime and 10% in property crime are not trivial. They suggest the city isn't coasting on a favorable geography — active policing and community engagement appear to be contributing. Nationally, violent crime fell an estimated 4.5% in 2024, so Kenmore's 16% drop outpaced the country significantly.

Washington state's overall property crime decline of 13.4% — including motor vehicle theft dropping from over 52,000 incidents to 34,294 — gave Kenmore favorable tailwinds. But the city was already well below the state baseline before those declines began.

How Kenmore's Police Department Actually Works

A Contract Model That Punches Above Its Weight

Kenmore doesn't operate a traditional standalone police department. Instead, a dedicated team of King County Sheriff's Office deputies is assigned specifically to Kenmore, working out of Kenmore City Hall rather than a county precinct. Command oversight and patrol supervision are provided in partnership with the City of Shoreline Police Department — a structure that has saved both cities approximately $600,000 per year without sacrificing local accountability.

In practice, this means Kenmore officers are embedded in the community rather than rotating through county-wide assignments. They know the city's specific pressure points along SR-522, the traffic patterns around Kenmore Air Harbor, and the seasonal dynamics around Saint Edward State Park and Log Boom Park. That institutional knowledge matters for response quality.

What the Activity Numbers Show

In 2024, Kenmore police responded to nearly 3,000 calls for service and initiated more than 5,700 community contacts — a ratio that reflects proactive patrol rather than purely reactive policing. More than 5,700 community contacts for a city of about 24,000 people is a notably high figure; it suggests officers are visible and engaged rather than waiting for calls.

The department holds Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs (WASPC) accreditation, which it has maintained since 2015. Accreditation requires departments to meet or exceed professional standards across policies, training, and operations — it's not automatic, and it's not permanent without ongoing compliance.

Community Programs Worth Knowing About

The Block Watch program pairs specific neighborhoods with an assigned patrol officer who meets with residents monthly to discuss local crime trends. This isn't a passive hotline — it's a structured relationship between a named officer and a named block. If you move to a neighborhood with an active Block Watch chapter, you'll have a direct line to the officer covering your street.

The Safe Place program designates businesses, schools, and government buildings as official refuge locations for anyone who feels threatened or witnesses a crime, providing a safe holding point until police arrive. For families with kids who walk to school or travel independently around the Burke-Gilman Trail corridor, knowing which buildings carry that designation is genuinely useful information to have in hand before you settle on a specific street.

Neighborhood Safety Patterns Across Kenmore

Where the Data Points Within City Limits

Aggregate city-level crime figures flatten meaningful differences between Kenmore's neighborhoods. CrimeGrade.org's March 2025 analysis of resident-reported and incident data identifies the northeast part of Kenmore as the area locals generally consider safest. That corridor includes areas closer to the Saint Edward State Park boundary and the quieter residential streets that run north from the Burke-Gilman Trail toward the Bothell city line.

For a fuller breakdown of how each neighborhood is characterized — Uplake, St. Edward, Arrowhead, Moorlands, Linwood Heights, Kenmore Terrace, Inglewood, and Uptown Kenmore — the neighborhoods guide covers the geographic and character distinctions that shape daily life in each area. The safety picture and the neighborhood character picture are inseparable here, so reading them together gives you a more complete view than either alone.

What to Look for Before Choosing a Specific Area

Property crime in Kenmore, where it does occur, tends to follow the patterns typical of suburban Seattle-area communities: vehicle break-ins and package theft concentrated near higher-traffic commercial corridors, particularly along 68th Avenue NE and the SR-522 frontage. The residential streets that back up against the greenbelt north of Saint Edward State Park see considerably less of this activity.

The Burke-Gilman Trail corridor brings foot traffic and some overnight activity near Log Boom Park, particularly on summer weekends. Most of it is benign — the trail is heavily used by commuters and recreational cyclists — but it does mean the immediate vicinity of Log Boom Park has a different ambient character on a July Saturday than a neighborhood street two blocks away. Worth factoring in if you're looking at properties that directly front that corridor.

These characterizations reflect general incident patterns and neighborhood geography — they are not absolute risk rankings, and the differences within Kenmore are modest compared to the gap between Kenmore and the broader regional average.

The Property Crime Nuance You Shouldn't Miss

Why 10 per 1,000 Reads Differently Here Than in Other States

If you're relocating from a lower-crime state — the Midwest, the Mountain West, parts of the South — a property crime rate of 10 per 1,000 may give you pause. That reaction is understandable but worth interrogating. The frame of reference matters enormously.

