Mid-City Crime Rate Trends — Los Angeles
Mid-City is a Central LA neighborhood between Pico and Venice Boulevards, organized around the La Brea, Fairfax, and Crenshaw commercial corridors. Predominantly Spanish Colonial Revival single-family homes and four-plexes; anchored by the Mid-City Heritage square and the Metro E Line's Expo/La Brea station.
Nine categories moved in Mid-City this March — five ran below trend in the current month, and four show sustained structural shifts between the trailing 12 months and the prior year. The overall shape is a broad, multi-category decline across both property crime and violent crime, not a single outlier pulling the average down.
Theft from vehicle is the strongest single signal: 170 incidents in the trailing 12 months against a baseline of 376.42, a 12-month total that is also down 47.9% from the prior year's 326. Motor vehicle theft and vandalism also ran below trend this month, and both reflect the same structural pattern in the 12-month totals — motor vehicle theft is down 61.9% year-over-year (104 vs. 273), vandalism down 47.5% (149 vs. 284). Aggravated assault and robbery follow the same direction, off 22.3% and 19.7% respectively against the prior 12 months. Categories not in the top signals — burglary, other larceny, sexual assault — moved in the same direction and are all within the same downward range.
Notable signals 5
Theft from Vehicle
The past 12 months saw 170 incidents — about 55% below the 376 average from prior years.
Motor Vehicle Theft
The past 12 months saw 104 incidents — about 68% below the 320 average from prior years.
Vandalism
The past 12 months saw 149 incidents — about 43% below the 259 average from prior years.
Robbery
The past 12 months saw 49 incidents — about 43% below the 86 average from prior years.
Burglary
The past 12 months saw 65 incidents — about 57% below the 152 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.
- Motor Vehicle Theft has reset to a lower baseline.
The trailing 12-month count is 104, down 62% from 273 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 170, down 48% from 326 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 149, down 48% from 284 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 172, down 34% from 260 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 Mid-City compares
Peer neighborhoods picked by closest 12-month theft from vehicle 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 theft from vehicle levels.”
Canoga Park
169 incidents over the past 12 months — 1 below Mid-City's 170.
Open page →Historic South-Central
174 incidents over the past 12 months — 4 above Mid-City's 170.
Open page →Reseda
174 incidents over the past 12 months — 4 above Mid-City's 170.
Open page →Recurring local terms (last 12 months)
Top terms in incident descriptions for Mid-City, 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.