Burnside Crime Rate Trends — Chicago
Burnside is a small Far South Side community area between the Bishop Ford Expressway and the Norfolk Southern railroad corridor. Named for the Burnside subdivision developed by the Illinois Central Railroad; one of the smallest of Chicago's 77 community areas by both area and population.
June 2026 was a quiet month in Burnside by signal count — one tracked signal surfaced, a below-trend read on aggravated assault. The broader 12-month picture is where the story is: violent crime across the neighborhood has shifted down substantially over the past year, with the single drop signal this month consistent with that longer structural move.
Aggravated assault sits at 15 incidents over the trailing 12 months against 27 in the prior period — down 44.4% year-over-year. Robbery shows an even sharper gap: 6 incidents versus 13, down 53.8%. Sexual assault is at 1 incident against 6 a year ago, a -83.3% change, though volumes are low enough that a single incident can shift that figure materially. Property categories — motor vehicle theft, other larceny, vandalism, burglary — were all within a narrow range of flat to modestly lower, none crossing a signal threshold this month.
Notable signals 1
Aggravated Assault
The past 12 months saw 15 incidents — about 42% below the 26 average from prior years.
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.
No sustained shifts surfaced this month.
What next month likely looks like
Forecasts trained through June 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
Below the volume threshold for a reliable forecast — too few incidents in recent months to project from.
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 Burnside compares
Peer neighborhoods picked by closest 12-month aggravated assault 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 aggravated assault levels.”
Mount Greenwood
9 incidents over the past 12 months — 6 below Burnside's 15.
Open page →Ohare
21 incidents over the past 12 months — 6 above Burnside's 15.
Open page →Forest Glen
6 incidents over the past 12 months — 9 below Burnside's 15.
Open page →Recurring local terms (last 12 months)
Top terms in incident descriptions for Burnside, 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.