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.
Two categories moved in Rainier Valley in April 2026 — one a single-month below-trend signal, one a structural multi-month shift. The shape of the month is narrow but pointed: robbery ran below trend, and other larceny has moved into sustained-shift territory, meaning the decline there reflects more than a quiet month.
Robbery's current 12-month total is 96 incidents against a prior-year total of 125, down 23.2% year-over-year. Other larceny is down 26.7% — 621 incidents in the trailing 12 months versus 847 the year before — and the sustained-shift signal indicates that gap has been building across multiple months, not just April. Every other tracked category in Rainier Valley came in within normal range this month.
Notable signals 1
Robbery
The past 12 months saw 96 incidents — about 32% 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 621, down 27% from 847 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 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 — 12 below Rainier Valley's 96.
Open page →Beacon Hill
75 incidents over the past 12 months — 21 below Rainier Valley's 96.
Open page →University District
66 incidents over the past 12 months — 30 below Rainier Valley's 96.
Open page →Do crime spikes here spill over to adjacent neighborhoods?
When Rainier Valley has spiked other larceny historically (6 events on record), an adjacent neighborhood spiked the same category within 3 months 83.3% of the time. The strongest-travelling categories sit at the top of the table.
| Category | Spike events | Same-category spillover |
|---|---|---|
| Other larceny | 6 | 83.3% |
| Motor vehicle theft | 4 | — too few |
Each row shows Rainier Valley'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 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.