Oakland Crime Rate Trends
Data sourced from the Oakland Police Department (OPD) Open Data portal and analyzed by Public Analyst.ai: 35 neighborhoods, 10 incident categories, twelve months of trailing comparison. Browse the rankings, scan the multi-year trends, or open a neighborhood-level breakdown.
Rockridge theft from vehicle is the headline signal this month — a sharp move above its multi-year baseline and the most prominent fresh signal in May 2026. Millsmont homicide has been the citywide lead category and remains prominent in the rankings, but the new story this briefing is the property-crime side: a theft-from-vehicle spike in a neighborhood that had been running quietly.
Citywide volume is down 18.5% against the prior 12 months — 27,449 incidents against 33,681 the year before. The signal mix is dominated by declines: 59 below-trend signals and 58 sustained-shift signals, against just 3 fresh spikes. Homicide surfaced in both Millsmont and Uptown this month, and Westlake arson registered a streak break — a category that had been consistently low is no longer trending that way.
The broader arc is still a multi-year volume decline, and 35 neighborhoods registering signals in a month with 121 tracked movements is consistent with that structural shift holding. The two homicide signals and the Rockridge theft-from-vehicle move are worth tracking in June — whether they represent isolated months or the start of a sustained change in direction is something the next briefing will either confirm or dismiss.
Oakland 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 May 2026 briefing.
Is crime in Oakland down?
Yes — citywide incident volume is 18.5% lower than the prior 12 months.
Across the trailing 12-month window we tracked 27,449 incidents in NIBRS-aligned categories, compared to 33,681 in the year before — down 6,232 incidents.
Is violent crime in Oakland down?
Yes — homicide, robbery, aggravated assault, and sexual assault are down 22.3% combined in the trailing 12 months.
That's 3,902 violent incidents in the past year against 5,021 in the prior year. See the by-category section below for the per-bucket breakdown.
Is property crime in Oakland down?
Yes — burglary, theft from vehicle, larceny, motor vehicle theft, and arson are down 18.7% combined in the trailing 12 months.
That's 20,441 property incidents in the past year against 25,147 in the prior year.
What are the safest neighborhoods to stay in Oakland?
- Upper Rockridge — 17.7 incidents per 1,000 residents
- Piedmont Pines — 21.9 incidents per 1,000 residents
- Montclair — 25.2 incidents per 1,000 residents
The three safest neighborhoods in Oakland, 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 Oakland saw the biggest crime drop?
Piedmont Pines — 46.6% fewer incidents than the prior 12 months.
Piedmont Pines logged 103 incidents in the trailing 12 months against 193 the year before.
Which neighborhood in Oakland saw the biggest crime increase?
Rockridge — 22.4% more incidents than the prior 12 months.
Rockridge logged 1,359 incidents in the trailing 12 months against 1,110 the year before.
The denominators behind the numbers
Bay-fronting, hill-stacked city; the I-580 ridge and Highway 13 carve the flatlands from the hills, and major arterials (Telegraph, MacArthur, International) define most neighborhood boundaries.
ACS 2024 5-year estimates, county-level (Alameda County). Includes Oakland plus other Alameda municipalities in the demographic aggregates — county is the smallest official ACS geography matching where Oakland city data lives.
City-level only. We deliberately do not juxtapose these with neighborhood-level crime data — see the methodology for why.
Mixed-density city: walkable flatlands corridors (Telegraph, College, International) coexist with car-dependent hills neighborhoods. Crime-rate denominators differ sharply between the two.
OPD migrated to NIBRS reporting in 2021; pre-2021 records use a different taxonomy and are excluded from the analysis window. CrimeWatch metadata cites a 90-day post-month processing window, but in practice ~92% of incidents land in the feed within 30 days — the briefing uses a 30-day settle buffer. The most recent reported month may show a small undercount.
Every neighborhood, color-coded
Largest moves this month
| # | Neighborhood | Category | MoM | YoY 12mo | vs baseline | 90-day trend | Signal |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Millsmont | Homicide | +100% | +24% | +87% | SPIKE | |
| 02 | Rockridge | Theft from Vehicle | -7% | +53% | +78% | SPIKE | |
| 03 | Uptown | Homicide | -75% | +41% | +27% | SPIKE | |
| 04 | Westlake | Arson | — | — | — | STREAK BREAK | |
| 05 | Seminary Park | Vandalism | 0% | -24% | -39% | DROP | |
| 06 | San Antonio | Robbery | -50% | -38% | -60% | DROP | |
| 07 | West Oakland | Burglary | -55% | -37% | -48% | DROP | |
| 08 | Eastlake | Theft from Vehicle | -50% | -31% | -33% | DROP | |
| 09 | Fruitvale | Robbery | +29% | -55% | -64% | DROP | |
| 10 | Brookfield Village | Motor Vehicle Theft | +19% | -33% | -54% | DROP | |
| 11 | Lockwood Gardens | Motor Vehicle Theft | -39% | -34% | -51% | DROP | |
| 12 | Eastmont | Robbery | +50% | -40% | -49% | DROP |
The long arc — eight years of monthly counts
Four neighborhoods worth your time
Millsmont
The past 12 months saw 21 incidents — about 87% above the 11 average from prior years.
Read briefing →SPIKE · THEFT FROM VEHICLERockridge
The past 12 months saw 752 incidents — about 78% above the 421 average from prior years.
Read briefing →SPIKE · HOMICIDEUptown
The past 12 months saw 31 incidents — about 27% above the 24 average from prior years.
Read briefing →STREAK BREAK · ARSONWestlake
First incident since December 2023 — a 2-year gap ended this month.
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 35 Oakland neighborhoods
Crime rate trends and May 2026 briefings for every tracked neighborhood. Alphabetical.
- Adams Point crime rate
- Brookfield Village crime rate
- Chinatown crime rate
- Clinton crime rate
- Dimond District crime rate
- Downtown crime rate
- Eastlake crime rate
- Eastmont crime rate
- Elmhurst crime rate
- Financial District crime rate
- Fruitvale crime rate
- Glenview crime rate
- Golden Gate crime rate
- Grand Lake crime rate
- Jack London Square crime rate
- Jingletown crime rate
- Laurel crime rate
- Lockwood Gardens crime rate
- Longfellow crime rate
- Maxwell Park crime rate
- Melrose crime rate
- Millsmont crime rate
- Montclair crime rate
- Oakmore Highlands crime rate
- Piedmont Avenue crime rate
- Piedmont Pines crime rate
- Pill Hill crime rate
- Rockridge crime rate
- San Antonio crime rate
- Seminary Park crime rate
- Temescal crime rate
- Upper Rockridge crime rate
- Uptown crime rate
- West Oakland crime rate
- Westlake crime rate
How We Calculate Oakland 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.