University Park Crime Rate Trends — Los Angeles
University Park is the South LA neighborhood anchored by USC's University Park campus and the Exposition Park complex — LA Memorial Coliseum, BMO Stadium, the California Science Center, and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. Bordered by Vermont Square to the south, Pico-Union to the north, and the 110 Freeway to the east.
University Park's March 2026 briefing is defined by structural contraction across property crime, not a single noisy month. Four tracked signals surfaced — one single-month below-trend reading and three sustained shifts, all pointing downward. The dominant story is a broad, multi-year pullback in property categories rather than any isolated event.
Burglary leads the signal mix: 38 incidents over the current 12 months against 96 in the prior year, a 60.4% decline, with both a one-month drop signal and a sustained structural shift registered. Theft from vehicle is also in sustained-shift territory, down 33.0% year-over-year (120 vs. 179). Other Larceny has fallen 68.0% against the prior 12 months — 170 incidents vs. 531 — one of the sharper multi-year contractions in the dataset. Motor vehicle theft, at 301 incidents and up 14.0% year-over-year, is the one category moving in the opposite direction; every other tracked category in University Park ran below its prior-year level.
Notable signals 1
Burglary
The past 12 months saw 38 incidents — about 65% below the 107 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 170, down 68% from 531 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 38, down 60% from 96 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 120, down 33% from 179 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 University Park 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.”
Brentwood
38 incidents over the past 12 months — 0 below University Park's 38.
Open page →Fairfax
37 incidents over the past 12 months — 1 below University Park's 38.
Open page →Sunland
37 incidents over the past 12 months — 1 below University Park's 38.
Open page →Recurring local terms (last 12 months)
Top terms in incident descriptions for University Park, 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.