The public preview of CrimeScore covers 30 Baltimore-area ZIP codes, 21201 through 21231, and two published months are now on record for each: June and July 2026. That is enough to say something, as long as we are careful about what.
The headline
All 30 ZIPs sit in the top tenth of scored US ZIP codes for reported crime. The July median is the 98.2nd percentile. The range runs from 21228, Catonsville, at 94.42, to 21201, downtown, at 99.43. Eighteen of the 30 are rated Very High and the rest Extreme. Nothing in this set is quiet, and the differences are differences of degree inside a busy region.
Five highest in July, with national rank:
| ZIP | Area | Percentile | National rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| 21201 | Downtown | 99.43 | #63 |
| 21202 | Mount Vernon | 99.37 | #70 |
| 21231 | Fells Point | 99.33 | #74 |
| 21230 | Federal Hill | 99.23 | #85 |
| 21205 | Middle East | 99.20 | #88 |
Five lowest:
| ZIP | Area | Percentile | National rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| 21228 | Catonsville | 94.42 | #608 |
| 21204 | Towson | 95.59 | #481 |
| 21219 | Sparrows Point | 95.83 | #455 |
| 21214 | Lauraville | 96.30 | #403 |
| 21210 | Roland Park | 96.63 | #367 |
What moved
Twenty-nine of the 30 ZIPs fell in percentile from June to July, by an average of a quarter of a point. Only 21208, Pikesville, rose, and by six hundredths. The biggest fall was 21219, Sparrows Point, down 1.26 points from 97.09 to 95.83, with its national rank sliding from #354 to #455. Towson, Catonsville, Govans, Roland Park, and Lauraville each fell about half a point.
A near-uniform drift down across a whole region in one month is not thirty local stories. It is one regional story, or a change in the comparison set. Percentiles are relative: if ZIPs elsewhere in the country reported more crime in July, or if more ZIPs entered the scored set, Baltimore's standing shifts even where local activity did not. Two months cannot separate those explanations. Six can, which is why the pages keep history.
The quirk: rank and percentile can disagree
Look at 21223, West Baltimore. Its percentile fell from 99.24 to 99.18, which reads as slightly less crime relative to the country. Its national rank went from #93 to #90, which reads as slightly more. Both are correct.
Percentile is a share of the scored population; rank is a position in it. When the number of scored ZIPs changes between months, the two can move in opposite directions for a ZIP whose standing barely changed. The lesson for anyone building on the data: pick one measure for trend analysis and stick with it, and always keep the denominator next to the rank.
The neighbors
The neighbor view on the home page shows which ZIPs touch which, computed from Census boundaries. Federal Hill, 21230, touches eight scored ZIPs, and five of them score lower than it does. Downtown, 21201, touches five, all within 0.9 of a point of it. That is the difference between a local peak and a plateau: Federal Hill stands out from its surroundings, downtown is part of a continuous high-crime core with Mount Vernon, Fells Point, and West Baltimore.
What this is not
Two months of one metro area is a starting point, not a finding about Baltimore. The scores describe reported incidents in areas; they say nothing about any block or any person, and a fall of half a point is not a reason to change a decision. When the August publication lands, this post will have a third column, and by winter there will be a trend worth the name.
Every number here is on the corresponding ZIP page, with the model hash that produced it. The methodology explains how they are made.