Pacific Heights Crime Rate Trends — San Francisco
Pacific Heights is one of San Francisco's wealthiest neighborhoods — a hilltop district of grand Victorian and Edwardian mansions, embassies, and consulates with sweeping views of the bay. Its commercial spines along Fillmore and Sacramento Streets carry boutiques, restaurants, and the kind of low-key luxury that has long defined the area.
Pacific Heights had a broadly quiet March 2026, with the signal mix tilted heavily downward. Three categories ran below trend — vandalism, motor vehicle theft, and theft from vehicle — and two registered as sustained structural shifts. One zero-event signal rounds out the five tracked signals, none of which pointed upward.
The most concrete movement is in vehicle-related crime: motor vehicle theft is down 50.0% over the trailing 12 months (62 incidents vs. 124 in the prior year), and theft from vehicle fell 37.3% (175 vs. 279). Vandalism is also running below its multi-year baseline — 114 incidents against a baseline of 186 — and down 19.7% year over year. Robbery and other larceny both edged higher on a 12-month basis, but neither crossed the signal threshold this month.
Notable signals 3
Vandalism
The past 12 months saw 114 incidents — about 39% below the 186 average from prior years.
Motor Vehicle Theft
The past 12 months saw 62 incidents — about 56% below the 140 average from prior years.
Theft from Vehicle
The past 12 months saw 175 incidents — about 66% below the 508 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 175, down 37% from 279 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 62, down 50% from 124 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 March 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 Pacific Heights 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
107 incidents over the past 12 months — 7 below Pacific Heights's 114.
Open page →Excelsior
105 incidents over the past 12 months — 9 below Pacific Heights's 114.
Open page →Lakeshore
105 incidents over the past 12 months — 9 below Pacific Heights's 114.
Open page →Recurring local terms (last 12 months)
Top terms in incident descriptions for Pacific 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, 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.