Excelsior Crime Rate Trends — San Francisco
Excelsior is a working-class residential neighborhood in southeastern San Francisco, defined by the commercial spine of Mission Street and rows of single-family homes climbing the surrounding hills. It has a quieter, suburban feel relative to the city center, with deep neighborhood roots along the Mission Street corridor.
Seven categories moved in Excelsior this August, with no spikes in the mix. Four ran below trend on a single-month basis and three registered as sustained structural shifts, a pattern that points to broad, multi-year contraction across property and violent crime rather than any isolated quiet stretch.
Vandalism, robbery, and theft from vehicle are among the strongest signals. Vandalism's 12-month total sits at 111 incidents against 125 in the prior year, down 11.2%. Theft from vehicle has compressed more sharply, 92 incidents in the current 12 months versus 180 in the year before, a 48.9% reduction. Motor vehicle theft and burglary show similar scale: motor vehicle theft is down 51.8% year-over-year and burglary down 46.8%, both reading as sustained shifts rather than single-month noise. Every other tracked category held within a narrow range, with other larceny the lone exception, up 9.2% against the prior 12 months.
Notable signals 4
Vandalism
The past 12 months saw 111 incidents — about 36% below the 174 average from prior years.
Robbery
The past 12 months saw 51 incidents — about 44% below the 90 average from prior years.
Theft from Vehicle
The past 12 months saw 92 incidents — about 70% below the 309 average from prior years.
Burglary
The past 12 months saw 42 incidents — about 53% below the 90 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.
- Motor Vehicle Theft has reset to a lower baseline.
The trailing 12-month count is 92, down 52% from 191 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 92, down 49% from 180 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 42, down 47% from 79 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 August 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 Excelsior compares
Peer neighborhoods picked by closest 12-month vandalism 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 vandalism levels.”
West of Twin Peaks
111 incidents over the past 12 months — 0 below Excelsior's 111.
Open page →North Beach
110 incidents over the past 12 months — 1 below Excelsior's 111.
Open page →Outer Richmond
106 incidents over the past 12 months — 5 below Excelsior's 111.
Open page →Recurring local terms (last 12 months)
Top terms in incident descriptions for Excelsior, 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.