Central Area Crime Rate Trends — Seattle
The Central Area is the historically central neighborhood east of downtown and south of Capitol Hill, organized around 23rd Avenue and East Union, Cherry, and Jackson streets. Anchored by Garfield High School, Judkins Park, and the Central District commercial corridors; long the cultural heart of Black Seattle.
August 2026 produced a single notable signal in Central Area: a sustained structural shift in vandalism, not a one-month dip but a multi-month pattern that has reset the category's trajectory downward. Every other tracked category fell within its normal range.
Vandalism is down 25.7% against the prior 12 months, 310 incidents versus 417 in the year before. The broader picture reinforces that context: robbery is down 18.7% (61 vs. 75), burglary is down 17.5% (376 vs. 456), and theft from vehicle is down 14.4% (590 vs. 689). The one counter-trend is arson, up 87.5% year-over-year, though at 15 incidents against 8 the prior year the absolute volumes are small. The sustained vandalism shift is the structural story; the rest of the property crime categories are declining across the board.
Notable signals 0
Nothing notable surfaced this month — every category sits within normal range against its baseline.
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.
- Vandalism has reset to a lower baseline.
The trailing 12-month count is 310, down 26% from 417 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 Central Area 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.”
Ballard
317 incidents over the past 12 months — 7 above Central Area's 310.
Open page →Queen Anne
300 incidents over the past 12 months — 10 below Central Area's 310.
Open page →North Central
282 incidents over the past 12 months — 28 below Central Area's 310.
Open page →Recurring local terms (last 12 months)
Top terms in incident descriptions for Central Area, 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 SPD's Crime Data feed on Seattle 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.