Pill Hill Crime Rate Trends — Oakland
Pill Hill is a compact medical district between Broadway and Telegraph Avenue, named for its cluster of hospitals — Kaiser, Alta Bates Summit, Highland, and Children's — alongside their associated medical office buildings. Includes the Mosswood Park natural area.
Ten categories moved in Pill Hill this March — six ran below their single-month trend and four registered as sustained structural shifts, meaning the pattern predates this briefing by at least a year. The overall shape is a broad, multi-category decline across both violent and property crime.
Theft from Vehicle leads the signal list: the trailing 12-month total is 109 incidents against a multi-year baseline of 241.43, and the 12-month count is down 37.0% against the prior year's 173. Aggravated Assault and Robbery both ran below trend as well — Robbery is down 37.0% year-over-year (34 incidents vs. 54) and Aggravated Assault down 19.0% (51 vs. 63). Sexual Assault is the one category moving in the opposite direction, up 57.1% over the prior 12 months (22 vs. 14), and stands apart from the otherwise downward picture across the neighborhood.
Notable signals 6
Theft from Vehicle
The past 12 months saw 109 incidents — about 55% below the 241 average from prior years.
Aggravated Assault
The past 12 months saw 51 incidents — about 31% below the 74 average from prior years.
Robbery
The past 12 months saw 34 incidents — about 47% below the 64 average from prior years.
Vandalism
The past 12 months saw 73 incidents — about 64% below the 201 average from prior years.
Other Larceny
The past 12 months saw 183 incidents — about 36% below the 288 average from prior years.
Burglary
The past 12 months saw 56 incidents — about 46% below the 103 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 109, down 37% from 173 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 73, down 41% from 123 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 148, down 28% from 206 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 37% from 89 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 March 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 Pill Hill 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.”
Downtown
117 incidents over the past 12 months — 8 above Pill Hill's 109.
Open page →Elmhurst
98 incidents over the past 12 months — 11 below Pill Hill's 109.
Open page →Fruitvale
96 incidents over the past 12 months — 13 below Pill Hill's 109.
Open page →Recurring local terms (last 12 months)
Top terms in incident descriptions for Pill Hill, 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 SFPD's open dataset, 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.