Los Angeles Crime Rate Trends
Data sourced from the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) Open Data portal and analyzed by Public Analyst.ai: 114 neighborhoods, 10 incident categories, twelve months of trailing comparison. Browse the rankings, scan the multi-year trends, or open a neighborhood-level breakdown.
Lincoln Heights other-larceny rose 85% against its multi-year baseline, the strongest single signal in Los Angeles this briefing and the first time this neighborhood-category combination has topped the rankings. Windsor Square vandalism had been the lead category entering August, but the fresh move in other-larceny across multiple neighborhoods is the dominant story this month.
Citywide volume is up 5.5% against the prior 12 months, 125,622 incidents against 119,079. The signal mix is broadly balanced, 37 above-trend signals against 36 below-trend, with 126 sustained-shift signals reinforcing a structural uptick rather than isolated noise. Other-larceny accounts for much of the activity: Lincoln Heights, Chinatown, and Chesterfield Square all registered spikes in the same category, pointing to a category-wide move rather than a single neighborhood anomaly.
The recurrence of other-larceny across three distinct neighborhoods in one briefing is the pattern to watch heading into September. Windsor Square vandalism dropped back to the second position after one month at the top, making its run short-lived for now. With 114 neighborhoods registering signals and the citywide total above the prior-year level for a sustained stretch, August reinforces a broad upward shift rather than marking a new turning point.
Why these numbers are below LAPD's headline totals
Counts from March 2024 onwardrun roughly 10 to 20 percent below LAPD's command-staff totals citywide. LAPD's legacy crime feed froze after a late-2024 cyber incident, and the replacement NIBRS feed has been shipping fewer rows than LAPD's own statistics show. The shortfall is most visible in homicide and in dense south-LA neighborhoods, because the new feed lacks coordinates and resolves location through reporting districts. Trend direction is still meaningful; absolute levels are not directly comparable to LAPD's headline figures.
Los Angeles 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 Los Angeles down?
No. Citywide incident volume is 5.5% higher than the prior 12 months.
Across the trailing 12-month window we tracked 125,622 incidents in NIBRS-aligned categories, compared to 119,079 in the year before, up 6,543 incidents.
Is violent crime in Los Angeles down?
Yes. Homicide, robbery, aggravated assault, and sexual assault are down 4.3% combined in the trailing 12 months.
That's 24,471 violent incidents in the past year against 25,571 in the prior year. See the by-category section below for the per-bucket breakdown.
Is property crime in Los Angeles down?
No. Burglary, theft from vehicle, larceny, motor vehicle theft, and arson are up 12.4% combined in the trailing 12 months.
That's 79,084 property incidents in the past year against 70,344 in the prior year.
What are the safest neighborhoods to stay in Los Angeles?
- Harvard Park — 0.0 incidents per 1,000 residents
- Porter Ranch — 8.3 incidents per 1,000 residents
- Pacific Palisades — 10.2 incidents per 1,000 residents
The three safest neighborhoods in Los Angeles, 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 Los Angeles saw the biggest crime drop?
Porter Ranch: 23.7% fewer incidents than the prior 12 months.
Porter Ranch logged 216 incidents in the trailing 12 months against 283 the year before.
Which neighborhood in Los Angeles saw the biggest crime increase?
University Park: 55.6% more incidents than the prior 12 months.
University Park logged 1,374 incidents in the trailing 12 months against 883 the year before.
The denominators behind the numbers
Sprawling Mediterranean-climate city laid out across the LA Basin, San Fernando Valley, the Santa Monica Mountains, and a southern peninsula running to the Port of LA at San Pedro. Neighborhood boundaries follow the LA Times' Mapping LA project (114 polygons) — the historical analytical standard for the city. Major freeways (101, 405, 110, 10, 5) and the Santa Monica Mountains define most neighborhood-cluster boundaries.
ACS 2024 5-year estimates, county-level (Los Angeles County). LA County is much broader than the City of Los Angeles — county-level medians (rent, home value, household income, age) are county-wide, not city-only. Per-tract counts (population, households, housing units) sum only the ~1,100 tracts whose interior point falls inside city limits.
City-level only. We deliberately do not juxtapose these with neighborhood-level crime data — see the methodology for why.
Largely car-oriented, low-density single-family fabric across most of the city, with high-rise cores in Downtown, Century City, Westwood, and along the Wilshire corridor (Koreatown, Mid-Wilshire). The Metro Rail B/D Line subway and the A/E/K light-rail lines shape transit travel for the central and Westside neighborhoods; the San Fernando Valley relies on the G Line bus rapid transit and freeways.
LAPD now publishes through three feeds — a frozen UCR-coded feed (2nrs-mtv8) that carries 2020 through 2024-02 history, and two NIBRS-coded feeds (y8y3-fqfu for 2024-03 through 2025-12, then k7nn-b2ep for 2026 onward). Our ingest stitches them by date. The NIBRS feeds don't carry lat/lng, so neighborhood is resolved via a hand-built LAPD-RD → Mapping-LA crosswalk: 1,129 of 1,135 reporting districts mapped, with the remaining 6 falling outside city limits. Approximately ~14-day reporting lag on the NIBRS side per LAPD docs.
