Nob Hill Crime Rate Trends — San Francisco
Nob Hill is a steep, wealthy district crowned by historic luxury hotels like the Fairmont and the Mark Hopkins, the Gothic Grace Cathedral, and the cable cars that climb its slopes. Long associated with the railroad and silver-mining elite who rebuilt the area after the 1906 earthquake, it remains a residential and hotel district with sweeping bay views.
Eight categories moved in Nob Hill this April — four ran below trend for the month, four registered as sustained structural shifts in the trailing 12-month window. The pattern is broadly downward across property crime, with no spikes and no rare-event signals anywhere in the mix.
Vandalism, theft from vehicle, and motor vehicle theft all came in below trend for the month; over the full 12-month window, theft from vehicle is down 47.1% (198 incidents vs. 374 the prior year) and motor vehicle theft is down 35.2% (105 vs. 162). The one category running against the grain is other larceny, up 22.6% over the same period (489 vs. 399) — the only sustained upward move in an otherwise down-trending neighborhood.
Notable signals 4
Vandalism
The past 12 months saw 203 incidents — about 34% below the 309 average from prior years.
Theft from Vehicle
The past 12 months saw 198 incidents — about 68% below the 612 average from prior years.
Motor Vehicle Theft
The past 12 months saw 105 incidents — about 49% below the 206 average from prior years.
Burglary
The past 12 months saw 114 incidents — about 56% below the 259 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.
- Theft from Vehicle has reset to a lower baseline.
The trailing 12-month count is 198, down 47% from 374 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 105, down 35% from 162 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 114, down 34% from 172 the year before. If the trend holds another quarter, it will pull the multi-year baseline down.
- Robbery has reset to a lower baseline.
The trailing 12-month count is 44, down 44% from 78 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 April 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 Nob Hill 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.”
Western Addition
217 incidents over the past 12 months — 14 above Nob Hill's 203.
Open page →Sunset/Parkside
181 incidents over the past 12 months — 22 below Nob Hill's 203.
Open page →Hayes Valley
172 incidents over the past 12 months — 31 below Nob Hill's 203.
Open page →Recurring local terms (last 12 months)
Top terms in incident descriptions for Nob Hill, 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.