Over-the-Rhine Crime Rate Trends — Cincinnati
Over-the-Rhine is a historic neighborhood immediately north of downtown, named for the Miami and Erie Canal that 19th-century German immigrants likened to the Rhine. Anchored by Findlay Market, Music Hall on Washington Park, and the Vine Street and Main Street commercial corridors lined with Italianate and Queen Anne buildings.
Two sustained structural shifts defined Over-the-Rhine in August 2026, both pointing downward. No spikes, no rare events, no streak breaks: the month's shape is a quiet, multi-year compression in two property crime categories.
Burglary is down 43.6% over the trailing 12 months, 92 incidents against 163 the year before, a sustained shift that has reshaped the neighborhood's property crime profile. Motor vehicle theft shows the same structural pattern, off 44.7% year-over-year, 68 incidents against 123. Every other tracked category, including aggravated assault at -23.7% and theft from vehicle at -13.3%, moved in the same direction or held flat, with none crossing the threshold for a single-month signal.
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.
- Burglary has reset to a lower baseline.
The trailing 12-month count is 92, down 44% from 163 the year before. If the trend holds another quarter, it will pull the multi-year baseline down.
- Motor Vehicle Theft has reset to a lower baseline.
The trailing 12-month count is 68, down 45% from 123 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.
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.
Theft from Vehicle
How Over-the-Rhine compares
Peer neighborhoods picked by closest 12-month burglary 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 burglary levels.”
East Price Hill
92 incidents over the past 12 months — 0 below Over-the-Rhine's 92.
Open page →Avondale
97 incidents over the past 12 months — 5 above Over-the-Rhine's 92.
Open page →CUF
86 incidents over the past 12 months — 6 below Over-the-Rhine's 92.
Open page →Recurring local terms (last 12 months)
Top terms in incident descriptions for Over-the-Rhine, 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 Cincinnati Open Data — STARS Category Offenses post-2024-06-03 plus PDI Crime Incidents back to 2020 — mapped to 8 UCR-aligned categories (vandalism and arson aren't recoverable across the STARS migration boundary). Aggregated to Statistical Neighborhood Approximation × 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.