Los Angeles Crime Rate — January 2025

Vandalism rose sharply across multiple Los Angeles neighborhoods in January 2025, with Woodland Hills posting the largest single-month move at +102% against its multi-year baseline. Every position in the top five this month belongs to the same category, with Porter Ranch, West Hills, Encino, and Northridge all registering fresh above-trend signals alongside Woodland Hills. This is the first month Woodland Hills vandalism has topped the citywide rankings.

Citywide volume is down 5.6% against the prior 12 months, 143,412 incidents against 151,892 in the year before. That aggregate decline holds, but the signal mix inside January is unusually balanced: 94 above-trend signals against 101 below-trend, plus 167 sustained-shift signals across 114 neighborhoods. The breadth of the vandalism pattern is what separates this month from a routine check-in.

The structural citywide decline remains intact, but the concentration of vandalism signals across Woodland Hills, Porter Ranch, West Hills, Encino, and Northridge in a single month is atypical. Whether this is a one-month cluster or the start of a sustained shift is the question the February briefing will need to answer. No other category came close to producing this kind of geographic concentration.

Sustained drops worth naming

Homicide ran below trend in the trailing 12 months — 37% down from the year before. Sustained shifts often precede a baseline reset; we surface them at the same prominence as spikes.

How last month's forecasts performed

Forecasts for January were issued from data through December 2024. 7 of 10 citywide bucket forecasts (70%) landed inside their 95% prediction intervals.

Per-bucket coverage, MAPE, and bias across the full 12-month horizon live on the methodology page.