Armour Square Crime Rate Trends — Chicago
Armour Square is a Near South Side community area that includes Chinatown's Wentworth Avenue commercial strip and the Guaranteed Rate Field stadium grounds. Named for Philip Armour and the meatpacking industry that once dominated the area; bordered by the Dan Ryan Expressway to the west and the South Branch of the Chicago River to the east.
Two sustained structural shifts defined Armour Square in August 2026, both pulling in opposite directions. Robbery has moved durably lower over the trailing 12 months, while other larceny has moved durably higher. There were no spikes, no drops, and no rare events this month: the signal is structural, not reactive.
Robbery is down 48.8% year-over-year, 44 incidents in the current 12 months against 86 in the prior period, the sharpest category-level move in the neighborhood. Other larceny ran the other way, up 41.0% over the same window, 392 incidents against 278. Vandalism also rose 33.0% year-over-year, 153 vs. 115, though it did not cross the sustained-shift threshold this month. Everything else, aggravated assault, sexual assault, burglary, and motor vehicle theft, held within a few percent of the prior year.
Notable signals 0
Nothing notable surfaced this month — every category sits within normal range against its baseline.
All categories, last 24 months
Each panel: recent monthly count vs. trailing 12-month context. MoM is the most recent month vs. the one before; 12mo YoY compares the trailing year to the year before that.
What's been quietly true for a year
Spikes get attention. Sustained shifts shape policy. These are multi-quarter patterns where the past 12-month total differs meaningfully from the year before — they often precede the baseline resetting.
- Other Larceny is climbing.
The trailing 12-month count is 392, up 41% from 278 the year before. If the trend holds another quarter, it will pull the multi-year baseline up.
- Robbery has reset to a lower baseline.
The trailing 12-month count is 44, down 49% from 86 the year before. If the trend holds another quarter, it will pull the multi-year baseline down.
What next month likely looks like
Forecasts trained through August 2026, with a likely range we're 95% confident the actual count will fall inside. Categories with too little recent volume — or violent categories at the neighborhood level — show no forecast and are surfaced through signals above instead. See the methodology page for the gating rules.
Aggravated Assault
Too low-volume per neighborhood for a reliable point forecast — see the rare-event and streak-break signals above instead.
Arson
Below the volume threshold for a reliable forecast — too few incidents in recent months to project from.
Burglary
Homicide
Too low-volume per neighborhood for a reliable point forecast — see the rare-event and streak-break signals above instead.
Motor Vehicle Theft
Other Larceny
Robbery
Too low-volume per neighborhood for a reliable point forecast — see the rare-event and streak-break signals above instead.
Sexual Assault
Too low-volume per neighborhood for a reliable point forecast — see the rare-event and streak-break signals above instead.
Vandalism
How Armour Square compares
Peer neighborhoods picked by closest 12-month other larceny volume — a pragmatic v1 of peer matching. Demographic / housing-stock peer matching isn't built yet (we deliberately don't ingest income or race data alongside crime). Volume similarity has the right intuition: “neighborhoods experiencing comparable other larceny levels.”
West Garfield Park
394 incidents over the past 12 months — 2 above Armour Square's 392.
Open page →Morgan Park
387 incidents over the past 12 months — 5 below Armour Square's 392.
Open page →Brighton Park
403 incidents over the past 12 months — 11 above Armour Square's 392.
Open page →Recurring local terms (last 12 months)
Top terms in incident descriptions for Armour Square, excluding generic crime taxonomy. Useful as texture — what kinds of specifics show up here that don't show up elsewhere.
Hour-of-day, day-of-week, and seasonality
Distribution of bucketed incidents in this neighborhood 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.
How we built this page
Data → Anomalies → Forecast → Page
Incident data is pulled from CPD's open dataset on the City of Chicago Open Data portal — IUCR-coded and mapped to 9 UCR-aligned categories (theft from vehicle isn't reliably separable in the public feed and rolls into other larceny). Aggregated to community area × category × month.Anomalies are surfaced using strict thresholds (~p < 0.01). Forecasts are Prophet with low-count gating; violent categories at the neighborhood level skip the forecast and show rare-event / streak signals instead.
Spike rule: 12-mo total > baseline mean + 2.5σ AND ≥ 20 incidents AND 6-mo confirms. Drop rule: 12-mo total < baseline mean − 2.5σ AND baseline mean ≥ 20. Rare event: any incident in the last 90 days, no prior comparable in ≥ 5 years.