Crime & Safety in Denver
Denver's 2026 crime data tells a genuinely mixed story rather than a single clean trend: Denver Police Department figures for the first half of 2026 showed overall crime down 0.4% year-over-year, with both violent and property crime counts down, even as homicides rose sharply -- up nearly 37% (26 homicides January-July 2026 versus 19 in the same period of 2025) -- a real, disclosed tension rather than a resolved-in-one-direction picture.
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Learn moreOverall Crime: Down, With One Real Exception
Denver Police Department data for the first half of 2026 showed roughly 2,700 violent crimes and 14,000 property crimes reported, compared to nearly 3,000 violent crimes and 15,000 property crimes in the same period of 2025 -- both categories down. The clear exception: homicides rose to 26 from January 1 through July 1, 2026, up from 19 in the same period the prior year, an increase of nearly 37%. Denver7 reporting on the same data noted that despite this homicide increase, 2026 still ranked among the city's best starts to a year in the past decade -- both the increase and that broader decade-context framing are disclosed here rather than picking one.
A Separate Citywide Rate Figure, Not Directly Reconciled to the 2026 Police Data
A separate source cited an overall Denver crime rate of 74.14 per 1,000 residents, broken out as 10.58 violent crimes and 63.56 property crimes per 1,000 residents, alongside cited odds of about 1-in-354 for being a victim of violent crime and 1-in-61 for property crime in a given year. This figure's exact time period and methodology were not independently confirmed to align precisely with the Denver Police Department's first-half-2026 figures above -- it is presented here as a separate, disclosed data point rather than reconciled into one single crime-rate number.
Property Crime Remains the Larger Category by Volume
Consistent with the H1 2026 figures above (14,000 property crimes versus 2,700 violent crimes), property crime -- not violent crime -- dominates Denver's overall crime volume by a wide margin. This is a common pattern across large U.S. cities and worth keeping in mind when weighing the citywide "1 in 61" property-crime-victimization figure against the far lower "1 in 354" violent-crime figure cited above.
The Homicide Increase Deserves Its Own Honest Framing
The nearly 37% year-over-year homicide increase in the first half of 2026 is real and shouldn't be minimized by the broader "crime is down" headline -- it's the one category moving clearly in the wrong direction even as most other measured crime categories improved. At the same time, the base rate remains modest in absolute terms (26 homicides across a city of roughly 740,000 residents over six months) and 2026 still reportedly ranks among Denver's better decade-long starts to a year -- both facts are true and disclosed together rather than either one alone.
Neighborhood-to-Neighborhood Variance Is Real
As in any city this size, citywide figures blend genuinely different neighborhoods. Washington Park, for instance, is specifically cited in 2026 neighborhood coverage as running crime rates about 22% below the citywide average -- a real, sourced contrast covered further on the best-areas topic page. Anyone narrowing in on a specific address or neighborhood should check block-level or neighborhood-specific data directly rather than relying on a citywide figure, which may not describe a specific neighborhood at all.
Key takeaways
- Denver's H1 2026 crime data is genuinely mixed: overall crime down 0.4% year-over-year, with both violent crime (~2,700 incidents) and property crime (~14,000 incidents) down from the same period in 2025 -- but homicides up nearly 37% (26 vs. 19).
- A separately cited citywide rate (74.14 per 1,000 overall; 10.58 violent, 63.56 property) was not independently reconciled to the H1 2026 police-department figures above -- disclosed as a separate data point, not resolved into one number.
- Property crime dominates Denver's overall crime volume by a wide margin over violent crime -- consistent with the roughly 5-to-1 ratio in the H1 2026 police figures.
- The homicide increase is real and shouldn't be minimized by the broader improving-crime headline, even though 2026 reportedly still ranks among Denver's better starts to a year over the past decade -- both facts are disclosed together.
- Neighborhood variance is real -- Washington Park, for instance, is cited as running about 22% below the citywide crime average. Check block-level data for a specific address rather than relying on a citywide figure.
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