Rainier Valley Crime Rate Trends — Seattle
Rainier Valley runs along Rainier Avenue South and the Link light rail line through southeast Seattle, including Columbia City, Hillman City, Brighton, and Rainier Beach. One of the most diverse parts of the city, anchored by the Columbia City landmark district, Othello and Rainier Beach light rail stations, and Lake Washington's Seward Park to the east.
Three signals moved in Rainier Valley this March — one single-month drop and two sustained structural shifts, both pointing downward. The month's shape is narrow but consistent: robbery and other larceny are the categories doing the work, and both point in the same direction.
Robbery carries both the drop signal and a sustained-shift reading, meaning the decline isn't just a one-month dip. The trailing 12-month total stands at 95 incidents, down 29.1% against the prior 12 months (134). Other larceny has moved similarly at the structural level — 629 incidents in the current window against 860 the year before, a 26.9% reduction. Vandalism and arson both ticked above their prior-year totals, but neither crossed a signal threshold this month.
Notable signals 1
Robbery
The past 12 months saw 95 incidents — about 33% below the 141 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.
- Other Larceny has reset to a lower baseline.
The trailing 12-month count is 629, down 27% from 860 the year before. If the trend holds another quarter, it will pull the multi-year baseline down.
- Robbery has reset to a lower baseline.
The trailing 12-month count is 95, down 29% from 134 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 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
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 Rainier Valley compares
Peer neighborhoods picked by closest 12-month robbery 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 robbery levels.”
Northgate
84 incidents over the past 12 months — 11 below Rainier Valley's 95.
Open page →Beacon Hill
76 incidents over the past 12 months — 19 below Rainier Valley's 95.
Open page →Central Area
61 incidents over the past 12 months — 34 below Rainier Valley's 95.
Open page →Recurring local terms (last 12 months)
Top terms in incident descriptions for Rainier Valley, 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.