Chevy Chase DC Crime Rate Trends — Washington DC
Chevy Chase DC is the upper-Northwest neighborhood along the Connecticut Avenue corridor up to the Maryland line, distinct from the Chevy Chase town across the border. The cluster also includes Hawthorne and Barnaby Woods to the east, two leafy pockets of single-family homes that step down toward Rock Creek Park.
Four categories moved in Chevy Chase DC this September, a mix of two one-month spikes, two sustained structural shifts, and a zero-event signal. The shape is uneven: motor vehicle theft and other larceny spiked sharply upward, while theft from vehicle has settled into a multi-month structural decline rather than a single quiet reading.
Motor vehicle theft is the most prominent signal, running well above its recent pace with 41 incidents in the trailing 12 months against 10 in the prior period, a 310.0% year-over-year increase. Other larceny also spiked, 122 incidents in the current 12 months versus 73 before, up 67.1%. Theft from vehicle moves in the opposite direction: 90 incidents against 162 the prior year, down 44.4%, and the sustained-shift classification means that decline has held across multiple months, not just September.
Notable signals 2
Motor Vehicle Theft
The past 12 months saw 41 incidents — about 106% above the 20 average from prior years.
Other Larceny
The past 12 months saw 122 incidents — about 67% above the 73 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.
- Theft from Vehicle has reset to a lower baseline.
The trailing 12-month count is 90, down 44% from 162 the year before. If the trend holds another quarter, it will pull the multi-year baseline down.
- Other Larceny is climbing.
The trailing 12-month count is 122, up 67% from 73 the year before. If the trend holds another quarter, it will pull the multi-year baseline up.
What next month likely looks like
Forecasts trained through September 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
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.
Theft from Vehicle
How Chevy Chase DC 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.”
Barry Farm
45 incidents over the past 12 months — 4 above Chevy Chase DC's 41.
Open page →Fairfax Village
36 incidents over the past 12 months — 5 below Chevy Chase DC's 41.
Open page →Shaw
47 incidents over the past 12 months — 6 above Chevy Chase DC's 41.
Open page →Do crime spikes here spill over to adjacent neighborhoods?
Chevy Chase DCdoesn't have enough spike history in any single category for a stable spillover rate yet (we want at least 5 events). The table below lists what we have.
| Category | Spike events | Same-category spillover |
|---|---|---|
| Other larceny | 2 | — too few |
| Motor vehicle theft | 1 | — too few |
Each row shows Chevy Chase DC's historical spike events for that category, and how often any of its 3 adjacent neighborhoods spiked the same category within the next 3 months. A high same-category rate suggests a shock that travels (e.g. theft crews moving across Washington DC); a low rate means spikes here tend to be local to the neighborhood. Categories with fewer than 5 historical spike events are listed but their rates are suppressed.
Recurring local terms (last 12 months)
Top terms in incident descriptions for Chevy Chase DC, 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 DC Open Data — MPD's per-year Crime Incidents layers on the DCGIS ArcGIS Hub — mapped to 8 UCR Part 1 categories (vandalism and arson are not exposed in MPD's public feed and are excluded). The feed covers 2018-current and updates daily. Aggregated to neighborhood cluster × category × month, with each cluster page identified by its colloquial lead constituent (Adams Morgan, Petworth, Capitol Hill, etc.) rather than the numbered 'Cluster N' identifier.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.