SUSTAINED DROP · MOTOR VEHICLE THEFTMARCH 2026 BRIEFINGCHICAGO · 101.2K residents

Lake View Crime Rate Trends — Chicago

Lake View is a North Side neighborhood organized around Belmont and Addison Streets, anchored by Wrigley Field, the Music Box Theatre, and the CTA Red Line's Belmont, Addison, and Sheridan stations. Mixed mid-rise apartments and Victorian-era three-flats; bordered by Lake Michigan to the east.

MOTOR VEHICLE THEFT · 24-MO COUNT03 2026 · 17
0357012-mo avg: 23.9
LAKE VIEWCITYWIDE TREND (RESCALED)-12% 12MO YOY
-29%MoM
-28%12mo YoY
287last 12mo
17this month
01 · TL;DR

Lake View's March 2026 briefing is narrow but structurally significant: two categories moved, both as sustained multi-month shifts, both downward. This is not a single quiet month — the trailing 12-month window is tracking below the prior 12 months across robbery and motor vehicle theft, a pattern that has held long enough to register as a structural change rather than noise.

Motor vehicle theft is down 27.5% against the prior 12 months — 287 incidents vs. 396 — the larger of the two moves. Robbery follows at −25.1%, 143 incidents vs. 191. Every other tracked category in Lake View — aggravated assault, burglary, vandalism, other larceny, sexual assault — ran within normal range this month, with no spikes or rare events surfacing.

2 sustained shifts
02 · Notable signals

Notable signals 0

Nothing notable surfaced this month — every category sits within normal range against its baseline.

03 · By category

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.

Homicidebelow threshold
2024-042026-03
Robbery-25%
2024-042026-03
Aggravated Assault-16%
2024-042026-03
Sexual Assault-14%
2024-042026-03
Burglary-14%
2024-042026-03
Other Larceny-5%
2024-042026-03
Motor Vehicle Theft-28%
2024-042026-03
Vandalism-7%
2024-042026-03
Arsonbelow threshold
2024-042026-03
05 · Forecast

What next month likely looks like

Forecasts trained through March 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

NO FORECAST

Too low-volume per neighborhood for a reliable point forecast — see the rare-event and streak-break signals above instead.

Arson

NO FORECAST

Below the volume threshold for a reliable forecast — too few incidents in recent months to project from.

Burglary

APRIL 2026
Most likely 14 next month — likely between 0 and 27.
25% vs 12-month average (≈18.3)

Homicide

NO FORECAST

Too low-volume per neighborhood for a reliable point forecast — see the rare-event and streak-break signals above instead.

Motor Vehicle Theft

APRIL 2026
Most likely 38 next month — likely between 19 and 57.
+58% vs 12-month average (≈23.9)

Other Larceny

APRIL 2026
Most likely 188 next month — likely between 125 and 249.
11% vs 12-month average (≈211.5)

Robbery

NO FORECAST

Too low-volume per neighborhood for a reliable point forecast — see the rare-event and streak-break signals above instead.

Sexual Assault

NO FORECAST

Too low-volume per neighborhood for a reliable point forecast — see the rare-event and streak-break signals above instead.

Vandalism

APRIL 2026
Most likely 49 next month — likely between 31 and 66.
+26% vs 12-month average (≈38.8)
06 · Context & comps

How Lake View compares

Peer neighborhoods picked by closest 12-month motor vehicle theft 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 motor vehicle theft levels.”

07 · Patterns

Recurring local terms (last 12 months)

Top terms in incident descriptions for Lake View, excluding generic crime taxonomy. Useful as texture — what kinds of specifics show up here that don't show up elsewhere.

simpleretailfraudbuildingaggravatedconfidencegamefinancialidentitydomesticpickingpocketcardweaponforciblelandunlawfulharassmentcreditfeetfistshandsinjuryhandgunstrong
When does it happen?

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.

HOUR OF DAY · ALL CATEGORIES
01,0752,14912am6am12pm6pm11pm

Hour 0 is mildly inflated by reports without a known time defaulting to midnight — see methodology.

DAY OF WEEK · ALL CATEGORIES
02,7745,547MonTueWedThuFriSatSun
MONTH OF YEAR · ALL CATEGORIES
01,6823,364JanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec
08 · Methodology

How we built this page

Data → Anomalies → Forecast → Page

Incident data is pulled from SFPD's open dataset, mapped to 10 NIBRS-aligned categories, and aggregated to neighborhood × 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.