Manhattan CD7 — Upper West Side Crime Rate Trends — New York
CD7 is the Upper West Side and Manhattan Valley, from West 59th to West 110th between Central Park and the Hudson River. Anchored by Lincoln Center, Columbus Circle, the American Museum of Natural History, Riverside Park, and the 1/2/3 and B/C subway lines on Broadway and Central Park West.
Six categories moved in Upper West Side this month, split evenly between single-month below-trend drops and sustained multi-month structural shifts. The structural pattern across August 2026 is broadly downward: no category spiked, and the longer-term declines in vandalism and theft from vehicle are not isolated months but multi-year moves.
Robbery is the sharpest single-month signal, with the trailing 12-month total at 158 against 206 the year before, a 23.3% reduction. Vandalism is down 44.3% over the same window, 319 incidents against 573, and theft from vehicle has fallen 65.8%, from 222 to 76. The three sustained-shift signals reinforce that these are not one-month dips; the direction has held across multiple periods.
Notable signals 3
Robbery
The past 12 months saw 158 incidents — about 33% below the 235 average from prior years.
Vandalism
The past 12 months saw 319 incidents — about 48% below the 616 average from prior years.
Theft from Vehicle
The past 12 months saw 76 incidents — about 58% below the 181 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 319, down 44% from 573 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 76, down 66% from 222 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 29% from 158 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 CD7 — Upper West Side compares
Peer neighborhoods picked by closest 12-month robbery 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 robbery levels.”
Staten Island CD1 — North Shore
156 incidents over the past 12 months — 2 below Manhattan CD7 — Upper West Side's 158.
Open page →Queens CD2 — Sunnyside / Woodside
168 incidents over the past 12 months — 10 above Manhattan CD7 — Upper West Side's 158.
Open page →Manhattan CD2 — Greenwich Village / SoHo
147 incidents over the past 12 months — 11 below Manhattan CD7 — Upper West Side's 158.
Open page →Recurring local terms (last 12 months)
Top terms in incident descriptions for Manhattan CD7 — Upper West Side, 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.