Cincinnati · April 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 2026-04
47
tracked signals this month — across spikes, drops, sustained shifts, rare events.
-5.6%
overall city incident volume vs. trailing 12-month avg.
50
neighborhoods covered. Each gets its own page.
8
incident categories tracked, NIBRS-aligned.

Riverside_Sedamsville other larceny is the lead signal for April 2026 — a fresh spike with no prior-month run behind it. With demoted_lead null this month, there is no recurring backdrop to set aside: this is a clean break, a newly surfaced move in a category that also appears in two other neighborhoods in the top five.

Citywide volume is down 5.6% against the prior 12 months — 13,472 incidents versus 14,268 the year before. The signal mix is heavily weighted toward fresh spikes: 16 spike signals and 18 sustained-shift signals across 50 neighborhoods, against just 4 below-trend signals. Mt. Airy and Camp Washington both show other-larceny spikes alongside Riverside_Sedamsville, suggesting the move is not isolated to a single neighborhood. Millvale aggravated assault also surfaces in the top five.

Other larceny appearing across three distinct neighborhoods in the same briefing is the structural story to watch going forward. The category-wide nature of the move — rather than a single outlier — makes this month's signal more durable than a single-point anomaly. Whether it persists into May or resolves as a one-month cluster will determine whether it becomes the dominant backdrop for subsequent briefings.

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 April 2026 briefing.

Is crime in Cincinnati down?

Yes — citywide incident volume is 5.6% lower than the prior 12 months.

Across the trailing 12-month window we tracked 13,472 incidents in NIBRS-aligned categories, compared to 14,268 in the year before — down 796 incidents.

Is violent crime in Cincinnati down?

Yes — homicide, robbery, aggravated assault, and sexual assault are down 7.8% combined in the trailing 12 months.

That's 1,715 violent incidents in the past year against 1,860 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 5.2% combined in the trailing 12 months.

That's 11,757 property incidents in the past year against 12,408 in the prior year.

What are the safest neighborhoods to stay in Cincinnati?

  1. California1.7 incidents per 1,000 residents
  2. Columbia Tusculum2.9 incidents per 1,000 residents
  3. English Woods_North Fairmount7.8 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?

Hartwell — 33.9% fewer incidents than the prior 12 months.

Hartwell logged 115 incidents in the trailing 12 months against 174 the year before.

Which neighborhood in Cincinnati saw the biggest crime increase?

Camp Washington — 40.9% more incidents than the prior 12 months.

Camp Washington logged 186 incidents in the trailing 12 months against 132 the year before.

City profile

The denominators behind the numbers

SOURCES · US CENSUS ACS 2023 · 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
318,856
Density~4,093 / mi²
Median age36.9
Households~146K
Avg HH size2.30

ACS 2023 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~163K
Median rent$1,005
Median home value$225,700
Vacancy10.3%
Tenure
Renter 60%Owner 40%
Stock
SFH 44%2–4 unit 20%5+ unit 36%
Economy & people
Median HH income$70,816
Poverty rate24.0%
Unemployment6.8%
Bachelor's+41.4%
Foreign-born7.1%
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
47071,409
Rankings

Largest moves this month

RANKED BY ANOMALY STRENGTH
#NeighborhoodCategoryMoMYoY 12movs baseline90-day trendSignal
01Riverside_SedamsvilleOther Larceny-67%+52%+352%SPIKE
02Mt. AiryOther Larceny-22%+19%+54%SPIKE
03MillvaleAggravated Assault+200%+38%+127%SPIKE
04Camp WashingtonOther Larceny-33%+120%+84%SPIKE
05Roll HillAggravated Assault+33%+24%+93%SPIKE
06EvanstonTheft from Vehicle-50%+8%+75%SPIKE
07West EndOther Larceny-8%+10%+54%SPIKE
08CUFAggravated Assault+400%+8%+87%SPIKE
09RoselawnOther Larceny0%+21%+48%SPIKE
10Spring Grove VillageBurglary-100%+67%+84%SPIKE
11OakleyOther Larceny-25%+49%+73%SPIKE
12MillvaleOther Larceny0%+11%+79%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 ↓
036913201820192020202120222023202420252026monthly12-mo rolling mean
Latest 12mo52
YoY 12mo-4%
5-year change-37%
Window change
Peak (12mo avg)7 · Feb '21
Trough (12mo avg)4 · Oct '25
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
05,72211,44312am6am12pm6pm11pm

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

DAY OF WEEK · ALL CATEGORIES
08,75617,512MonTueWedThuFriSatSun
MONTH OF YEAR · ALL CATEGORIES
05,19410,388JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec
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 →