University District Crime Rate Trends — Seattle
The University District is the neighborhood surrounding the University of Washington's main campus, organized around University Way NE ("the Ave") and the U District Link light rail station. Mixed student housing, mid-rise apartments, and the UW campus itself running east to Lake Washington.
University District had a structurally quiet March 2026. One category — vandalism — registered a sustained shift downward, meaning the decline isn't a single off month but a multi-month structural change in volume. A zero-event signal rounded out the count, and every other tracked category stayed within range.
Vandalism is the month's defining movement: 248 incidents over the current 12 months against 334 in the prior year, down 25.7%. That's a structural reset, not noise. Elsewhere, burglary is also running well below its prior-year level (380 vs. 501, down 24.2%) and theft from vehicle is down 20.1% — neither crossed the signal threshold this month, but both contribute to a broadly lower property-crime baseline across the neighborhood. Aggravated assault moved in the opposite direction, 93 incidents against 86 a year ago, up 8.1%, though it did not register as a signal either.
Notable signals 0
Nothing notable surfaced this month — every category sits within normal range against its baseline.
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.
- Vandalism has reset to a lower baseline.
The trailing 12-month count is 248, down 26% from 334 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 University District compares
Peer neighborhoods picked by closest 12-month vandalism 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 vandalism levels.”
Northwest
241 incidents over the past 12 months — 7 below University District's 248.
Open page →Greater Duwamish
258 incidents over the past 12 months — 10 above University District's 248.
Open page →West Seattle
238 incidents over the past 12 months — 10 below University District's 248.
Open page →Recurring local terms (last 12 months)
Top terms in incident descriptions for University District, 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.