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Jay Donde

2 Apr, 25 tweets, 7 min read

In response to claims by some that crime in SF is down despite most residents’ experiences to the contrary, I decided to dig into the data and see whether this claim is true or we’re all being gaslighted. A thread on crime, punishment, and Chesa Boudin. 1/x

The first important conclusion is that SF is a relatively safe big city in terms of non-property-related violent crimes. The second is that we are very much not a safe city in terms of property-related crimes, both violent and non-violent. 2/x

The third conclusion is that it’s misleading to say crime in SF is down -- this elides important distinctions between categories of crime. The fourth conclusion is that in crime categories that are down, it’s more likely due to the effects of COVID than Chesa’s policies. 3/x

The fifth conclusion is that in crime categories that are up, it’s more likely due to Chesa’s policies. The sixth and final conclusion is that we’re missing comparative data on an important category that is likely to be significantly up in SF: drug trafficking. 4/x

Before I dive into the numbers, a few preliminaries: First, I strongly support recalling Chesa, but I don’t think it helps anyone to overstate the case against him. For example, homicides are up in SF, but I’m skeptical this has much to do with his policies. 5/x

Second, this is a real rough accounting. I took what numbers were available from 10 major cities reporting mandatory data annually to the FBI. I tried to do the major cities from the 10 largest MSAs, but some of them made finding their data real tough. 6/x

To that end, if you can find good 2020 UCR data from Miami, Chicago, Houston, or LA, let me know. In any case, take this analysis as a start, not an end, to the conversation. There are probably a few (hopefully minor) errors in here. 7/x

Third, I compared data on homicide, rape, robbery, assault, burglary, motor vehicle theft, and larceny (the standard 7 UCR crimes), along with arson where I could find it. The cities were SF, Oakland, San Jose, San Diego, Dallas, NYC, Philadelphia, DC, Atlanta, and Phoenix. 8/x

Let’s start with homicide, rape, and assault -- non-property-related violent crimes. Homicides in SF went up in 2020 over 2019, but way less than in other cities. Rapes dropped much more than in other cities. Finally, assaults went down; in many other cities they went up. 9/x

This is really good news, especially considering the fact that we started with comparatively low numbers for all these crimes. What concerns me is the discrepancy between the rape/assault trend in SF vs other cities. 10/x

I hope that the big drop in rapes isn’t just a reflection of more unreported domestic violence during COVID. 11/x

Robberies were down in 2020 over 2019, which you would expect during COVID, but we should acknowledge they dropped in SF more than elsewhere. Sounds good until you look at the overall numbers. For a city of our size, we’ve got a heckuvalota robberies!!! 12/x

With that in mind, the drop isn’t so impressive, and this looks more like a serious problem that Chesa isn’t doing enough to solve. 13/x

Now let’s look at burglary (both home and commercial) and car theft. This, I think, is a big part of what most people are talking about when they say SF has become very unsafe. The numbers, especially in burglaries, are shocking: 52% YOY increase! 14/x

For comparison, every other major city I looked at except NYC and Philly saw burglaries drop last year, and only NYC came close to SF’s increase at 43%. Again, this looks even worse when you look at the overall numbers. 15/x

We have as many burglaries as cities two or three times larger than us. A similar story holds for larceny, which actually dropped in SF more than elsewhere. Especially in SF, this probably reflects fewer car break-ins b/c fewer tourists during COVID. 16/x

But, WOW, our rates of larceny are astronomical to begin with, and some of the drop is probably just reversion to the mean. If Chesa was paying attention to this at the level it deserves, we would have seen a more precipitous drop. 17/x

Finally, a couple of points about the data. First, DC has some pretty creative crime reporting. They exclude “unrest-related” incidents from their burglary stats, and only report assaults “with a dangerous weapon.” No special insight here, I just think it’s funny. 18/x

Second, as I mentioned above, no comparative data on drug sales. In neighborhoods like the Tenderloin, this has basically taken away the housed residents’ ability to spend time outdoors. SF lost 699 citizens to overdoses last year, a 59% YOY increase. 19/x