Neighborhood Crime Statistics for South Portland 2025

Here is our third annual review of the Portland Police Bureau crime statistics for the South Portland neighborhood. The data is offered through PPB's Tableau-powered public website.

All offenses past year (Dec 2024-Nov 2025):

In our last 2 years' reports, we have seen the crime trend decreasing since a peak in 2022 and behaving similarly to what has been seen across the country following the post-Covid spike. 

However, this year the South Portland data appears to be ticking up again since June 2025:

There are reasons. Protests at the ICE facility started up again in June and have continued.  According to PPB as of January 12, "To date, the total number of arrests related to ICE protest activity is 82."

Crimes Against Persons spiked in October. Assaults are the primary driver for this:

Assault/Simple Intimidations spiked in October presumably amid heightened police and activist activity near the ICE Facility:

Property Crime was also up in October with larceny and vandalism contributing:

• Motor Vehicle Theft, which we've looked into in past years, continues to be lower this year.
• Weapon Laws Violations: 11 this year, 2 in June, 3 in November.
• No Homicides, human trafficking, vehicular manslaughter or prostitution crimes recorded.

How does this compare to the overall Portland crime data? and the US?

Stay tuned for future research!

Neighborhood Crime Statistics for South Portland 2024

Here is our second annual review of the Portland Police Bureau crime statistics for the South Portland neigborhood. The data is offered through PPB's Tableau-powered public website.

All offenses past year (Nov 2023-Nov 2024):

For context, the crime trend has been decreasing since a peak in 2022. 

Motor Vehicle Theft is a category we looked at closely last year. This category has dropped dramatically likely thanks to the initiatives outlined last year.  Vandalism is also way down.

Neighborhood Crime Statistics for South Portland 2023

Portland Police Bureau offers crime statistics for the neighborhoods of Portland through its Tableau-powered public website.

I did a quick review of the data for South Portland and thought I'd share it here in case others are interested.

All offenses past year (Nov 2022-Nov 2023):

Taking a longer view back to 2016, we can see the overall increasing trend, though taking note of a potential peak in fall of 2022.

Regarding said peak, various sources including this Atlantic article have reported on violent crime rates peaking (with Portland's highest homicide rate in history in 2022), followed by a significant drop in 2023. 

The FBI Uniform Crime Reports for Oregon data is compiled through 2022 but suggests early indications of that decline: "Overall, Oregon’s most populated cities have experienced a nearly 9 percent decrease in violent index crime from 2021 to 2022, largely influenced by significant decreases in Bend, Eugene, and Portland. This is compared to the 11.8 percent increase in violent crime between 2020 and 2021, which indicates that the concerning increase in violent crime during the COVID-19 pandemic may be reversing, at least in those locales."

Back to South Portland, the largest category for the neighborhood is Larceny (unlawful taking away of property from another entity). Larceny combined with Burglaries make up 62% of the Property-related offenses since 2016, and 54% of all offenses. 

 Vandalism saw a sharp rise up through last winter, with this year showing a decrease.

The category that stands out the most in terms of recent spikes is... Motor Vehicle Theft. That is consistent with trends across other Portland neighborhoods.

In comparison with the US-wide Motor Vehicle Theft trend as reported by the FBI Crime Data below, Oregon is roughly tracking the trend, but well below the US rate. 

More on the stolen vehicle stats to come, and here. Portland restarted up an auto theft task force to tackle this in May 2023, and DA Mike Schmidt has commented on this Jeff-alytics article that yes, the viral Kia Tiktok video was impactful, and the new enforcement initiative and algorithms for stopping cars are contributing to a decline in Portland in 2023.

All of the Portland data is available and sortable by neighborhood via the PPB site, for a deeper dive. 

A review of the Motor Vehicle Theft data is next. Let me know if you are interested in more on this topic!

South Waterfront Neighborhood Crime Review

Portland Police Bureau has a tool called CrimeMapper which is "an easy to use neighborhood crime mapping tool that creates maps of reported crime in Portland".

You can subscribe to their monthly updates to receive an email newsletter providing a review of neighborhood crimes, such as the following:

In the half mile radius around the SWF, there were 11 crimes reported in June, and 10 in the month of May.  However, looking at just the SWF area east of I-5, there were 4 in June:  Disorderly Conduct, June 13, 8:30am, Fraud, June 9, 12:00pm, Theft from Auto & Vandalism, June 20 & June 30 respectively.  In May only 1 crime was reported (Disorderly Conduct).

Using the CrimeMapper search tool (http://www.gis.ci.portland.or.us/maps/police/), a search for the SWF data over the last 12 months yielded the following:
http://www.gis.ci.portland.or.us/maps/police/detail.cfm?x=7645518.70&y=674561.79

Based on this data, it looks like the majority of SWF issues over the past 12 months have involved some form of Theft, or Disorderly Conduct, and a smattering of other crimes.

Another site for exploring neighborhood data is www.crimereports.com, which offers an interactive map and a rich set of data, including traffic stops & emergency calls.