Lake City Crime Rate Trends — Seattle
Lake City is a far-northeast neighborhood organized around Lake City Way NE, the historic primary route to Bothell and points north. Predominantly mid-century single-family homes and apartment buildings, with the Lake City Library and Civic Core area at 125th and 28th.
Four signals surfaced in Lake City this April — one single-month below-trend move and three sustained structural shifts, all pointing in the same direction. The shape of the month is broadly downward: every tracked category shows a lower 12-month total than the year before, and the sustained-shift signals confirm this isn't noise from one quiet month.
Burglary is the standout single-month signal, with 185 incidents over the current 12 months against a baseline of 283.56 — down 20.3% year-over-year. Aggravated assault and theft from vehicle are both registered as sustained shifts downward: aggravated assault is at 61 incidents vs. 99 the prior year (down 38.4%), and theft from vehicle sits at 261 vs. 348 (down 25.0%). The remaining tracked categories — robbery, motor vehicle theft, vandalism, and other larceny — all show lower 12-month totals as well, and none crossed the anomaly threshold, meaning they're declining within expected range rather than breaking out.
Notable signals 1
Burglary
The past 12 months saw 185 incidents — about 35% below the 284 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.
- Motor Vehicle Theft has reset to a lower baseline.
The trailing 12-month count is 143, down 45% from 258 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 261, down 25% from 348 the year before. If the trend holds another quarter, it will pull the multi-year baseline down.
- Aggravated Assault has reset to a lower baseline.
The trailing 12-month count is 61, down 38% from 99 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 April 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 Lake City 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.”
Beacon Hill
221 incidents over the past 12 months — 36 above Lake City's 185.
Open page →Delridge
242 incidents over the past 12 months — 57 above Lake City's 185.
Open page →Magnolia
110 incidents over the past 12 months — 75 below Lake City's 185.
Open page →Do crime spikes here spill over to adjacent neighborhoods?
When Lake City has spiked motor vehicle theft historically (12 events on record), an adjacent neighborhood spiked the same category within 3 months 75% of the time. The strongest-travelling categories sit at the top of the table.
| Category | Spike events | Same-category spillover |
|---|---|---|
| Motor vehicle theft | 12 | 75% |
Each row shows Lake City's historical spike events for that category, and how often any of its 2 adjacent neighborhoods spiked the same category within the next 3 months. A high same-category rate suggests a shock that travels (e.g. theft crews moving across Seattle); a low rate means spikes here tend to be local to the neighborhood. Categories with fewer than 5 historical spike events are listed but their rates are suppressed.
Recurring local terms (last 12 months)
Top terms in incident descriptions for Lake City, 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.