South of Market Crime Rate Trends — San Francisco
South of Market — universally called SoMa — is the formerly industrial district south of Market Street, transformed since the 1990s into a dense mix of tech offices, condos, museums (including SFMOMA), and the convention space at Moscone Center. It carries a 24-hour rhythm distinct from the rest of the city, with nightlife clusters, the Caltrain terminus, and an uneven mix of long-time residents, single-room-occupancy hotels, and new-build towers.
Eight categories moved in South of Market this April — four ran below trend as one-month drops and four registered as sustained structural shifts. The overall shape is broadly downward across property and violent crime, with no spikes anywhere in the mix.
Vandalism leads the signals: the trailing 12-month total is 515, down 20.0% from 644 the prior year. Motor vehicle theft and sexual assault also registered below-trend drops — motor vehicle theft is down 35.6% year-over-year (280 vs 435), and sexual assault is down 62.9% (13 vs 35). The one counterweight is other larceny, which is up 39.3% over the same window (1,667 vs 1,197), the only category moving against the neighborhood's otherwise downward trajectory.
Notable signals 4
Vandalism
The past 12 months saw 515 incidents — about 28% below the 717 average from prior years.
Motor Vehicle Theft
The past 12 months saw 280 incidents — about 40% below the 465 average from prior years.
Sexual Assault
The past 12 months saw 13 incidents — about 67% below the 39 average from prior years.
Burglary
The past 12 months saw 290 incidents — about 45% below the 523 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.
- Other Larceny is climbing.
The trailing 12-month count is 1,667, up 39% from 1,197 the year before. If the trend holds another quarter, it will pull the multi-year baseline up.
- Theft from Vehicle has reset to a lower baseline.
The trailing 12-month count is 364, down 38% from 586 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 280, down 36% from 435 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 290, down 26% from 391 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
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 South of Market 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.”
Tenderloin
472 incidents over the past 12 months — 43 below South of Market's 515.
Open page →Bayview Hunters Point
438 incidents over the past 12 months — 77 below South of Market's 515.
Open page →Mission
661 incidents over the past 12 months — 146 above South of Market's 515.
Open page →Recurring local terms (last 12 months)
Top terms in incident descriptions for South of Market, 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.