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.
Five signals across Manhattan CD3 — Lower East Side / Chinatown in May 2026 — one single-month drop and four sustained shifts, all pointing in the same direction. The structural pattern is broadly downward: no category moved above trend this month, and the sustained-shift signals indicate this isn't a one-month dip but a multi-year repositioning across multiple crime types.
Vandalism is the sharpest single-month signal — 681 incidents over the current 12 months against a baseline of 1,052.12, and down 25.7% against the prior year's 917. Robbery and theft from vehicle both registered sustained structural declines: robbery is at 222 over the trailing 12 months versus 317 the year prior, a 30.0% reduction; theft from vehicle is at 73 versus 125, down 41.6%. The remaining categories tracked this month stayed within range, with no spikes or rare-event signals recorded.
Notable signals 1
Vandalism
The past 12 months saw 681 incidents — about 35% below the 1052 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.
- Vandalism has reset to a lower baseline.
The trailing 12-month count is 681, down 26% from 917 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 222, down 30% from 317 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 73, down 42% from 125 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 58, down 45% from 105 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 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
686 incidents over the past 12 months — 5 above Manhattan CD3 — Lower East Side / Chinatown's 681.
Open page →Brooklyn CD3 — Bedford-Stuyvesant
688 incidents over the past 12 months — 7 above Manhattan CD3 — Lower East Side / Chinatown's 681.
Open page →Manhattan CD11 — East Harlem
692 incidents over the past 12 months — 11 above Manhattan CD3 — Lower East Side / Chinatown's 681.
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.