West Oakland Crime Rate Trends — Oakland
West Oakland is the area west of I-980 and north of the Inner Harbor, encompassing the West Oakland BART station, the Port of Oakland industrial belt, and the historic Mandela Parkway corridor. A mix of Victorian-era residential blocks, light-industrial parcels, and a recent wave of mixed-use redevelopment.
Five signals surfaced in West Oakland this March — two one-month below-trend readings and three sustained structural shifts. The dominant shape is a broad, multi-year decline across violent and property crime categories, not a single noisy month.
Burglary and Robbery were the two sharpest one-month signals, both running below trend; Robbery also registers as a sustained shift, with its 12-month total down 41.6% against the prior year (52 incidents vs. 89). Burglary tells a similar story: the current 12-month total of 82 incidents compares to a baseline mean of 169.97 and a prior-year count of 146, down 43.8%. Three categories across the neighborhood show that same sustained-shift pattern, meaning the declines are structural rather than month-to-month noise.
Notable signals 2
Burglary
The past 12 months saw 82 incidents — about 52% below the 170 average from prior years.
Robbery
The past 12 months saw 52 incidents — about 44% below the 94 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.
- Burglary has reset to a lower baseline.
The trailing 12-month count is 82, down 44% from 146 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 166, down 31% from 240 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 52, down 42% 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 West Oakland compares
Peer neighborhoods picked by closest 12-month burglary 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 burglary levels.”
Brookfield Village
75 incidents over the past 12 months — 7 below West Oakland's 82.
Open page →Glenview
74 incidents over the past 12 months — 8 below West Oakland's 82.
Open page →Laurel
74 incidents over the past 12 months — 8 below West Oakland's 82.
Open page →Recurring local terms (last 12 months)
Top terms in incident descriptions for West Oakland, 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.