Potrero Hill Crime Rate Trends — San Francisco
Potrero Hill is a sunny residential neighborhood east of the Mission, with two distinct sides: the wealthier crest with its panoramic bay views, and the historically working-class flats below. Its short 18th Street commercial strip, the long-running Anchor Brewing facility, and a growing mix of design and tech offices give it a quietly mixed-use feel.
Eight categories moved in Potrero Hill this month — four ran below trend in the current period and four registered as sustained structural shifts. The split matters: this isn't just a quiet month with a few soft numbers. The data reflects a broad, multi-year recalibration across property and violent crime alike.
Vandalism, robbery, and burglary all came in below trend, with vandalism at 76 incidents over the trailing 12 months against a baseline of 182.04. Robbery is down 56.2% year-over-year (7 incidents vs. 16), and burglary fell 38.4% (98 vs. 159). Motor vehicle theft, at 78 incidents against 155 the prior year, is down 49.7% — the second-largest category drop in the mix. Every tracked category in Potrero Hill is below its prior-year level, and the four sustained-shift signals confirm that pattern extends well beyond a single month.
Notable signals 4
Vandalism
The past 12 months saw 76 incidents — about 58% below the 182 average from prior years.
Robbery
The past 12 months saw 7 incidents — about 78% below the 32 average from prior years.
Burglary
The past 12 months saw 98 incidents — about 48% below the 187 average from prior years.
Motor Vehicle Theft
The past 12 months saw 78 incidents — about 63% below the 208 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 78, down 50% from 155 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 98, down 38% from 159 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 137, down 29% from 193 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 76, down 35% from 117 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 Potrero 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.”
Visitacion Valley
76 incidents over the past 12 months — 0 below Potrero Hill's 76.
Open page →Inner Sunset
74 incidents over the past 12 months — 2 below Potrero Hill's 76.
Open page →Portola
74 incidents over the past 12 months — 2 below Potrero Hill's 76.
Open page →Recurring local terms (last 12 months)
Top terms in incident descriptions for Potrero 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, 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.