Every neighborhood, color-coded
Largest moves this month
| # | Neighborhood | Category | MoM | YoY 12mo | vs baseline | 90-day trend | Signal |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Windsor Square | Vandalism | +200% | +61% | +116% | SPIKE | |
| 02 | Lincoln Heights | Other Larceny | -36% | +45% | +85% | SPIKE | |
| 03 | Chinatown | Other Larceny | +57% | +34% | +148% | SPIKE | |
| 04 | Chesterfield Square | Other Larceny | -20% | +38% | +140% | SPIKE | |
| 05 | Woodland Hills | Other Larceny | +4% | +37% | +118% | SPIKE | |
| 06 | North Hills | Other Larceny | +32% | +42% | +119% | SPIKE | |
| 07 | Downtown | Vandalism | -7% | +11% | +36% | SPIKE | |
| 08 | Tarzana | Other Larceny | +154% | +34% | +107% | SPIKE | |
| 09 | Echo Park | Vandalism | 0% | +27% | +38% | SPIKE | |
| 10 | Eagle Rock | Other Larceny | -5% | +12% | +68% | SPIKE | |
| 11 | Beverlywood | Other Larceny | +200% | +41% | +185% | SPIKE | |
| 12 | Exposition Park | Vandalism | +4% | +22% | +48% | SPIKE |
The long arc — eight years of monthly counts
Four neighborhoods worth your time
Windsor Square
The past 12 months saw 74 incidents — about 116% above the 34 average from prior years.
Read briefing →SPIKE · OTHER LARCENYLincoln Heights
The past 12 months saw 232 incidents — about 85% above the 125 average from prior years.
Read briefing →SPIKE · OTHER LARCENYChinatown
The past 12 months saw 316 incidents — about 148% above the 127 average from prior years.
Read briefing →SPIKE · OTHER LARCENYChesterfield Square
The past 12 months saw 105 incidents — about 140% above the 44 average from prior years.
Read briefing →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.
All 114 Los Angeles neighborhoods
Crime rate trends and August 2026 briefings for every tracked neighborhood. Alphabetical.
- Adams-Normandie crime rate
- Arleta crime rate
- Arlington Heights crime rate
- Atwater Village crime rate
- Baldwin Hills/Crenshaw crime rate
- Bel-Air crime rate
- Beverly Crest crime rate
- Beverly Grove crime rate
- Beverlywood crime rate
- Boyle Heights crime rate
- Brentwood crime rate
- Broadway-Manchester crime rate
- Canoga Park crime rate
- Carthay crime rate
- Central-Alameda crime rate
- Century City crime rate
- Chatsworth crime rate
- Chatsworth Reservoir crime rate
- Chesterfield Square crime rate
- Cheviot Hills crime rate
- Chinatown crime rate
- Cypress Park crime rate
- Del Rey crime rate
- Downtown crime rate
- Eagle Rock crime rate
- East Hollywood crime rate
- Echo Park crime rate
- El Sereno crime rate
- Elysian Park crime rate
- Elysian Valley crime rate
- Encino crime rate
- Exposition Park crime rate
- Fairfax crime rate
- Florence crime rate
- Glassell Park crime rate
- Gramercy Park crime rate
- Granada Hills crime rate
- Green Meadows crime rate
- Griffith Park crime rate
- Hancock Park crime rate
- Hansen Dam crime rate
- Harbor City crime rate
- Harbor Gateway crime rate
- Harvard Heights crime rate
- Harvard Park crime rate
- Highland Park crime rate
- Historic South-Central crime rate
- Hollywood crime rate
- Hollywood Hills crime rate
- Hollywood Hills West crime rate
- Hyde Park crime rate
- Jefferson Park crime rate
- Koreatown crime rate
- Lake Balboa crime rate
- Lake View Terrace crime rate
- Larchmont crime rate
- Leimert Park crime rate
- Lincoln Heights crime rate
- Los Feliz crime rate
- Manchester Square crime rate
- Mar Vista crime rate
- Mid-City crime rate
- Mid-Wilshire crime rate
- Mission Hills crime rate
- Montecito Heights crime rate
- Mount Washington crime rate
- North Hills crime rate
- North Hollywood crime rate
- Northridge crime rate
- Pacific Palisades crime rate
- Pacoima crime rate
- Palms crime rate
- Panorama City crime rate
- Pico-Robertson crime rate
- Pico-Union crime rate
- Playa del Rey crime rate
- Playa Vista crime rate
- Porter Ranch crime rate
- Rancho Park crime rate
- Reseda crime rate
- San Pedro crime rate
- Sawtelle crime rate
- Sepulveda Basin crime rate
- Shadow Hills crime rate
- Sherman Oaks crime rate
- Silver Lake crime rate
- South Park crime rate
- Studio City crime rate
- Sun Valley crime rate
- Sunland crime rate
- Sylmar crime rate
- Tarzana crime rate
- Toluca Lake crime rate
- Tujunga crime rate
- University Park crime rate
- Valley Glen crime rate
- Valley Village crime rate
- Van Nuys crime rate
- Venice crime rate
- Vermont Knolls crime rate
- Vermont Square crime rate
- Vermont Vista crime rate
- Vermont-Slauson crime rate
- Watts crime rate
- West Adams crime rate
- West Hills crime rate
- West Los Angeles crime rate
- Westchester crime rate
- Westlake crime rate
- Westwood crime rate
- Wilmington crime rate
- Windsor Square crime rate
- Winnetka crime rate
- Woodland Hills crime rate
How We Calculate Los Angeles 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.