Sylmar Crime Rate Trends — Los Angeles
Sylmar is the northernmost San Fernando Valley neighborhood at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains, organized around Foothill Boulevard. Anchored by the Olive View-UCLA Medical Center, the Veterans Memorial Park, and the historic San Fernando Pioneer Memorial Cemetery.
Ten categories moved in Sylmar this March — five one-month below-trend signals and five sustained structural shifts, all pointing in the same direction. The month's shape is a broad, multi-category property crime decline with no offsetting spikes and no rare events.
Motor vehicle theft leads the signals: the trailing 12 months came in at 94 incidents against a baseline of 343.13, down 69.4% year-over-year. Burglary and other larceny track the same pattern — burglary at 48 incidents vs. 105 the prior year (down 54.3%), other larceny at 97 vs. 209 (down 53.6%). Everything else in the property crime bucket ran within range or below; violent categories including robbery (down 23.6%) and aggravated assault (down 12.9%) also declined, though neither produced a signal strong enough to rank in the top three.
Notable signals 5
Motor Vehicle Theft
The past 12 months saw 94 incidents — about 73% below the 343 average from prior years.
Burglary
The past 12 months saw 48 incidents — about 56% below the 109 average from prior years.
Other Larceny
The past 12 months saw 97 incidents — about 52% below the 204 average from prior years.
Theft from Vehicle
The past 12 months saw 92 incidents — about 74% below the 350 average from prior years.
Vandalism
The past 12 months saw 130 incidents — about 34% below the 197 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 94, down 69% from 307 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 92, down 62% from 242 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 97, down 54% from 209 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 130, down 45% from 236 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 Sylmar compares
Peer neighborhoods picked by closest 12-month motor vehicle theft 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 motor vehicle theft levels.”
Panorama City
94 incidents over the past 12 months — 0 below Sylmar's 94.
Open page →Tarzana
94 incidents over the past 12 months — 0 below Sylmar's 94.
Open page →El Sereno
92 incidents over the past 12 months — 2 below Sylmar's 94.
Open page →Recurring local terms (last 12 months)
Top terms in incident descriptions for Sylmar, 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.