New York Crime Rate Trends
Data sourced from the New York City Police Department (NYPD) Open Data portal and analyzed by Public Analyst.ai: 59 neighborhoods, 10 incident categories, twelve months of trailing comparison. Browse the rankings, scan the multi-year trends, or open a neighborhood-level breakdown.
Vandalism fell 44% in Manhattan CD12 , Washington Heights / Inwood against its multi-year baseline, the strongest single-district signal this briefing. The same category is also running below trend in Brooklyn CD15 , Sheepshead Bay and Brooklyn CD16 , Brownsville / Ocean Hill, making vandalism the most consistent downward mover this month. Sexual assault registered fresh spikes in Brooklyn CD11 , Bensonhurst and Queens CD8 , Hillcrest / Fresh Meadows, the new signal this briefing and the reason sexual assault, not vandalism, takes the structural spotlight despite the category's prior month at the top.
Citywide volume is down 24.6% against the prior 12 months, 205,738 incidents against 272,978 in the year before. The signal mix is heavily weighted toward sustained declines: 203 sustained-shift signals and 117 below-trend signals, against just 2 fresh spikes across 59 districts. That ratio, broad structural decline with only isolated upward moves, has defined the last several months of New York briefings.
The sexual assault spikes in Brooklyn CD11 , Bensonhurst and Queens CD8 , Hillcrest / Fresh Meadows are new this month and are worth tracking into September. The vandalism declines across three districts are notable in their consistency but are part of the same sustained-shift pattern driving the citywide trend. With 323 total signals and only 2 spikes, this briefing is largely a continuation of structural decline rather than a turning point in either direction.
New York 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 New York down?
Yes. Citywide incident volume is 24.6% lower than the prior 12 months.
Across the trailing 12-month window we tracked 205,738 incidents in NIBRS-aligned categories, compared to 272,978 in the year before, down 67,240 incidents.
Is violent crime in New York down?
Yes. Homicide, robbery, aggravated assault, and sexual assault are down 21.0% combined in the trailing 12 months.
That's 44,032 violent incidents in the past year against 55,721 in the prior year. See the by-category section below for the per-bucket breakdown.
Is property crime in New York down?
Yes. Burglary, theft from vehicle, larceny, motor vehicle theft, and arson are down 25.6% combined in the trailing 12 months.
That's 134,280 property incidents in the past year against 180,377 in the prior year.
What are the safest neighborhoods to stay in New York?
- Staten Island CD3 — South Shore — 7.4 incidents per 1,000 residents
- Brooklyn CD12 — Borough Park — 8.7 incidents per 1,000 residents
- Brooklyn CD10 — Bay Ridge / Dyker Heights — 12.1 incidents per 1,000 residents
The three safest neighborhoods in New York, 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 New York saw the biggest crime drop?
Manhattan CD8 — Upper East Side: 36.7% fewer incidents than the prior 12 months.
Manhattan CD8 — Upper East Side logged 3,915 incidents in the trailing 12 months against 6,181 the year before.
The denominators behind the numbers
Five-borough archipelago straddling the mouth of the Hudson — three of the boroughs (Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island) sit on islands; only the Bronx is on the mainland. The 59 Community Districts are NYC's official sub-municipal unit, governed by Community Boards and used by the Department of City Planning for land-use review. We picked CDs over the finer-grained Neighborhood Tabulation Areas (195 NTAs) because CD-level density matches the platform's per-page target — comparable to Chicago's 77 community areas and SF's 41 analysis neighborhoods.
ACS 2024 5-year estimates. NYC spans 5 counties (Manhattan / New York County, Bronx, Brooklyn / Kings, Queens, and Staten Island / Richmond). Per-tract counts (population, households, housing units) sum across all 5 counties — but only the ~2,300 tracts whose centroid falls inside an NYC Community District in our crosswalk. Median figures (rent, home value, household income, age) on this profile reflect Manhattan / New York County only, so they lean wealthier and older than a true five-borough median; per-neighborhood medians on the neighborhood pages are tract-level and unaffected.
City-level only. We deliberately do not juxtapose these with neighborhood-level crime data — see the methodology for why.
Densest big city in the country; the subway and bus network shapes nearly every travel pattern in Manhattan, the western Bronx, northern Brooklyn, and northwest Queens. Outer-borough edges (eastern Queens, Staten Island, far-southern Brooklyn) are markedly more car-dependent and are mostly served by buses, the LIRR/Metro-North commuter rails, and the Staten Island Railway. The Brooklyn–Queens Expressway, the Cross Bronx, the Belt Parkway, and the FDR / Henry Hudson on Manhattan are the spine of the road network.
NYPD publishes incident-level complaint data on NYC Open Data with roughly a two-week reporting lag. The feed uses NYPD's own offense classifications, which our category mapper translates into the same UCR Part 1 buckets used elsewhere on the site so cross-city comparisons stay apples-to-apples. NYPD operates 77 patrol precincts plus housing and transit bureaus; precinct boundaries cut across community-district boundaries, so the analysis unit on this site is the Community District, not the precinct.
