Cincinnati · August 2026 briefing

Cincinnati Crime Rate Trends

Data sourced from the Cincinnati Police Department (CPD) Open Data portal and analyzed by Public Analyst.ai: 50 neighborhoods, 8 incident categories, twelve months of trailing comparison. Browse the rankings, scan the multi-year trends, or open a neighborhood-level breakdown.

Read methodologyUPDATED · AS OF 2026-08
53
tracked signals this month — across spikes, drops, sustained shifts, rare events.
-7.7%
overall city incident volume vs. trailing 12-month avg.
50
neighborhoods covered. Each gets its own page.
8
incident categories tracked, NIBRS-aligned.

Camp Washington other larceny rose 179% against its multi-year baseline, the largest single-category move in Cincinnati this month. That is also the first time this combination has topped the citywide rankings, so there is no prior run to account for. The signal stands on its own as a fresh, sharp move in a small neighborhood.

Citywide volume is down 7.7% against the prior 12 months, 13,175 incidents against 14,275 the year before. The mix this month is heavily weighted toward upward pressure in specific neighborhoods: 18 spikes against just 3 below-trend signals, alongside 22 sustained-shift readings. Millvale and CUF both registered aggravated assault spikes, and CUF also appears in the top five for theft from vehicle, making it the most active neighborhood in the upper rankings this briefing.

The citywide decline holds, but the composition of this month's signals is notably spike-heavy across 50 neighborhoods. The Camp Washington move is sharp enough to watch through September; if other larceny in Roselawn, which also appears in the top five, runs at the same elevated pace next month, the category itself becomes the story rather than any single neighborhood.

WHAT TO READ NEXT
Direct answers

Cincinnati Crime Frequently Asked Questions

Trailing 12 months vs the prior 12 months, computed from the same NIBRS-aligned categories used everywhere else on the page. Updated each August 2026 briefing.

Is crime in Cincinnati down?

Yes. Citywide incident volume is 7.7% lower than the prior 12 months.

Across the trailing 12-month window we tracked 13,175 incidents in NIBRS-aligned categories, compared to 14,275 in the year before, down 1,100 incidents.

Is violent crime in Cincinnati down?

Yes. Homicide, robbery, aggravated assault, and sexual assault are down 5.5% combined in the trailing 12 months.

That's 1,741 violent incidents in the past year against 1,843 in the prior year. See the by-category section below for the per-bucket breakdown.

Is property crime in Cincinnati down?

Yes. Burglary, theft from vehicle, larceny, motor vehicle theft, and arson are down 8.0% combined in the trailing 12 months.

That's 11,434 property incidents in the past year against 12,432 in the prior year.

What are the safest neighborhoods to stay in Cincinnati?

  1. California2.1 incidents per 1,000 residents
  2. Columbia Tusculum2.6 incidents per 1,000 residents
  3. English Woods_North Fairmount9.6 incidents per 1,000 residents

The three safest neighborhoods in Cincinnati, ranked by trailing-12-month incidents per 1,000 residents.

Computed as NIBRS-aligned trailing-12-month incident totals divided by the latest ACS 5-year residential population, expressed per 1,000 residents. Restricted to neighborhoods with at least 1,000 residents so park-only and industrial geographies, where visitor populations are not reflected in the residential denominator, are excluded.

Which neighborhood in Cincinnati saw the biggest crime drop?

Hyde Park: 33.2% fewer incidents than the prior 12 months.

Hyde Park logged 149 incidents in the trailing 12 months against 223 the year before.

Which neighborhood in Cincinnati saw the biggest crime increase?

South Fairmount: 41.2% more incidents than the prior 12 months.

South Fairmount logged 137 incidents in the trailing 12 months against 97 the year before.

City profile

The denominators behind the numbers

SOURCES · US CENSUS ACS 2024 · CINCINNATI OPEN DATA · CPD
Geography
Land area77.9 mi²
Water area1.7 mi²
River frontageOhio River + Mill Creek
Elevation455–960 ft
CPD districts5
Neighborhoods50 SNAs (analysis units)

River-fronting, hill-and-valley city. The Ohio River anchors the southern edge; the Mill Creek Valley splits the West Side from the urban core, and a ring of hilltop neighborhoods (Mt. Adams, Mt. Auburn, Mt. Lookout, Mt. Washington, Mt. Airy) surrounds the basin where downtown sits.

Population
320,109
Density~4,109 / mi²
Median age36.9
Households~148K
Avg HH size2.29

ACS 2024 5-year estimates, county-level (Hamilton County). Includes Cincinnati plus other Hamilton municipalities in the demographic aggregates, county is the smallest official ACS geography matching where Cincinnati city data lives.

