Where would you expect to find more criminal acts committed…the Sunset District or Hunter’s Point? The answer…the Sunset District with a ratio of 123 criminal acts to Hunter’s Point’s 18. Now granted, the Sunset is the largest district being cut into the inner, central and outer Sunset, but still. I’ve always remarked how quiet it was here.
Where did I get this information? There’s a website called Trulia.com that gives people in the market for a house information on the houses available and the neighborhoods surrounding them. Now they’ve added a crime map to map where the crimes are occurring and what type of crimes they are. The worst part about this is when you move around and compare other cities on their list to San Francisco, we top the list as the highest crime city overall. We’re higher than bigger cities like Los Angeles and Chicago in overall crimes which was a pretty big shock to me. At least in the Sunset they’re usually indecent exposure and public intoxication with the occasional car break in or theft. We’re basically drunks and pervs out here for the most part.
The majority of crimes occur in the mid-market area from Civic Center down to 6th street followed by a line down Mission Street and oddly enough there’s a hot spot around North Beach/Chinatown. This is shown on their heat map where you’ll see blotches of red to indicate a higher amount of criminal activity. The total number of crimes for the last month in San Francisco was 2500. By comparison, Chicago had 818 and Los Angeles had 1504. These are two huge cities covering more miles than San Francisco, yet they have less crime than we do. New Orleans came closest to us with 2471 and they beat us in violent crimes.
My question to all this local crime is what gives Mayor Lee? There is talk of cutting back the police force in the city to ease the budget, but when San Francisco tops the list in overall crime [note, I couldn’t compare NYC as they aren’t on the lists.] This might make the crime rates go up and we’re already on top. This city needs to do something about the crime or else not only are we going to start losing residents, but we’ll start losing tourist dollars as well. I can’t say how accurate this is, but it is set up by geocaching reported crimes, so that counts for something in the overall equation.
Be safe and have a nice weekend now.
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There is a better source than Trulia and that is your local district police station. I live in the Park District and they send out an email newsletter listing all arrests with details about every three days. It even gives arresting officers names. It is interesting to see the wide variety of “crimes” people are arrested for. There is a high degree of mental illness related crime in my district. I’m sure some of the discrepancy between cities has to do with how and what crimes are reported and I’m sure all cities don’t use the same criteria. I am from LA but have been here for 20 years in the Western Addition which has always had a bad rap for crime but as a resident I don’t see it that way and I mostly walk and bike the streets so my awareness is high. Car break ins are common, more so than most cities and due to the high population of homeless, there are many arrests related to that. Also, SF is a destination for many East Bay and Peninsula people who get commit arrestable acts (drunk in public a big one) while partying in the City. Most of the red light runners for instance are not SF residents. You can use numbers if you want but the numbers don’t really tell the story.