Historic South-Central Crime Rate Trends — Los Angeles
Historic South-Central is the original South Central LA corridor along Central Avenue between Vernon and Slauson, the heart of the city's mid-century jazz scene. Anchors include the Dunbar Hotel, the Lincoln Theater, the 28th Street YMCA, and the Central Avenue commercial strip.
Nine categories moved in Historic South-Central this March — five ran below trend in the current month, and four show sustained multi-month structural shifts. The overall shape is a broad, deepening decline across both violent and property crime, with no spikes or rare-event signals in the mix.
Robbery is the sharpest signal: 100 incidents in the current 12 months against 207 in the prior year, down 51.7%. Aggravated assault and motor vehicle theft also ran below trend — aggravated assault is down 16.2% year-over-year (244 vs. 291), and motor vehicle theft is down 27.3% (272 vs. 374). Other larceny and theft from vehicle show the same structural pattern across the 12-month window, down 37.3% and 28.7% respectively. Arson is the one counter-move — 8 incidents in the current 12 months against 5 prior — but at those volumes it carries limited weight against the broader directional pull.
Notable signals 5
Robbery
The past 12 months saw 100 incidents — about 50% below the 201 average from prior years.
Aggravated Assault
The past 12 months saw 244 incidents — about 24% below the 321 average from prior years.
Motor Vehicle Theft
The past 12 months saw 272 incidents — about 53% below the 584 average from prior years.
Theft from Vehicle
The past 12 months saw 174 incidents — about 52% below the 365 average from prior years.
Burglary
The past 12 months saw 77 incidents — about 52% below the 159 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.
- Robbery has reset to a lower baseline.
The trailing 12-month count is 100, down 52% from 207 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 267, down 37% from 426 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 272, down 27% from 374 the year before. If the trend holds another quarter, it will pull the multi-year baseline down.
- Theft from Vehicle has reset to a lower baseline.
The trailing 12-month count is 174, down 29% from 244 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
Below the volume threshold for a reliable forecast — too few incidents in recent months to project from.
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 Historic South-Central 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.”
Vermont Knolls
104 incidents over the past 12 months — 4 above Historic South-Central's 100.
Open page →Pico-Union
94 incidents over the past 12 months — 6 below Historic South-Central's 100.
Open page →Sun Valley
91 incidents over the past 12 months — 9 below Historic South-Central's 100.
Open page →Recurring local terms (last 12 months)
Top terms in incident descriptions for Historic South-Central, 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.