Manhattan CD4 — Chelsea / Hell's Kitchen Crime Rate Trends — New York
CD4 spans Chelsea, Hell's Kitchen (Clinton), the Hudson Yards redevelopment, and the Theater District's western edge. Anchored by Penn Station, the High Line park, the Javits Center, and the 7-train Hudson Yards terminus.
May 2026 brought five tracked signals across Manhattan CD4 — Chelsea / Hell's Kitchen, all of them pointing in the same direction. Two categories registered one-month below-trend signals, and three registered as sustained structural shifts — a mix that reflects broad, multi-month downward pressure rather than a single quiet period.
Theft from Vehicle is the sharpest single-month signal: 83 incidents over the current 12 months against a baseline mean of 141.99, and down 29.7% year-over-year. Vandalism also ran below trend on the month, with 490 incidents in the trailing year versus 690 in the prior period — a 29.0% decline. Sexual Assault is the most structurally significant shift: 377 incidents in the current 12 months against 563 in the year before, a 33.0% reduction that has persisted long enough to register as a sustained move, not a one-month dip. Everything else in the neighborhood — robbery, burglary, aggravated assault, motor vehicle theft — is also lower year-over-year, even without crossing the signal threshold this month.
Notable signals 2
Theft from Vehicle
The past 12 months saw 83 incidents — about 42% below the 142 average from prior years.
Vandalism
The past 12 months saw 490 incidents — about 27% below the 667 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.
- Sexual Assault has reset to a lower baseline.
The trailing 12-month count is 377, down 33% from 563 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 490, down 29% from 690 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 52, down 45% from 94 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 CD4 — Chelsea / Hell's Kitchen compares
Peer neighborhoods picked by closest 12-month theft from vehicle 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 theft from vehicle levels.”
Manhattan CD5 — Midtown
84 incidents over the past 12 months — 1 above Manhattan CD4 — Chelsea / Hell's Kitchen's 83.
Open page →Brooklyn CD10 — Bay Ridge / Dyker Heights
86 incidents over the past 12 months — 3 above Manhattan CD4 — Chelsea / Hell's Kitchen's 83.
Open page →Queens CD4 — Elmhurst / Corona
88 incidents over the past 12 months — 5 above Manhattan CD4 — Chelsea / Hell's Kitchen's 83.
Open page →Recurring local terms (last 12 months)
Top terms in incident descriptions for Manhattan CD4 — Chelsea / Hell's Kitchen, 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.