Housing
Units~164K
Median rent$1,075
Median home value$241,900
Vacancy9.8%
Tenure
Renter 59%Owner 41%
Stock
SFH 44%2–4 unit 20%5+ unit 36%
Economy & people
Median HH income$72,470
Poverty rate25.1%
Unemployment6.8%
Bachelor's+42.1%
Foreign-born6.9%
Age distribution
<18 21%18–34 32%35–64 34%65+ 13%

City-level only. We deliberately do not juxtapose these with neighborhood-level crime data — see the methodology for why.

Built environment
Street miles~1,000
Parks (acres)~5,000
Streetcar routeCincinnati Bell Connector
Walk score50 (somewhat walkable)

Compact downtown and Over-the-Rhine core sit in a basin walled by hilltop neighborhoods reached by historic inclines and steep arterials. Crime-rate denominators differ sharply between the dense basin neighborhoods and the lower-density hilltop and West Side communities.

Policing context
CPD sworn officers~1,000
Officers / 10K res.~32
911 calls / yr~700K
Open data lag≈ 7 days

CPD migrated its public crime feed to the STARS schema on 2024-06-03. Pre-migration data comes from the PDI (Police Data Initiative) Crime Incidents dataset, which used granular UCR groupings; post-migration data uses the rolled-up STARS categories. Vandalism and arson are excluded from the analysis at the city page level because STARS does not expose enough offense detail to recover them post-migration; both buckets would render asymmetric across the migration boundary.

Interactive map

Every neighborhood, color-coded

CLICK A NEIGHBORHOOD →
Category
Layer
Window
RAW COUNT · 1Y
56971,388
Rankings

Largest moves this month

RANKED BY ANOMALY STRENGTH
#NeighborhoodCategoryMoMYoY 12movs baseline90-day trendSignal
01Camp WashingtonOther Larceny-58%+197%+179%SPIKE
02MillvaleAggravated Assault+100%+71%+149%SPIKE
03CUFAggravated Assault-43%+33%+145%SPIKE
04CUFTheft from Vehicle+8%+50%+52%SPIKE
05RoselawnOther Larceny+100%+24%+62%SPIKE
06Winton HillsOther Larceny-8%+83%+54%SPIKE
07Roll HillAggravated Assault+100%+63%+133%SPIKE
08Riverside_SedamsvilleOther Larceny+300%+9%+252%SPIKE
09EvanstonTheft from Vehicle0%+19%+89%SPIKE
10OakleyOther Larceny-4%+32%+69%SPIKE
11Bond HillAggravated Assault-75%+67%+73%SPIKE
12CarthageBurglary0%+60%+61%SPIKE
Showing top 12 of 20 (neighborhood × category) cells with tracked signals.
Multi-year trends

The long arc — eight years of monthly counts

SELECT A CATEGORY ↓
047111520192020202120222023202420252026monthly12-mo rolling mean
Latest 12mo40
YoY 12mo-25%
5-year change-50%
Window change
Peak (12mo avg)8 · Feb '21
Trough (12mo avg)3 · Aug '26
ALL CATEGORIES · 8-YEAR ARC · 12-MO ROLLING MEAN
2018 ─────────────────── 2026
When does it happen?

Hour-of-day, day-of-week, and seasonality

Distribution of bucketed incidents citywide across the full analysis window. Useful for routine context — shopping-strip thefts vs. late-night assaults read very differently when you can see when each typically happens.

HOUR OF DAY · ALL CATEGORIES
05,98111,96112am6am12pm6pm11pm

Hour 0 is mildly inflated by reports without a known time defaulting to midnight — see methodology.

DAY OF WEEK · ALL CATEGORIES
09,17918,358MonTueWedThuFriSatSun
MONTH OF YEAR · ALL CATEGORIES
05,81611,631JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec
Methodology

How We Calculate Cincinnati Crime Trends

Open about how we define spikes, what we exclude as noise, where the data comes from, and how often the model is wrong.

# anomaly rule — spike
flag = (z >= 2.5) AND (current_12mo >= 20) AND (current_6mo above sustained band)
where z = (current_12mo − μ_baseline) / σ_baseline
# exclusions (excerpt)
· simple assault (varies by reporting practice)
· drug offenses (reflect policing policy)
· admin records, weapons-possession, fraud
# 2025 backtest (citywide)
7 of 10 categories ≥ 90% coverage. see table →