Bernal Heights Crime Rate Trends — San Francisco
Bernal Heights is a hilltop residential neighborhood south of the Mission, organized around the open green space of Bernal Heights Park and the cafes and shops of Cortland Avenue. Predominantly single-family Victorian and stucco homes, it draws families and longtime San Franciscans for its panoramic city views and quiet streets.
Ten signals across Bernal Heights in June 2026 — five one-month below-trend readings and five sustained structural shifts. The dominant shape is a broad, multi-year property crime decline, not a single noisy month. No categories spiked, and the mix is uniformly downward.
Theft from vehicle, vandalism, and burglary all ran below trend this month. The 12-month totals put the scale in context: theft from vehicle is at 100 incidents against 222 in the prior year, down 55.0%; burglary has dropped to 86 from 156, down 44.9%; and other larceny — not in the top three signals but one of the largest movers — sits at 172 against a prior-year 430, down 60.0%. Arson is the one category with a different trajectory, edging from 9 to 10 incidents over the same window, but the volumes are too small to read as a structural reversal.
Notable signals 5
Theft from Vehicle
The past 12 months saw 100 incidents — about 75% below the 398 average from prior years.
Vandalism
The past 12 months saw 115 incidents — about 51% below the 234 average from prior years.
Burglary
The past 12 months saw 86 incidents — about 56% below the 195 average from prior years.
Aggravated Assault
The past 12 months saw 53 incidents — about 35% below the 81 average from prior years.
Motor Vehicle Theft
The past 12 months saw 92 incidents — about 68% below the 291 average from prior years.
All categories, last 24 months
Each panel: recent monthly count vs. trailing 12-month context. MoM is the most recent month vs. the one before; 12mo YoY compares the trailing year to the year before that.
What's been quietly true for a year
Spikes get attention. Sustained shifts shape policy. These are multi-quarter patterns where the past 12-month total differs meaningfully from the year before — they often precede the baseline resetting.
- Other Larceny has reset to a lower baseline.
The trailing 12-month count is 172, down 60% from 430 the year before. If the trend holds another quarter, it will pull the multi-year baseline down.
- Theft from Vehicle has reset to a lower baseline.
The trailing 12-month count is 100, down 55% from 222 the year before. If the trend holds another quarter, it will pull the multi-year baseline down.
- Motor Vehicle Theft has reset to a lower baseline.
The trailing 12-month count is 92, down 47% from 173 the year before. If the trend holds another quarter, it will pull the multi-year baseline down.
- Burglary has reset to a lower baseline.
The trailing 12-month count is 86, down 45% from 156 the year before. If the trend holds another quarter, it will pull the multi-year baseline down.
What next month likely looks like
Forecasts trained through June 2026, with a likely range we're 95% confident the actual count will fall inside. Categories with too little recent volume — or violent categories at the neighborhood level — show no forecast and are surfaced through signals above instead. See the methodology page for the gating rules.
Aggravated Assault
Too low-volume per neighborhood for a reliable point forecast — see the rare-event and streak-break signals above instead.
Arson
Below the volume threshold for a reliable forecast — too few incidents in recent months to project from.
Burglary
Homicide
Too low-volume per neighborhood for a reliable point forecast — see the rare-event and streak-break signals above instead.
Motor Vehicle Theft
Other Larceny
Robbery
Too low-volume per neighborhood for a reliable point forecast — see the rare-event and streak-break signals above instead.
Sexual Assault
Too low-volume per neighborhood for a reliable point forecast — see the rare-event and streak-break signals above instead.
Theft from Vehicle
Vandalism
How Bernal Heights compares
Peer neighborhoods picked by closest 12-month theft from vehicle volume — a pragmatic v1 of peer matching. Demographic / housing-stock peer matching isn't built yet (we deliberately don't ingest income or race data alongside crime). Volume similarity has the right intuition: “neighborhoods experiencing comparable theft from vehicle levels.”
Lakeshore
99 incidents over the past 12 months — 1 below Bernal Heights's 100.
Open page →Noe Valley
97 incidents over the past 12 months — 3 below Bernal Heights's 100.
Open page →Haight Ashbury
104 incidents over the past 12 months — 4 above Bernal Heights's 100.
Open page →Recurring local terms (last 12 months)
Top terms in incident descriptions for Bernal Heights, excluding generic crime taxonomy. Useful as texture — what kinds of specifics show up here that don't show up elsewhere.
Hour-of-day, day-of-week, and seasonality
Distribution of bucketed incidents in this neighborhood across the full analysis window. Useful for routine context — shopping-strip thefts vs. late-night assaults read very differently when you can see when each typically happens.
How we built this page
Data → Anomalies → Forecast → Page
Incident data is pulled from SFPD's open dataset on DataSF, mapped to 10 NIBRS-aligned categories, and aggregated to neighborhood × category × month.Anomalies are surfaced using strict thresholds (~p < 0.01). Forecasts are Prophet with low-count gating; violent categories at the neighborhood level skip the forecast and show rare-event / streak signals instead.
Spike rule: 12-mo total > baseline mean + 2.5σ AND ≥ 20 incidents AND 6-mo confirms. Drop rule: 12-mo total < baseline mean − 2.5σ AND baseline mean ≥ 20. Rare event: any incident in the last 90 days, no prior comparable in ≥ 5 years.