Westlake Crime Rate Trends — Los Angeles
Westlake is a Central LA neighborhood organized around MacArthur Park and the Wilshire Boulevard corridor west of Downtown. Anchored by the historic Westlake Theatre, the MacArthur Park lake, and the Metro B/D Line's Westlake/MacArthur Park station.
Nine categories moved in Westlake this March — five ran below trend in the current month and four registered as sustained multi-month structural shifts. The shape of the month is broadly and consistently downward across every tracked category, with no spikes and no offsetting moves in any direction.
Burglary leads the signals: 65 incidents over the trailing 12 months against a baseline of 295.9, and down 66.8% versus the prior 12-month period. Motor vehicle theft and arson also posted below-trend signals — motor vehicle theft is down 28.6% year-over-year (465 vs. 651), and arson fell 47.4% (10 vs. 19). The four sustained-shift signals indicate these aren't single-month fluctuations; categories like other larceny (down 51.8%, 378 vs. 784) and sexual assault (down 33.1%, 81 vs. 121) reflect structural change across the full comparison window.
Notable signals 5
Burglary
The past 12 months saw 65 incidents — about 78% below the 296 average from prior years.
Motor Vehicle Theft
The past 12 months saw 465 incidents — about 36% below the 729 average from prior years.
Arson
The past 12 months saw 10 incidents — about 56% below the 23 average from prior years.
Theft from Vehicle
The past 12 months saw 646 incidents — about 14% below the 755 average from prior years.
Other Larceny
The past 12 months saw 378 incidents — about 55% below the 837 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 378, down 52% from 784 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 65, down 67% from 196 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 465, down 29% from 651 the year before. If the trend holds another quarter, it will pull the multi-year baseline down.
- Sexual Assault has reset to a lower baseline.
The trailing 12-month count is 81, down 33% from 121 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 Westlake 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.”
Recurring local terms (last 12 months)
Top terms in incident descriptions for Westlake, 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.