SF Homicides Are On Track for 60-Year Low. Why Does Crime Still Dominate the Discourse?

You wouldn’t know it from the rhetoric coming out of San Francisco’s highly contentious mayoral race, but homicides in the city are on track to hit their lowest point in more than six decades.

According to San Francisco Police Department data, there have been 24 homicides so far this year, putting the city on pace for about 34 by the end of the year. That would be a 37% decrease from the 54 homicides recorded in 2023 — and the lowest since 1960, when there were 30, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

The decline is even outpacing a national trend — the average homicide rate across 29 cities in the U.S. was down 13% through June compared with the same time period last year, according to the Council on Criminal Justice.

This statistic, along with double-digit percentage drops in violent and property crimes generally compared to last year, could be seen as a marker of success. Not everyone in San Francisco agrees.

“To consistently tell people crime is down is gaslighting,” Supervisor Ahsha Safaí said during a debate for mayoral candidates hosted by KQED and the Chronicle on Thursday night.

“Crime is happening at a brazen level,” he said. “Crime statistically might be down, but property crime is not. And that’s what makes people the angriest — to hear the crime is down, things are getting better. Yes, they might be on the numbers side, but people don’t feel it because they’re seeing it on a daily basis.”

Property crime is down 35% compared with the same time period last year, which was close to pre-pandemic levels in 2019, according to SFPD data. The biggest year-over-year decline through August is in theft from vehicles, which was up significantly in recent years, but there have been decreases across all categories through August.

Violent crime is also down more than 13%, with the reduction in homicides contributing substantially.

Still, polling shows public safety is the No. 1 issue for many voters ahead of November’s election, and it was certainly a focal point of Thursday’s debate. Former interim Mayor Mark Farrell at one point said that “crime is at record levels” under Mayor London Breed’s leadership.

Part of this dissonance could be because of the way crime is being perceived, one policy expert said.

“These are the types of crimes that we might be reminded of on a regular basis, for example, that merchandise is being locked up,” said Magnus Lofstrom, policy director of criminal justice and a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California. “There are these smash-and-grab videos that oftentimes go viral and that, again, might give people a perception of the problem.”

At Target, you’ll likely need to call an attendant over to unlock the theft-resistant cases around face wash or allergy medicine from the pharmacy. Parking lots have signs reminding you not to leave anything of value in your vehicle.

And, Lofstrom noted, retail theft rates did rise throughout the pandemic. San Francisco’s numbers of both lower-value shoplifting and commercial burglary, which applies to merchandise totaling more than $950, were higher in 2023 than in 2019, which already represented an increase from five years earlier.

The pandemic posed challenges across the criminal justice system as well as for the service providers that many low-income people relied on. The number of police officers decreased, and the volatility of the world itself played a part — people had more time on their hands, for one thing, Stanford professor and criminal justice expert Keith Humphreys told KQED in July.

Still, the increase in retail theft in San Francisco through 2023 was less stark than in other urban areas of California.

“It’s actually encouraging. It’s still up [in 2023], retail theft, in San Francisco compared to pre-pandemic level, but it’s not up by nearly as much as you’re seeing in some areas,” Lofstrom said. “I understand that that’s not particularly comforting, but it’s up by about 12%, and we’re seeing some areas of L.A. and other parts of the Bay Area that have seen much bigger increases in retail theft.”

Between 2019 and 2023, this type of theft rose overall statewide, going up 70% in Sacramento County, 65% in Alameda County, 41% in San Mateo County, and 40% in Los Angeles County, according to research published by the PPIC in August. However, last year’s data showed a decline in commercial burglary compared to 2022.

In San Francisco, authorities have touted figures that show a declining crime rate; at a July meeting of the Police Commission, SFPD Chief Bill Scott said property crime — including larceny, which retail theft falls under — in particular, was “the reason that we have such a significant drop in overall crime.”

But as Safaí said during Thursday’s debate: “Go tell that to the small businesses in my district [that] for the last three weeks have literally been broken into almost every night between 1 and 5 a.m. Tell that to the … hotel worker — 42 years of work for the Westin St. Francis — [who] was pushed into a moving train on a BART platform.”

After increases in both violent and nonviolent crimes in 2021 and 2022, and bearing in mind that data can fluctuate quickly, Lofstrom said it could take time for public perception to match the more recent trends in the data.

“It takes a little bit of time before we have confidence that public safety is really improving,” he told KQED.