Every neighborhood, color-coded
Largest moves this month
| # | Neighborhood | Category | MoM | YoY 12mo | vs baseline | 90-day trend | Signal |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Brooklyn CD11 — Bensonhurst | Sexual Assault | — | +52% | +104% | SPIKE | |
| 02 | Queens CD8 — Hillcrest / Fresh Meadows | Sexual Assault | — | +3% | +34% | SPIKE | |
| 03 | Manhattan CD12 — Washington Heights / Inwood | Vandalism | — | -32% | -44% | DROP | |
| 04 | Brooklyn CD15 — Sheepshead Bay | Vandalism | — | -32% | -44% | DROP | |
| 05 | Brooklyn CD16 — Brownsville / Ocean Hill | Vandalism | — | -12% | -22% | DROP | |
| 06 | Manhattan CD6 — Stuyvesant Town / Turtle Bay | Other Larceny | — | -33% | -39% | DROP | |
| 07 | Brooklyn CD11 — Bensonhurst | Vandalism | — | -28% | -41% | DROP | |
| 08 | Brooklyn CD12 — Borough Park | Vandalism | — | -38% | -55% | DROP | |
| 09 | Queens CD13 — Queens Village / Cambria Heights | Vandalism | — | -22% | -35% | DROP | |
| 10 | Manhattan CD8 — Upper East Side | Theft from Vehicle | — | -47% | -57% | DROP | |
| 11 | Queens CD7 — Flushing / Whitestone | Vandalism | — | -30% | -43% | DROP | |
| 12 | Queens CD11 — Bayside / Little Neck | Vandalism | — | -28% | -44% | DROP |
The long arc — eight years of monthly counts
Four neighborhoods worth your time
Brooklyn CD11 — Bensonhurst
The past 12 months saw 226 incidents — about 104% above the 111 average from prior years.
Read briefing →SPIKE · SEXUAL ASSAULTQueens CD8 — Hillcrest / Fresh Meadows
The past 12 months saw 134 incidents — about 34% above the 100 average from prior years.
Read briefing →DROP · VANDALISMManhattan CD12 — Washington Heights / Inwood
The past 12 months saw 513 incidents — about 44% below the 919 average from prior years.
Read briefing →DROP · VANDALISMBrooklyn CD15 — Sheepshead Bay
The past 12 months saw 294 incidents — about 44% below the 521 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 59 New York neighborhoods
Crime rate trends and August 2026 briefings for every tracked neighborhood. Alphabetical.
- Bronx CD1 — Mott Haven / Melrose crime rate
- Bronx CD10 — Throgs Neck / Co-op City crime rate
- Bronx CD11 — Pelham Parkway / Morris Park crime rate
- Bronx CD12 — Williamsbridge / Baychester crime rate
- Bronx CD2 — Hunts Point / Longwood crime rate
- Bronx CD3 — Morrisania / Crotona crime rate
- Bronx CD4 — Concourse / Highbridge crime rate
- Bronx CD5 — Fordham / University Heights crime rate
- Bronx CD6 — Belmont / East Tremont crime rate
- Bronx CD7 — Kingsbridge Heights / Bedford crime rate
- Bronx CD8 — Riverdale / Fieldston crime rate
- Bronx CD9 — Parkchester / Soundview crime rate
- Brooklyn CD1 — Williamsburg / Greenpoint crime rate
- Brooklyn CD10 — Bay Ridge / Dyker Heights crime rate
- Brooklyn CD11 — Bensonhurst crime rate
- Brooklyn CD12 — Borough Park crime rate
- Brooklyn CD13 — Coney Island / Brighton Beach crime rate
- Brooklyn CD14 — Flatbush / Midwood crime rate
- Brooklyn CD15 — Sheepshead Bay crime rate
- Brooklyn CD16 — Brownsville / Ocean Hill crime rate
- Brooklyn CD17 — East Flatbush crime rate
- Brooklyn CD18 — Canarsie / Flatlands crime rate
- Brooklyn CD2 — Brooklyn Heights / Fort Greene crime rate
- Brooklyn CD3 — Bedford-Stuyvesant crime rate
- Brooklyn CD4 — Bushwick crime rate
- Brooklyn CD5 — East New York / Starrett City crime rate
- Brooklyn CD6 — Park Slope / Carroll Gardens crime rate
- Brooklyn CD7 — Sunset Park crime rate
- Brooklyn CD8 — Crown Heights / Prospect Heights crime rate
- Brooklyn CD9 — South Crown Heights / Lefferts Gardens crime rate
- Manhattan CD1 — Financial District / Battery Park / Tribeca crime rate
- Manhattan CD10 — Central Harlem crime rate
- Manhattan CD11 — East Harlem crime rate
- Manhattan CD12 — Washington Heights / Inwood crime rate
- Manhattan CD2 — Greenwich Village / SoHo crime rate
- Manhattan CD3 — Lower East Side / Chinatown crime rate
- Manhattan CD4 — Chelsea / Hell's Kitchen crime rate
- Manhattan CD5 — Midtown crime rate
- Manhattan CD6 — Stuyvesant Town / Turtle Bay crime rate
- Manhattan CD7 — Upper West Side crime rate
- Manhattan CD8 — Upper East Side crime rate
- Manhattan CD9 — Morningside Heights / Hamilton Heights crime rate
- Queens CD1 — Astoria / Long Island City crime rate
- Queens CD10 — Howard Beach / Ozone Park crime rate
- Queens CD11 — Bayside / Little Neck crime rate
- Queens CD12 — Jamaica / Hollis crime rate
- Queens CD13 — Queens Village / Cambria Heights crime rate
- Queens CD14 — Far Rockaway / Broad Channel crime rate
- Queens CD2 — Sunnyside / Woodside crime rate
- Queens CD3 — Jackson Heights / East Elmhurst crime rate
- Queens CD4 — Elmhurst / Corona crime rate
- Queens CD5 — Ridgewood / Maspeth crime rate
- Queens CD6 — Forest Hills / Rego Park crime rate
- Queens CD7 — Flushing / Whitestone crime rate
- Queens CD8 — Hillcrest / Fresh Meadows crime rate
- Queens CD9 — Kew Gardens / Woodhaven crime rate
- Staten Island CD1 — North Shore crime rate
- Staten Island CD2 — Mid-Island crime rate
- Staten Island CD3 — South Shore crime rate
How We Calculate New York 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.