Russian Hill Crime Rate Trends — San Francisco
Russian Hill is a steep residential neighborhood north of Nob Hill, famous worldwide for the eight switchbacks of Lombard Street and the Hyde-Powell cable car that climbs its slopes. Behind the postcard streets, it is a quietly affluent area of apartment buildings and small homes mixed with the cafes and shops of Polk Street.
Eight categories moved in Russian Hill this March — four ran below trend in the current month, four registered as sustained structural shifts. The overall shape is broadly downward across both violent and property crime, with no spikes in the mix.
Robbery, vandalism, and motor vehicle theft all came in below trend this month. The 12-month robbery total stands at 16 against 19 the prior year, a 15.8% decline — and theft from vehicle and motor vehicle theft show larger structural moves, down 47.0% and 47.5% respectively over the trailing 12 months. The four sustained-shift signals indicate these aren't one-month dips: the downward pattern in property crime has been building across multiple periods.
Notable signals 4
Robbery
The past 12 months saw 16 incidents — about 65% below the 45 average from prior years.
Vandalism
The past 12 months saw 91 incidents — about 57% below the 210 average from prior years.
Motor Vehicle Theft
The past 12 months saw 52 incidents — about 56% below the 119 average from prior years.
Theft from Vehicle
The past 12 months saw 152 incidents — about 88% below the 1246 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 152, down 47% from 287 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 52, down 48% from 99 the year before. If the trend holds another quarter, it will pull the multi-year baseline down.
- Other Larceny is climbing.
The trailing 12-month count is 231, up 31% from 176 the year before. If the trend holds another quarter, it will pull the multi-year baseline up.
- Burglary is climbing.
The trailing 12-month count is 121, up 46% from 83 the year before. If the trend holds another quarter, it will pull the multi-year baseline up.
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 Russian Hill compares
Peer neighborhoods picked by closest 12-month robbery 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 robbery levels.”
Oceanview/Merced/Ingleside
16 incidents over the past 12 months — 0 below Russian Hill's 16.
Open page →Inner Sunset
15 incidents over the past 12 months — 1 below Russian Hill's 16.
Open page →Pacific Heights
19 incidents over the past 12 months — 3 above Russian Hill's 16.
Open page →Recurring local terms (last 12 months)
Top terms in incident descriptions for Russian 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.