Northridge Crime Rate Trends — Los Angeles
Northridge is a north San Fernando Valley neighborhood centered on California State University, Northridge. Predominantly single-family ranch homes; the 1994 Northridge earthquake's epicenter was just to the south of the campus.
Seven tracked signals across Northridge in March 2026 — two one-month below-trend signals and five sustained structural shifts. The dominant shape is broad, multi-category decline: property crime and violent crime both moved in the same direction, and five of the seven signals reflect changes that have been building across the trailing 12 months, not just a single quiet month.
Burglary and sexual assault each registered as below-trend signals this month. Burglary carries the most weight: 172 incidents in the current 12-month window against a prior-year total of 300, a 42.7% drop. Robbery's sustained shift reflects a 34.3% 12-month decline — 67 incidents versus 102 the year before. Theft from vehicle, at 0.8% year-over-year, was the only category that held essentially flat; everything else ran lower.
Notable signals 2
Burglary
The past 12 months saw 172 incidents — about 38% below the 279 average from prior years.
Sexual Assault
The past 12 months saw 24 incidents — about 35% below the 37 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.
- Other Larceny has reset to a lower baseline.
The trailing 12-month count is 569, down 38% from 920 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 275, down 37% from 436 the year before. If the trend holds another quarter, it will pull the multi-year baseline down.
- Burglary has reset to a lower baseline.
The trailing 12-month count is 172, down 43% from 300 the year before. If the trend holds another quarter, it will pull the multi-year baseline down.
- Sexual Assault has reset to a lower baseline.
The trailing 12-month count is 24, down 49% from 47 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 Northridge compares
Peer neighborhoods picked by closest 12-month burglary 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 burglary levels.”
Sun Valley
168 incidents over the past 12 months — 4 below Northridge's 172.
Open page →Valley Glen
178 incidents over the past 12 months — 6 above Northridge's 172.
Open page →Tarzana
159 incidents over the past 12 months — 13 below Northridge's 172.
Open page →Recurring local terms (last 12 months)
Top terms in incident descriptions for Northridge, 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.