Wondering if Redmond is safe? This Eastside city near Seattle, home to Microsoft, is widely regarded by residents as a comfortable, family-friendly place. Safety is one of the most common questions people ask about any place — and the honest answer is always nuanced: it varies by neighborhood, by time of day, and it changes over time. This guide explains how to research safety in Redmond properly, shares practical tips, and points you to the people who know best — locals who live here. (This is general guidance, not a safety rating of any specific area; always check current official data.)

Is Redmond safe? The honest picture

Redmond is frequently viewed by residents as a pleasant, family-oriented tech-hub city, with established residential neighborhoods and a growing downtown. Even in a well-regarded city, conditions vary by area and change over time, so it’s worth checking current Redmond Police Department data and neighborhood tools for the specific area you’re considering. The key takeaway: don’t judge a whole city by a single statistic or headline — safety varies block by block, and the best read comes from combining official data with the lived experience of residents.

How to research safety in Redmond

Do your homework at the neighborhood — even block — level, not just the city level:

• Official police data: Most cities publish crime statistics and maps through the local police department or an open-data portal — the most authoritative source.
• Neighborhood-level tools: Sites and apps that map incidents by area help you compare specific neighborhoods rather than relying on a citywide number.
• Visit in person: Walk or drive a prospective neighborhood at different times of day and evening to get a real feel.
• Ask people who live there: Residents know things data can’t capture — which blocks feel comfortable, where to park, how a place has changed. See how areas compare in our guide to the best neighborhoods in Redmond.

Practical safety tips for Redmond

Sensible, universal habits go a long way: stay aware of your surroundings (especially at night), keep valuables out of sight in parked cars, use well-lit and populated routes, know how local transit and rideshare work, and trust your instincts about a place. These basics apply in any city, from the biggest metro to the quietest suburb.

What Redmond locals actually say about safety

Crime maps and ratings sites can’t tell you what it actually feels like to live somewhere — how safe a specific block feels walking home, which areas residents love, how a neighborhood is changing. That candid, current perspective comes from people who live here. On Neighborhood Nurturers’ Redmond community, real Redmond neighbors answer safety questions honestly and share what it’s genuinely like on the ground. Join your Redmond neighbors free and get honest, real-life safety insight →

The short answer, with the numbers attached

Redmond is a very safe city for violent crime and a high-volume city for property crime. Those two things are both true, and most simple “is it safe” answers get it wrong by picking one.

From FBI data for the 2024 calendar year, released in September 2025: Redmond recorded 108 violent crimes, or 131 per 100,000 residents — 63.7% below the national average. In the same period it recorded 2,267 property crimes, or 2,740 per 100,000 residents — 55.7% above the U.S. average.

That combination — very low violence, elevated property offending — is the defining safety fact about this city, and it has a clear cause.

Why property crime is high here

The explanation is structural rather than alarming, and it applies to a whole category of American cities.

Redmond has about 80,000 residents but hosts an enormous daytime population and a large regional retail centre. Crime rates are calculated per resident, while offences are counted wherever they occur. A city with major employment campuses, a regional shopping destination and a county park drawing visitors from across King County generates offences against a much larger population than its residency figure implies.

The dominant categories in that count are theft-type property offences — from vehicles, from retail — rather than crimes against people in their homes. That is a genuinely different lived experience from a high violent-crime environment, even though a single headline “crime rate” number blends the two.

The 2025 direction of travel

Being straight about the trend rather than only the level. The Redmond Police Department’s 2025 activity report recorded a 48.5% increase in property crimes and a 29.5% increase in violent crimes from 2024 to 2025, alongside a 14.7% increase in total arrests. The department answered 62,382 calls in its communications centre and responded to 28,844 calls for service in 2025.

Two caveats matter for reading those figures honestly. Percentage increases on a low violent-crime base represent small absolute numbers — 29.5% of 108 is not the same as 29.5% in a city with thousands of violent offences. And full-year 2025 FBI data had not been published at the time of writing, so the department’s own activity report is the most current source rather than the standardised national one.

The direction is upward. The level, for violence, remains well below the national average.

What this means in practice

The practical guidance follows directly from the data and is unglamorous.

Nothing visible in your car, ever. This is the single highest-value habit in Redmond. Vehicle prowls are the archetypal offence in a city with a regional park, a large retail centre and employment campuses — all of which mean full car parks full of people who will be away for hours.

Park thoughtfully at Marymoor Park, particularly on event days when the lots are full and everyone is far from their vehicle for a long time.

Ordinary package and delivery precautions apply as they do in any prosperous suburb.

Report things. The 2025 figures reflect 28,844 calls for service; the data only works if incidents enter it.

Where to get current information

This page will age. Use the primary sources instead of trusting any summary, including this one.

The City of Redmond publishes its own crime statistics, dashboards and a crime map, which is the most direct and current view available and is updated far more often than annual national reporting. The Redmond Police Department’s annual activity report gives the year-over-year picture. FBI Uniform Crime Reporting gives the standardised national comparison, roughly nine months in arrears.

We do not publish street-level or neighborhood “dangerous area” rankings, because the underlying data does not support that resolution and the practice does real harm to real places and the people who live in them. City and department figures with their sources named are what the evidence actually supports.

Context for anyone relocating

Set against the region and the country, Redmond is a low-violence, high-affluence, high-employment city with a property crime profile driven by its role as a regional destination.

For most people moving here, the practical safety adjustment is a single habit — empty the car — rather than a change in how they live. That is a very different proposition from the impression a bare “crime rate per 1,000” headline creates, which is why the split figures matter more than any single number.

A word on comparison sites

You will find third-party sites presenting Redmond as having “one of the highest crime rates in America,” and it is worth understanding exactly what produces that sentence. It comes from a single blended figure — roughly 29 offences per 1,000 residents — that adds violent and property crime together and divides by the resident population.

For a city whose offence count is driven by a regional retail centre, employment campuses and a county park drawing visitors from across King County, that denominator is simply wrong for the purpose. The same arithmetic makes every regional destination look dangerous.

Read the two figures separately instead. Violent crime 63.7% below the national average, property crime 55.7% above it, both from FBI 2024 data — that pair tells you what living here is actually like, and the blended number does not.

Finally, worth stating plainly for anyone weighing a move: the practical safety question in Redmond is about what you leave in a parked car, not about where it is safe to walk after dark.

The city publishes dashboards and a crime map that update far more often than annual national reporting, and those remain the right place to check a current question rather than any static summary.

Frequently asked questions

Is Redmond, WA safe?

Redmond is generally regarded by residents as a comfortable, family-friendly city, though conditions still vary by area — check current Redmond Police Department data.

How do I research safety in Redmond?

Use official Redmond Police Department crime data, visit the area at different times, and ask residents — Redmond neighbors share candid insight in our community.

What do locals say about safety in Redmond?

Redmond residents share honest, current perspectives on how its neighborhoods actually feel in our community.