Laurel Crime Rate Trends — Oakland
The Laurel is a foothill-edge neighborhood along MacArthur Boulevard south of I-580, organized around the Laurel commercial district at MacArthur and 35th Avenue. Predominantly Craftsman bungalows and small apartment buildings on sloped streets toward the hills.
Six categories moved in Laurel this August, split evenly between one-month below-trend signals and multi-month sustained shifts. The structural pattern is broadly downward across both violent and property crime, with no spikes or rare-event signals in the mix. The sustained shifts in particular point to a longer realignment, not just a quiet month.
Theft from vehicle, robbery, and homicide are the three strongest below-trend signals this period. Over the trailing 12 months, theft from vehicle stands at 59 incidents against 174 in the prior year, down 66.1%. Robbery has followed a similar arc, 25 incidents versus 73 the year before, a 65.8% reduction. Homicide is at 14 incidents against 27, down 48.1%, and every other tracked category is also running below its prior-year count.
Notable signals 3
Theft from Vehicle
The past 12 months saw 59 incidents — about 63% below the 160 average from prior years.
Robbery
The past 12 months saw 25 incidents — about 73% below the 91 average from prior years.
Homicide
The past 12 months saw 14 incidents — about 54% below the 31 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.
- Theft from Vehicle has reset to a lower baseline.
The trailing 12-month count is 59, down 66% from 174 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 25, down 66% from 73 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 56, down 45% from 102 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 Laurel 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.”
Eastmont
57 incidents over the past 12 months — 2 below Laurel's 59.
Open page →Brookfield Village
54 incidents over the past 12 months — 5 below Laurel's 59.
Open page →Fruitvale
64 incidents over the past 12 months — 5 above Laurel's 59.
Open page →Recurring local terms (last 12 months)
Top terms in incident descriptions for Laurel, 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 OPD's CrimeWatch feed on Oakland Open Data, mapped to 10 NIBRS-aligned categories, and aggregated to neighborhood × 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.