Manhattan CD9 — Morningside Heights / Hamilton Heights Crime Rate Trends — New York
CD9 covers Morningside Heights, Manhattanville, Hamilton Heights, and Sugar Hill. Anchored by Columbia University and its Manhattanville expansion, the City College of New York campus, Riverside Church, and Riverside and Morningside parks.
Seven categories moved in Manhattan CD9 this August, with no spikes and no rare events in the mix. Three ran below their single-month trend, and four registered as sustained structural shifts, the kind of multi-month pattern that points to a longer directional change rather than a one-off quiet period. The overall shape is broadly downward across both violent and property crime.
Vandalism is the strongest single-month signal, with 308 incidents over the trailing 12 months against 416 in the year prior, a 26.0% reduction. Other larceny and robbery also ran below trend in August; robbery's 12-month total has fallen to 111 from 186, down 40.3% year-over-year. The four sustained-shift signals, covering categories including aggravated assault and sexual assault, reinforce that this is not a single-month dip: the trailing 12-month counts across most tracked categories are running well below where they stood a year ago.
Notable signals 3
Vandalism
The past 12 months saw 308 incidents — about 55% below the 682 average from prior years.
Other Larceny
The past 12 months saw 1,237 incidents — about 29% below the 1737 average from prior years.
Robbery
The past 12 months saw 111 incidents — about 52% below the 231 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 1,237, down 28% from 1,723 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 111, down 40% from 186 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 308, down 26% from 416 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 104, down 34% from 157 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 CD9 — Morningside Heights / Hamilton Heights 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 CD1 — Financial District / Battery Park / Tribeca
311 incidents over the past 12 months — 3 above Manhattan CD9 — Morningside Heights / Hamilton Heights's 308.
Open page →Staten Island CD3 — South Shore
304 incidents over the past 12 months — 4 below Manhattan CD9 — Morningside Heights / Hamilton Heights's 308.
Open page →Brooklyn CD11 — Bensonhurst
300 incidents over the past 12 months — 8 below Manhattan CD9 — Morningside Heights / Hamilton Heights's 308.
Open page →Recurring local terms (last 12 months)
Top terms in incident descriptions for Manhattan CD9 — Morningside Heights / Hamilton Heights, 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.