Manhattan CD12 — Washington Heights / Inwood Crime Rate Trends — New York
Manhattan's northernmost community district covers Washington Heights, Hudson Heights, and Inwood. Anchored by the George Washington Bridge bus station, Fort Tryon Park and the Cloisters, Inwood Hill Park, the A train and 1 train spines, and the Columbia University Medical Center / NewYork-Presbyterian campus.
Six categories moved in Manhattan CD12 — Washington Heights / Inwood this month: two one-month below-trend signals and four sustained structural shifts. The dominant shape is a broad, multi-year pullback across property and violent crime, not a single noisy outlier.
Vandalism and theft from vehicle both ran below trend in May 2026, with vandalism at 532 incidents over the trailing 12 months against a multi-year baseline of 924. Sexual assault is in sustained structural decline — 112 incidents in the current 12 months versus 175 in the prior year, down 36.0%. Aggravated assault, other larceny, motor vehicle theft, and vandalism all show similar year-over-year drops in the 12-month totals, indicating the downward move is category-wide rather than concentrated in one bucket.
Notable signals 2
Vandalism
The past 12 months saw 532 incidents — about 42% below the 924 average from prior years.
Theft from Vehicle
The past 12 months saw 214 incidents — about 34% below the 322 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 2,205, down 25% from 2,942 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 532, down 33% from 799 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 112, down 36% from 175 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 214, down 26% from 290 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 May 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 Manhattan CD12 — Washington Heights / Inwood compares
Peer neighborhoods picked by closest 12-month vandalism 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 vandalism levels.”
Brooklyn CD18 — Canarsie / Flatlands
533 incidents over the past 12 months — 1 above Manhattan CD12 — Washington Heights / Inwood's 532.
Open page →Manhattan CD2 — Greenwich Village / SoHo
531 incidents over the past 12 months — 1 below Manhattan CD12 — Washington Heights / Inwood's 532.
Open page →Bronx CD7 — Kingsbridge Heights / Bedford
528 incidents over the past 12 months — 4 below Manhattan CD12 — Washington Heights / Inwood's 532.
Open page →Recurring local terms (last 12 months)
Top terms in incident descriptions for Manhattan CD12 — Washington Heights / Inwood, 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 the NYPD Complaint dataset on NYC Open Data, mapped to 10 UCR-aligned categories, and aggregated to community district × 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.