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.
Three signals surfaced in Lake City this August, one single-month drop and two sustained structural shifts, both pointing in the same direction: property crime is running materially below where it stood a year ago. The month's shape is not a noisy outlier but a continuation of a multi-year downward move across vehicle-related categories.
Theft from vehicle registered both the strongest single-month signal and a sustained shift, with the trailing 12-month total at 230 incidents against 336 the year before, a 31.5% reduction. Motor vehicle theft shows the same structural pattern, down 32.2% year-over-year, 135 incidents versus 199. Burglary is the one category moving the other way, up 7.4% over the same period, 204 incidents against 190, and sits outside the otherwise broad downward trend across property crime.
Notable signals 1
Theft from Vehicle
The past 12 months saw 230 incidents — about 34% below the 348 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 230, down 32% from 336 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 135, down 32% from 199 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 Lake City 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.”
Magnolia
218 incidents over the past 12 months — 12 below Lake City's 230.
Open page →Delridge
310 incidents over the past 12 months — 80 above Lake City's 230.
Open page →Beacon Hill
342 incidents over the past 12 months — 112 above Lake City's 230.
Open page →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.