Washington state's property crime rate in 2024 ranked third worst in the nation. The regional baseline is elevated, driven heavily by motor vehicle theft and organized retail theft concentrated in urban and suburban King County. Within that context, Kenmore's figure is substantially below the state norm — not a standout exception, but a genuine positive outlier within a challenged regional picture.

What This Actually Means Day-to-Day

The most commonly reported property incidents in suburban King County communities like Kenmore involve vehicle break-ins and package theft — opportunistic crimes of access rather than targeted burglary. Residents who consistently lock cars, avoid leaving valuables visible, and use doorbell camera coverage report far fewer incidents than the aggregate figure might suggest is average.

This is the surprise that catches people after about six months here: the crime they worried about before moving — violent crime, home invasion — is genuinely rare. The crime they didn't think about — a smashed car window in a commercial parking lot — is the thing that occasionally happens. Managing it is more about habits than luck, and most longtime Kenmore residents have adopted those habits without much conscious effort.

Motor vehicle theft across Washington state dropped from over 52,000 incidents in 2023 to 34,294 in 2024, a decline of more than a third in a single year. That statewide shift almost certainly contributed to Kenmore's own 10% property crime decline. The trend is moving the right direction, but the underlying regional environment means property crime vigilance remains the realistic ongoing ask of anyone living here.

Practical Safety Research Before You Choose a Neighborhood

What the Data Can and Can't Tell You

Aggregate crime rates give you a useful starting point but a weak finishing line. A city-level violent crime rate of 0.65 per 1,000 tells you Kenmore is broadly safe — it doesn't tell you whether the specific block you're considering has an active Block Watch group, or whether the commercial strip two streets over generates the kind of foot traffic that invites opportunistic incidents.

The practical move: pull the Kenmore Police Department's publicly available call-for-service logs for the specific address or block before deciding on a neighborhood. Kenmore's contract policing model means those records run through King County, and the department's community contacts in 2024 — over 5,700 for a city of 24,000 — suggest officers are visible and accessible if you want to ask direct questions about a specific street's recent history.

Community Infrastructure as a Safety Signal

Block Watch participation is a surprisingly useful proxy for neighborhood cohesion. A block where residents meet monthly with an assigned patrol officer and know each other's faces tends to have lower opportunistic crime not just because of police visibility, but because strangers are noticed. If you're narrowing down streets within Kenmore, asking whether a specific block has an active Block Watch chapter is a faster signal than trying to parse incident maps at the block level.

The Safe Place program's network of designated refuge locations — businesses, schools, government buildings — is worth mapping relative to wherever you land if you have kids who travel independently in the city. Knowing that the library branch near Town Square or the Bastyr University campus serves as a designated safe location gives both parents and kids a clearer picture of the city's safety infrastructure than raw statistics provide.

One Thing People Don't Anticipate

The Burke-Gilman Trail is one of Kenmore's genuine assets — a paved, heavily traveled multi-use path that runs along the lake and connects directly to Seattle for cyclists. Most of the time it functions exactly as advertised: a well-lit, busy commuter and recreation corridor. What newcomers sometimes don't anticipate is that the trailhead area at Log Boom Park draws a small but consistent transient population during warmer months, which occasionally produces minor incidents that show up in the call-for-service logs. It's not a reason to avoid the area — the trail and park remain widely used and generally safe — but it's useful to know before you decide that a condo directly adjacent to the Log Boom trailhead is equivalent to a house two blocks east on a residential street.

Postdoc Brewing on NE 175th St sits near the Burke-Gilman Trail corridor and functions as one of the community anchors in that part of the city — a good place to talk to longtime locals about how the neighborhood actually feels on the ground, not just what the statistics say.

Quick Takeaways & FAQs

✅ Kenmore's violent crime rate of 0.65 per 1,000 is roughly one-fifth the FBI's 2024 national average, making it among the safer cities in the Seattle metro.

⚠️ Property crime at 10 per 1,000 is the honest catch — opportunistic vehicle break-ins and package theft do occur, particularly near the SR-522 corridor and commercial areas around Town Square.

📍 The northeast quadrant of Kenmore, near the Saint Edward State Park boundary, is where residents and CrimeGrade.org consistently point when asked which part of the city feels safest.

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