Sherman Oaks Crime Rate Trends — Los Angeles
Sherman Oaks is a San Fernando Valley neighborhood organized around Ventura Boulevard and the 405/101 freeway interchange. Anchored by the Sherman Oaks Galleria and a long stretch of mid-century single-family homes south of Ventura on the Santa Monica Mountains foothills.
Seven tracked signals surfaced in Sherman Oaks this March — three one-month below-trend drops and four sustained shifts, a mix that points to structural change across property crime rather than a single noisy month. The dominant story is a broad, multi-category retreat in vehicle-related and residential crime that has been building over more than a year.
Theft from vehicle is the sharpest move: 247 incidents over the current 12 months against 546 in the prior year, down 54.8%. Burglary and motor vehicle theft follow the same direction — burglary down 41.4% (265 vs. 452) and motor vehicle theft down 41.7% (162 vs. 278). Vandalism and aggravated assault also ran below prior-year levels, down 29.6% and 12.2% respectively. Everything else — robbery flat at 51, other larceny off 5.7% — was within a modest range. Sexual assault edged 16.7% above the prior 12-month count, the one category moving against the broader trend.
Notable signals 3
Theft from Vehicle
The past 12 months saw 247 incidents — about 65% below the 716 average from prior years.
Motor Vehicle Theft
The past 12 months saw 162 incidents — about 48% below the 309 average from prior years.
Burglary
The past 12 months saw 265 incidents — about 38% below the 429 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 247, down 55% from 546 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 265, down 41% from 452 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 162, down 42% from 278 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 317, down 30% from 450 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 Sherman Oaks 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.”
Granada Hills
243 incidents over the past 12 months — 4 below Sherman Oaks's 247.
Open page →Studio City
253 incidents over the past 12 months — 6 above Sherman Oaks's 247.
Open page →East Hollywood
263 incidents over the past 12 months — 16 above Sherman Oaks's 247.
Open page →Recurring local terms (last 12 months)
Top terms in incident descriptions for Sherman Oaks, 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.