How this page is made

Two sources

• The answer and the trend come from the official SAPS quarterly crime statistics for Woodstock police station, the police station for the suburbs this report covers. The station covers Woodstock, Salt River, Observatory and Walmer Estate. Precinct boundaries do not follow suburb lines exactly.
• The news section lists reports that made the news, each linked to the outlet that published it. We write our own plain line for each (type, place and month) and never repeat the outlet's headline.
• We have no street-level reports for this area, so the page cannot say which streets or times are riskiest.

One period

Every figure on the page covers the same 12 months to 30 June 2026, and compares it with the 12 months before. The period ends on the last day of the latest quarter of police figures. Reports after that date are listed separately under “Since”. The one exception is “Over time”, which shows a longer run of quarters; this page's 12 months are shaded there.

July 2025 to June 2026, compared with the 12 months before.

The rules we follow

• Every sentence is worked out from the data each time the page is built. None is written by hand.
• Police figures and news use the same crime types, with the same names, order and colours: murder, sexual offences, robbery, assault, break-ins, car crime and theft.
• In the police figures, “break-ins” are break-ins at homes only, and “assault” does not include attempted murder.
• Drug offences are never added to a total or called rising: police record them when they act, so the count measures police operations.
• When numbers are small, under 20, we give the counts and no percentage. On small numbers, a change of fewer than 3 is not called a rise or a fall.
• We only say “mostly” when it means more than half.
• News reports are counted for the hotspots but are never a measure of how much crime there is.

Compared with Cape Town, and over five years

• On this page, serious violence means murder: it is the one violent crime almost always reported to the police, so it is the fairest way to compare areas.
• The crimes are those recorded by SAPS for every Cape Town police station, published every quarter. Residents and households come from the City of Cape Town's Census 2022 police precinct profiles, a fixed 2022 figure.
• Serious violence is compared by murder: murders per 100,000 residents a year, averaged over the five-year view, for every one of Cape Town's police station areas. Murder is the crime least likely to go unreported, so it is the fairest way to compare areas.
• Robbery (including carjacking and house robbery) is compared per resident only to flag where it runs above the city's rate. In busy areas the count also includes crimes against visitors, so a rate per resident can overstate the risk to people who live there. Assault is not compared between areas, because it is reported far more in some areas than in others.
• Break-ins are compared with the city median per 1,000 households, because they happen to homes.
• The crime mix splits the seven types into three groups: crimes against people (murder, robbery, assault and sexual offences), car crime, and theft with break-ins, here and across Cape Town's police station areas. A group is called most of the crime only when it is more than half. The chart's title compares the share against people here with the city's: below 50 percent of it (with more than half against cars and property) the crime is mostly cars and property, below 80 percent less of it is against people, up to 120 percent the mix is similar, and above that more of it is against people.
• Car crime and theft are compared by count with similar areas only, never per resident: an area with many visitors and parked cars would look far riskier per resident than it is for any one person or car.
• The trend sets the seven crime types over the 12 months against the 12 months before, here and across Cape Town.
• Similar areas are suburban and coastal police station areas with high footfall, the places a reader choosing this area also considers. They are listed in the table under “Police figures”.
• The five-year view adds up the same quarterly releases into 12-month years that end in the same month as this page's period, going back up to 5 years.
• A type of violent crime with fewer than 20 recorded in 12 months is given as a count and not compared as a rate.
• A rate within 10 percent of the city's is called near it.
• The first line calls an area among the safest parts of Cape Town when its murder rate is in the lowest quarter of the police station areas, about as safe as a typical Cape Town area when its murder rate is in the middle half, and an area with more serious violence than most in the highest quarter. For break-ins, the page follows the city median: below it, above it, or at or near it.
• When murders here have risen over the five-year view (risen, risen by half or doubled, as in the table below), the bottom line says so, as serious violence. A fall adds nothing.
• Murder is called very rare only when the five-year view exists, fewer than 20 murders were recorded over those years and the murder rate is below the city's.
• Only car crime or theft can be called an outlier: when it makes up at least 40 percent of the seven types here and its count is among the 3 highest of the similar areas.
• Over up to 5 years, each count in the latest year is set against the earliest year (the long run), when the two are at least 2 years apart. The words mean:

  Word	What it means
  more than halved, halved	the latest year is at most 50% of the earliest
  fallen by a third	at most 67%
  fallen	at most 85%
  steady	between the two
  risen	at least 115%
  risen by half	at least 150%
  doubled	at least 200%

• A count is called steady since a year when, from that year on, the highest year is no more than 30 percent above the lowest, over at least 3 years, and the latest year is less than 15 percent away from that first year.
• A count below 20 in the earliest year gets no long run, and a count below 20 in any year gets no steady spell: a handful of crimes would swing it.
• We show each area's position on murders, the one crime recorded almost everywhere. We don't rank areas on other crimes, because reporting to the police differs too much between areas.
• A police station area without all eight quarters of figures is left out of the city's rates, medians, positions and totals, so a part year is never set against a full one.
• Cape Town's totals may include a new police station that has no Census 2022 profile yet: it counts in the totals and the trend, but not in any rate.

What we can't see

• News reports cover only what journalists wrote about.
• Police figures are published months after the event and do not say where in the station area a crime happened.

Privacy

• We never write house numbers or anyone's age.
• News items are shown by type, place and month only.

Corrections

If something on this page is wrong, tell us and we will check it against the source and correct it.