Palms Crime Rate Trends — Los Angeles
Palms is a Westside neighborhood between Culver City and Mar Vista, organized around National Boulevard and Motor Avenue. Predominantly mid-century apartment buildings and dingbat-style four-plexes; anchored by the Metro E Line's Palms station.
Ten categories moved in Palms this March — five one-month below-trend signals and five sustained structural shifts, a mix that points to broad and durable decline across property crime. No spikes and no rare events surfaced; every signal in the briefing ran in the same direction.
Other larceny leads the anomalies, with a current 12-month total of 153 against a baseline of 255.4 — down 39.3% year over year. Theft from vehicle and burglary both registered below-trend signals as well: theft from vehicle is down 54.9% against the prior 12 months (120 vs. 266), and burglary is down 68.3% (26 vs. 82). The rest of the tracked categories were within range, with robbery the lone category running modestly above its prior-year pace at 9.4%.
Notable signals 5
Other Larceny
The past 12 months saw 153 incidents — about 40% below the 255 average from prior years.
Theft from Vehicle
The past 12 months saw 120 incidents — about 67% below the 364 average from prior years.
Burglary
The past 12 months saw 26 incidents — about 81% below the 140 average from prior years.
Vandalism
The past 12 months saw 83 incidents — about 48% below the 158 average from prior years.
Motor Vehicle Theft
The past 12 months saw 85 incidents — about 66% below the 250 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 120, down 55% from 266 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 26, down 68% from 82 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 153, down 39% from 252 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 85, down 47% from 161 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 Palms compares
Peer neighborhoods picked by closest 12-month other larceny 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 other larceny levels.”
Lincoln Heights
153 incidents over the past 12 months — 0 below Palms's 153.
Open page →Highland Park
157 incidents over the past 12 months — 4 above Palms's 153.
Open page →Broadway-Manchester
147 incidents over the past 12 months — 6 below Palms's 153.
Open page →Recurring local terms (last 12 months)
Top terms in incident descriptions for Palms, 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.