Though Muni officials revealed on Monday that robbery cases are steadily declining, an incident on Saturday evening found another way to stand out — its suspect jumped out the window to escape capture.

After stealing a man’s phone on Geary Boulevard and Scott Street, the suspect tried to escape through the front door, which was closed. The 49-year-old victim attempted to grab him, so he jumped out of an open window, according to police spokesperson Officer Joseph Tomlinson. The man, estimated to be 25 years old, was last seen running south on foot.

If that scenario is hard to picture, you’re not alone.

“It would be a rare occurrence for someone to exit by way of window,” Rose says in a text responding to a question about the frequency of window exits, “as they are pretty small depending on the vehicle used.”

Unfortunately for the robbery victim, rare doesn’t mean impossible. The 38-Geary rider happened to be on a newer vehicle that has windows that can completely swing outwards for an emergency situation, according to Rose.

But hope is not lost yet — through the 45,000 surveillance requests SFMTA fulfilled, almost 100 percent of offenders are caught, according to SFMTA’s security chief Chris Grabarkiewctz. The man’s case is one of the declining robbery cases on public transportation — nearly 350 in 2014 and almost 140 in 2018.

Grabarkiewctz ran the supervisors through the numbers at a hearing at the Land Use and Transportation Committee Monday, which gave the general public to understand how SFMTA and SFPD deter and respond to crime on public transportation. Supervisors Sandra Lee Fewer and Catherine Stefani called for the hearing in April in the name of women’s safety.

“We know that transportation is one of the most important services San Francisco provides,” Stefani said at the hearing. “Unfortunately, lack of safety undermines the entire system.”

Roughly 1,200 reports of overall crime on public transportation in fiscal year 2018 is slightly up from 2014, when there were about 1,180 incidents, but slightly down from 2017 levels, when there were 1,342 incidents. Assault, however, is dropped significantly to 72 reports in 2018 from 127 reports in 2017. (San Francisco’s fiscal year begins on July 1 and ends on June 30.)

“The only truly acceptable number is zero,” Grabarkiewctz said, but added, “We don’t see this as an issue we’re going to be able to completely mitigate.”

Through funding from the Department of Homeland Security, the SFMTA is able to have police officers spend more than 13,000 hours on public transportation to deter or monitor crime, which Grabarkiewctz goes a long way. Even the 25 transit assistants and 50 fare inspectors with authoritative-looking vests on keep people on better behavior.

SFMTA also contracts 104 security guards, 24 of which are armed.

Though the pieced-together data helped shed light on SFTMA security, Fewer and Stefani called the hearing particularly with women in mind. Alas, both SFPD and SFMTA did not track reports of violence or crime based on gender. When questioned if it would be hard to distinguish, SPFD Municipal Transportation Commader Teresa Ewins replied, “I would have no problem asking.”

The supervisors ultimately felt they had enough information and filed the hearing, saying they would call for another hearing should their follow up not be fruitful.