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.
Rainier Valley's June 2026 briefing is defined by sustained, broad-based declines across property crime — three of the four signals this month are structural, multi-month shifts rather than single-month moves. One category, robbery, registered a one-month below-trend signal on top of the longer pattern already in place.
Theft from vehicle is down 32.0% over the trailing 12 months (414 incidents vs. 609 the prior year), and other larceny is down 28.8% (595 vs. 836) — both classified as sustained shifts, not just quiet months. Robbery's 12-month total stands at 104 against 122 the year before, a 14.8% decline. Vandalism and arson are the only categories running above their prior-year levels, but neither generated a signal this period.
Notable signals 1
Robbery
The past 12 months saw 104 incidents — about 26% 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 595, down 29% from 836 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 414, down 32% from 609 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 343, down 28% from 473 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 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.”
Beacon Hill
71 incidents over the past 12 months — 33 below Rainier Valley's 104.
Open page →Northgate
70 incidents over the past 12 months — 34 below Rainier Valley's 104.
Open page →Central Area
67 incidents over the past 12 months — 37 below Rainier Valley's 104.
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 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.