Queens CD8 — Hillcrest / Fresh Meadows Crime Rate Trends — New York
CD8 covers Hillcrest, Fresh Meadows, Briarwood, Jamaica Hills, Jamaica Estates, Kew Gardens Hills, Pomonok, and Utopia. Anchored by St. John's University's main campus, Queens College, the Long Island Expressway corridor, Cunningham Park, and the F train at 169th Street and 179th Street.
Five signals across Queens CD8 — Hillcrest / Fresh Meadows in May 2026: one one-month below-trend drop and four sustained structural shifts, all pointing downward. The dominant shape here is multi-year compression across property and violent crime categories, not a single noisy month.
Vandalism is the sharpest single-month signal — 335 incidents over the current 12 months against a baseline of 564.58 — while aggravated assault and burglary are each running well below their prior-year levels on a structural basis: aggravated assault down 25.3% (177 vs. 237) and burglary down 25.0% (174 vs. 232). Theft from vehicle, motor vehicle theft, and other larceny are all pulling in the same direction; every tracked category with 12-month data is below its prior-year mark, with theft from vehicle the steepest at -34.8%.
Notable signals 1
Vandalism
The past 12 months saw 335 incidents — about 41% below the 565 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.
- Motor Vehicle Theft has reset to a lower baseline.
The trailing 12-month count is 279, down 29% from 390 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 135, down 35% from 207 the year before. If the trend holds another quarter, it will pull the multi-year baseline down.
- Aggravated Assault has reset to a lower baseline.
The trailing 12-month count is 177, down 25% from 237 the year before. If the trend holds another quarter, it will pull the multi-year baseline down.
- Burglary has reset to a lower baseline.
The trailing 12-month count is 174, down 25% from 232 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 Queens CD8 — Hillcrest / Fresh Meadows 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
331 incidents over the past 12 months — 4 below Queens CD8 — Hillcrest / Fresh Meadows's 335.
Open page →Bronx CD2 — Hunts Point / Longwood
329 incidents over the past 12 months — 6 below Queens CD8 — Hillcrest / Fresh Meadows's 335.
Open page →Brooklyn CD11 — Bensonhurst
327 incidents over the past 12 months — 8 below Queens CD8 — Hillcrest / Fresh Meadows's 335.
Open page →Recurring local terms (last 12 months)
Top terms in incident descriptions for Queens CD8 — Hillcrest / Fresh Meadows, 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.