Portola Crime Rate Trends — San Francisco
Portola is a working-class southeastern neighborhood, once known as the city's 'Garden District' for its 19th-century commercial nurseries. Today it is a quiet residential area along San Bruno Avenue, with a character distinct from the busier districts to the north.
Seven categories moved in Portola this March — three one-month below-trend signals and four sustained structural shifts, the mix pointing to a broad, multi-year decline across property crime rather than a single quiet month.
Burglary, theft from vehicle, and vandalism all ran below trend in the top three signals. Burglary is the most pronounced: 22 incidents in the current 12 months against 52 in the prior year, a 57.7% drop. Motor vehicle theft and theft from vehicle tell a similar story — down 60.8% and 50.7% respectively over the same window. All other tracked categories were also below their prior-year levels, with nothing in the data running against the downward grain.
Notable signals 3
Burglary
The past 12 months saw 22 incidents — about 67% below the 66 average from prior years.
Theft from Vehicle
The past 12 months saw 74 incidents — about 69% below the 240 average from prior years.
Vandalism
The past 12 months saw 74 incidents — about 37% below the 117 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 69, down 61% from 176 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 74, down 51% from 150 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 22, down 58% from 52 the year before. If the trend holds another quarter, it will pull the multi-year baseline down.
- Vandalism has reset to a lower baseline.
The trailing 12-month count is 74, down 33% from 110 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 Portola compares
Peer neighborhoods picked by closest 12-month burglary 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 burglary levels.”
Visitacion Valley
24 incidents over the past 12 months — 2 above Portola's 22.
Open page →Golden Gate Park
27 incidents over the past 12 months — 5 above Portola's 22.
Open page →Treasure Island
17 incidents over the past 12 months — 5 below Portola's 22.
Open page →Recurring local terms (last 12 months)
Top terms in incident descriptions for Portola, 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.