

Opera-goer muggings aside, crime is actually down this year according to new stats from the SFPD. As the Examiner reports, new data from May shows a downward trend in the frequency of robberies, burglaries, assaults, and larceny, and year over year there have been significant drops as well. While acknowledging that such trends aren't always explicable, Interim Police Chief Toney Chaplin credits smarter police work and new crime-fighting efforts.

Assaults are down slightly year over year, with 1,136 by May 31, 2015, and 1,090 this year. Robberies are down a whopping 23 percent, though, with 1,591 by this time last year and 1,232 this year. Also, car break-ins, which hit epidemic proportions in 2015 and were still said to be rising in March, are actually down 25 percent year over year.

The homicide rate has remained steady, though, with 21 through May of this year, and 21 last year by this time as well. As of the end of June, SF has now had 26 homicides, which also tracks with last year, when we saw a total 52 by the end of the year.



The Mercury-News reports that there's been a sharp drop, meanwhile, in killings in Oakland, where the city saw a total of 98 homicides in 2015, and they have had 28 as of the end of June, put the city potentially on track to cut the homicide rate nearly in half.

In SF, Chaplin points to proactive policing of areas where the department is seeing upticks in crime, via Compstat data.

Department spokesperson Officer Carlos Mandfredi tells the Ex, "Our Patrol Bureau Task Force and our District Stations Officers have been working hard to deter these crimes and to investigate and make arrests when they do occur."

There's still a shit ton of broken car window glass on virtually every sidewalk, though, and a November ballot measure that we'll be voting on, submitted by Scott Wiener and called the Safe Neighborhoods Ordinance, would dedicate three percent of SFPD staff to neighborhood crime units that respond to burglaries, car break-ins, and the like.

Previously: New Stats Say Gun Violence Down In SF, While Car Break-Ins Continue To Skyrocket