Northwest Crime Rate Trends — Seattle
Northwest Seattle covers Crown Hill, Greenwood, Bitter Lake, and Broadview north of the Ship Canal and west of Aurora Avenue. Predominantly single-family residential along Greenwood Avenue and 15th Avenue NW; anchored by Carkeek Park on Puget Sound.
Four categories moved in Northwest this June — two one-month below-trend signals and two sustained structural shifts, all pointing in the same direction. The overall shape is a broad, multi-category decline across property crime: theft from vehicle, vandalism, motor vehicle theft, and a fourth tracked category are all running below their prior-year levels.
Theft from vehicle leads the month's signals, with the trailing 12-month total at 424 incidents against a multi-year baseline mean of 648.86 — a gap that reflects how far the category has moved over time. Vandalism is also below trend in the current window, down 25.1% year-over-year (224 incidents vs. 299). Motor vehicle theft carries the strongest structural reading: down 26.5% over 12 months (266 vs. 362), and classified as a sustained shift rather than a single quiet month. Other Larceny is the one exception, up 2.4% year-over-year, but that move is small enough that it sits outside the signal threshold.
Notable signals 2
Theft from Vehicle
The past 12 months saw 424 incidents — about 35% below the 649 average from prior years.
Vandalism
The past 12 months saw 224 incidents — about 21% below the 285 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 266, down 27% from 362 the year before. If the trend holds another quarter, it will pull the multi-year baseline down.
- Vandalism has reset to a lower baseline.
The trailing 12-month count is 224, down 25% from 299 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 June 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 Northwest 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.”
Northgate
418 incidents over the past 12 months — 6 below Northwest's 424.
Open page →Rainier Valley
414 incidents over the past 12 months — 10 below Northwest's 424.
Open page →West Seattle
441 incidents over the past 12 months — 17 above Northwest's 424.
Open page →Recurring local terms (last 12 months)
Top terms in incident descriptions for Northwest, 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.