Pico-Union Crime Rate Trends — Los Angeles
Pico-Union is a Central LA neighborhood west of Downtown, organized around Pico Boulevard and Union Avenue. Anchored by the historic Variety Arts Theatre and a dense small-apartment housing stock.
Seven categories moved in Pico-Union this March — five as sustained multi-month structural shifts and two as single-month below-trend signals. The dominant pattern is a broad, durable pullback across both violent and property crime, not a one-category anomaly.
Burglary and motor vehicle theft each ran below trend this month; burglary's current 12-month total stands at 71 incidents against a baseline of 119.23, and down 35.5% from the prior 12 months' 110. Robbery's sustained shift reflects a structural move: 94 incidents in the trailing year versus 148 before, a 36.5% decline. Everything else tracked — aggravated assault, theft from vehicle, other larceny, vandalism, arson — is also running lower on a 12-month basis, reinforcing that this is a neighborhood-wide pattern rather than isolated movement in one category.
Notable signals 2
Burglary
The past 12 months saw 71 incidents — about 40% below the 119 average from prior years.
Motor Vehicle Theft
The past 12 months saw 189 incidents — about 38% below the 303 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.
- Aggravated Assault has reset to a lower baseline.
The trailing 12-month count is 172, down 35% from 265 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 218, down 28% from 304 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 169, down 31% from 244 the year before. If the trend holds another quarter, it will pull the multi-year baseline down.
- Robbery has reset to a lower baseline.
The trailing 12-month count is 94, down 37% from 148 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 Pico-Union 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.”
Hollywood Hills West
70 incidents over the past 12 months — 1 below Pico-Union's 71.
Open page →Vermont-Slauson
73 incidents over the past 12 months — 2 above Pico-Union's 71.
Open page →Valley Village
68 incidents over the past 12 months — 3 below Pico-Union's 71.
Open page →Recurring local terms (last 12 months)
Top terms in incident descriptions for Pico-Union, 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.