Downtown Crime Rate Trends — Seattle
Downtown Seattle is the central business district fronting Elliott Bay between Belltown and Pioneer Square, anchored by Pike Place Market, the Seattle waterfront, and the central Link light rail tunnel. Includes the retail core along Pine and Pike, the financial district, and the convention-center spine.
March 2026 was a structurally mixed month for Downtown Seattle. No single-month anomalies surfaced — zero spikes, zero drops, zero sustained-shift signals — but the 12-month picture shows meaningful divergence across categories. The one tracked signal is a zero-event: Homicide recorded no incidents in the period measured.
On the property side, Other Larceny is the standout mover, up 15.6% over the prior 12 months (1,834 vs. 1,586). Arson is also running above the prior year — 41 incidents against 36, a 13.9% rise — though at low absolute volume. Burglary, Theft from Vehicle, and Vandalism all declined against the prior 12 months, down 6.6%, 6.6%, and 7.0% respectively, while Aggravated Assault fell 8.0% to 590 incidents. Robbery and Motor Vehicle Theft were essentially flat year-over-year.
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.
No sustained shifts surfaced this month.
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
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 Downtown compares
Peer neighborhoods picked by closest 12-month homicide 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 homicide levels.”
Recurring local terms (last 12 months)
Top terms in incident descriptions for Downtown, 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.