After seeing the performance of the models, I performed Exponential smoothing as well as Seasonal Decomposition on individual tiers of my data. I worked on Tier 3 and tier 2 crimes.
The general trend for tier 2 crimes (assault and battery) has been a slow decrease since 2015 with a large drop in 2020-2021. This drop could be due to Covid 19 initially but since the number did not jump back up after the lockdown ended, I suspect that this drop is just a drop in number of reportings rather than a true decrease in the crime rate.
Tier 3 crimes – Burglary and Robbery have shown a steady decrease throughout since 2015. Burglary showed very consistent seasonality and a strong downward trend over the years.
