North Hills Crime Rate Trends — Los Angeles
North Hills is a north San Fernando Valley neighborhood between Granada Hills and Van Nuys, organized around Devonshire Street and Sepulveda Boulevard. Predominantly mid-century single-family homes; anchored by the Cal State Northridge campus to the west.
Four categories moved in North Hills this March — two one-month below-trend signals and two sustained structural shifts. The dominant story is vehicle-related property crime: both theft from vehicle and motor vehicle theft ran below trend this month, and theft from vehicle also registers as a multi-month structural decline, meaning the drop is not a single quiet month but a pattern that has been building across the trailing year.
Theft from vehicle is down 47.3% against the prior 12 months — 155 incidents vs 294 — well below the multi-year baseline of 337.37. Motor vehicle theft tells a similar story: 107 incidents in the current 12 months vs 254 in the year before, a 57.9% decline. Vandalism and aggravated assault also fell year-over-year, down 24.5% and 13.6% respectively, while other larceny was the one category that moved in the other direction, edging up 5.5%.
Notable signals 2
Theft from Vehicle
The past 12 months saw 155 incidents — about 54% below the 337 average from prior years.
Motor Vehicle Theft
The past 12 months saw 107 incidents — about 68% below the 337 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 107, down 58% from 254 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 155, down 47% from 294 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 North Hills 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.”
Baldwin Hills/Crenshaw
153 incidents over the past 12 months — 2 below North Hills's 155.
Open page →Vermont-Slauson
157 incidents over the past 12 months — 2 above North Hills's 155.
Open page →Hyde Park
162 incidents over the past 12 months — 7 above North Hills's 155.
Open page →Recurring local terms (last 12 months)
Top terms in incident descriptions for North Hills, 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.