As the threat of a federal crackdown in San Francisco looms, local politicians are rallying to assert that sending National Guard troops isn’t necessary.
And they have the data to back that up.
Both violent and property crime in San Francisco are at record lows, and down between 29 and 41 percent since 2015. Homicides are at their lowest rate in 71 years, robberies and burglaries at their lowest in 40 years, and even car break-ins are at their lowest in 20 years.
“Thanks to local law enforcement and city workers, San Francisco is one of the safest cities in the country,” said City Attorney David Chiu in a statement to Mission Local on Monday. “Crime is at its lowest point in decades. Our local law enforcement are more than capable of keeping our city safe.”
Chiu, Mayor Daniel Lurie, and other city officials have repeatedly pushed back against claims by President Donald Trump that San Francisco “went wrong.” “Look at what the Democrats have done to San Francisco. They’ve destroyed it,” Trump said during a press conference on Aug. 22.
This past weekend, Trump vowed to bring the National Guard to the city, and Chiu vowed to sue if he tried.
By many measures, crime in San Francisco is, indeed, at its lowest point in decades. According to data provided by the San Francisco Police Department, and data published by the California Department of Justice:
- Homicides are on track to reach their lowest rate in 71 years. There were 22 homicides in San Francisco so far this year, and the last low was 27 homicides in 1954.
- The number of robberies in San Francisco is on track to be the lowest since 1985. In 2025 so far, there were 1,354 robberies, a 23 percent decrease compared to the same period last year. Likewise, burglaries are also on track to reach their lowest since 1985.
- Motor vehicle theft (that’s the theft or attempted theft of a vehicle itself) has declined over the last two years, after a spike in 2023, when there were 6,704 reported incidents. So far this year, there have been 2,504 incidents. Historically, the rate of motor vehicle thefts was much higher, reaching more than 12,000 incidents in the early 1990s.
- Larceny, which includes shoplifting, pickpocketing and car break-ins, has declined since 2022, and is much lower than historic highs. Similarly, arson incidents have declined since 2021.
- Aggravated assault has hovered around the same number over the last decade, but is also down from historic highs.
On Tuesday, the Council on Criminal Justice, a think tank, released a new report that found most crime categories in San Francisco down between 2019 and 2025. The exceptions: gun assaults, shoplifting, and drug offenses. That’s based on police incident reports, which log arrests and citations.
According to the report, drug offenses in San Francisco increased 114 percent, when comparing the first half of 2019 to the same period this year.
While that may reflect a spike in drug related incidents, Ernesto Lopez, a senior researcher at the Council on Criminal Justice, explained that it could also reflect more enforcement: If officers conduct more searches, he said that to some degree the increase in drug crime is “a function of police enforcement.”
When Mission Local analyzed police incident reports around the 16th St. BART station, for instance, a quarter of all drug arrests and citations in the city came from the intersection. Experts said that was likely due to more enforcement after the department stepped up patrols and visibility there in March.
Drug incidents aside, the trend in crime data in San Francisco reflects that of other cities across the United States, and those nearby. In Alameda County, which includes Berkeley, Oakland and Fremont, the number of crimes overall decreased by 32 percent between 2023 and 2024, according to data from the California Department of Justice.
According to Jeff Asher, a data analyst and consultant, violent crime nationally is down by 11 percent, and property crime is down by 12 percent, when comparing the first five months of the year with the same period last year.
“We’re seeing very large declines pretty much everywhere. For the majority of places: Crime is declining, and is declining sharply,” said Asher.
When the one Target at Metreon starts reporting all its shoplifting incidents and accidentally triples the citywide rate overnight, as it did a couple years ago, what does it tell us about the data? Or when drug deaths are at all time highs but drug crimes are at all time lows, what shall we make of it o knowledgable data journalist?
I’m sure you’ll pipe in whatever Trump wants you to say about it.
Serious crime may be down but there is a lot of “quality of life” crimes going. Such as open drug use, mentally ill people acting out, petty theft, homeless people everywhere, graffiti, blight and so on.
More law enforcement of the “broken windows” variety could help reduce that.
Speaking of mentally ill acting out… take a week off from commenting every day and see what happens?
Trump knows perfectly well sending in the National Guard is unnecessary; he does it solely as a power play to spite blue states. The man is a sociopath, and his only interest is in continuing to divide the country.
We should all know by now that the convicted felon Trump is a congenital liar for whom facts mean nothing.
Trump is not an aberration, however. He is the convenient face for all those who want to roll back every social gain Americans won in the last century as they prepare for a world war over natural resources.
What most Americans don’t yet know is that the Democratic Party, its pseudo-left satellites, and the union bureaucracies are doing nothing consequential to stop the many tragedies rapidly unfolding.
The only way to stop Trump is by a mass mobilization of a united working class in a sustained general strike. It will require a turn against capitalism, the root of all inequality and war.
Sorry, I’ve been convinced by San Francisco Dems for the last 4-5 years that even though statistics say crime is down, I just don’t “feel safe.”
I’m an old time San Franciscan who has never been killed or raped, but experienced everything else on the list, and none of that happened since 2022. Thanks to advice from SFPD, I learned to be more careful walking around in our evolving society. I also want to be careful when responding to Trump’s troops. Could one demonstrate with impunity wearing a MAGA cap–they wear masks as disguise so we wear MAGA caps? Just wondering.
Kelly,
The crime data is garbage and no insider trusts them.
A past chief once said:
“We control the files and they say what we want them to say.”
Joe Stalin once said:
“I don’t care how many people vote or how they vote; I only care who counts the vote.”
Four things this force hates most are paperwork and black and brown and yellow people.
go Niners !!
h.