Downtown Crime Rate Trends — Los Angeles
Downtown is the central business district of Los Angeles, organized around the Civic Center, the Financial District around Bunker Hill, and the historic core along Broadway and Spring. Anchored by Union Station, the Walt Disney Concert Hall, Grand Central Market, and the Crypto.com Arena/LA Live entertainment complex.
Ten categories moved in Downtown Los Angeles this March — four ran below trend in the current month, and six registered as sustained structural shifts across the trailing 12 months. The dominant shape is a broad, multi-year retreat across both violent and property crime, not a single quiet month.
Robbery leads the signals: 370 incidents over the current 12 months against 637 in the prior year, down 41.9% and well below its multi-year baseline. Burglary and homicide also ran below trend this month, with burglary down 20.8% year-over-year (376 vs. 475) and homicide down 23.1% (20 vs. 26). The sustained-shift count — six categories — points to something structural rather than month-to-month noise; motor vehicle theft, other larceny, and theft from vehicle are each down more than 40% against the prior 12 months.
Notable signals 4
Robbery
The past 12 months saw 370 incidents — about 54% below the 810 average from prior years.
Burglary
The past 12 months saw 376 incidents — about 49% below the 734 average from prior years.
Homicide
The past 12 months saw 20 incidents — about 38% below the 32 average from prior years.
Sexual Assault
The past 12 months saw 187 incidents — about 19% below the 231 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 1,256, down 47% from 2,390 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 591, down 55% from 1,320 the year before. If the trend holds another quarter, it will pull the multi-year baseline down.
- Other Larceny has reset to a lower baseline.
The trailing 12-month count is 1,458, down 41% from 2,459 the year before. If the trend holds another quarter, it will pull the multi-year baseline down.
- Vandalism has reset to a lower baseline.
The trailing 12-month count is 1,165, down 34% from 1,755 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 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
Too low-volume per neighborhood for a reliable point forecast — see the rare-event and streak-break signals above instead.
Arson
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
Vandalism
How Downtown compares
Peer neighborhoods picked by closest 12-month robbery 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 robbery levels.”
Recurring local terms (last 12 months)
Top terms in incident descriptions for Downtown, 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 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.