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's April 2026 briefing — two one-month below-trend signals and two sustained structural shifts. The overall shape is broadly downward across property crime, with no spikes and no rare-event signals in the mix.
Theft from vehicle and vandalism both ran below trend in the single-month window, while motor vehicle theft has shifted structurally lower: down 28.0% against the prior 12 months, 278 incidents vs. 386. Vandalism follows a similar arc, off 29.7% year-over-year (220 vs. 313). Theft from vehicle's 12-month total of 426 sits well below the multi-year baseline of 652.69. Arson is the one counter-current — 8 incidents against a prior-year 5, a 60.0% year-over-year move — though at those absolute counts it represents a small base.
Notable signals 2
Theft from Vehicle
The past 12 months saw 426 incidents — about 35% below the 653 average from prior years.
Vandalism
The past 12 months saw 220 incidents — about 23% 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 278, down 28% from 386 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 220, down 30% from 313 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 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.”
West Seattle
438 incidents over the past 12 months — 12 above Northwest's 426.
Open page →Rainier Valley
456 incidents over the past 12 months — 30 above Northwest's 426.
Open page →Cascade
465 incidents over the past 12 months — 39 above Northwest's 426.
Open page →Do crime spikes here spill over to adjacent neighborhoods?
When Northwest has spiked motor vehicle theft historically (8 events on record), an adjacent neighborhood spiked the same category within 3 months 100% of the time. The strongest-travelling categories sit at the top of the table.
| Category | Spike events | Same-category spillover |
|---|---|---|
| Motor vehicle theft | 8 | 100% |
| Vandalism | 1 | — too few |
Each row shows Northwest's historical spike events for that category, and how often any of its 3 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 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.