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 month — four one-month below-trend signals and four sustained structural shifts. The pattern is broadly downward across both violent and property crime, with no spikes and no rare events in the mix.
Vandalism, motor vehicle theft, and sexual assault all ran below trend in March 2026. Vandalism's 12-month total stands at 526 incidents against a multi-year baseline of 717.82 — down 18.8% year-over-year. Motor vehicle theft is down 37.6% against the prior 12 months (276 vs. 442), and sexual assault is down 72.5% (11 vs. 40). The four sustained-shift signals indicate these aren't single-month dips; the structural movement has been building across the trailing 24 months.
Notable signals 4
Vandalism
The past 12 months saw 526 incidents — about 27% below the 718 average from prior years.
Motor Vehicle Theft
The past 12 months saw 276 incidents — about 41% below the 465 average from prior years.
Sexual Assault
The past 12 months saw 11 incidents — about 72% below the 39 average from prior years.
Burglary
The past 12 months saw 291 incidents — about 45% below the 524 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 1,688, up 41% 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 384, down 34% from 580 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 276, down 38% from 442 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 291, down 26% from 393 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
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
493 incidents over the past 12 months — 33 below South of Market's 526.
Open page →Bayview Hunters Point
431 incidents over the past 12 months — 95 below South of Market's 526.
Open page →Mission
650 incidents over the past 12 months — 124 above South of Market's 526.
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, 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.