Manhattan CD3 — Lower East Side / Chinatown Crime Rate Trends — New York
CD3 covers the Lower East Side, Chinatown, the East Village, and Two Bridges. Anchored by the Manhattan and Williamsburg Bridge approaches, Tompkins Square Park, Seward Park, and the F/M/J/Z lines along Delancey Street and East Houston.
Four categories moved in Manhattan CD3 (Lower East Side / Chinatown) this August, one single-month below-trend signal and three sustained structural shifts. The structural pattern runs uniformly downward: robbery, other larceny, and motor vehicle theft have all been running below their prior-year levels for long enough to register as multi-year moves, not monthly noise. The single one-month signal, vandalism, reinforces the direction rather than cutting against it.
Vandalism is the sharpest single-month read, with the trailing 12-month total at 697 incidents against 844 in the prior year, down 17.4%. Robbery's sustained shift is the more consequential structural story: 180 incidents over the current 12 months versus 326 in the year before, a 44.8% reduction. Other larceny follows the same arc, 3,117 current versus 4,161 prior, down 25.1%. Everything else tracked in the neighborhood came in within normal range for the month.
Notable signals 1
Vandalism
The past 12 months saw 697 incidents — about 33% below the 1045 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 3,117, down 25% from 4,161 the year before. If the trend holds another quarter, it will pull the multi-year baseline down.
- Robbery has reset to a lower baseline.
The trailing 12-month count is 180, down 45% from 326 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 43, down 53% from 92 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 August 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 CD3 — Lower East Side / Chinatown 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.”
Manhattan CD5 — Midtown
708 incidents over the past 12 months — 11 above Manhattan CD3 — Lower East Side / Chinatown's 697.
Open page →Manhattan CD11 — East Harlem
676 incidents over the past 12 months — 21 below Manhattan CD3 — Lower East Side / Chinatown's 697.
Open page →Brooklyn CD16 — Brownsville / Ocean Hill
670 incidents over the past 12 months — 27 below Manhattan CD3 — Lower East Side / Chinatown's 697.
Open page →Recurring local terms (last 12 months)
Top terms in incident descriptions for Manhattan CD3 — Lower East Side / Chinatown, 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.