Sunset/Parkside Crime Rate Trends — San Francisco
The Sunset and adjoining Parkside form San Francisco's largest residential district by area, a foggy western expanse of low-rise single-family homes that runs from Golden Gate Park to the Pacific. The combined area has a quieter, family-oriented pace, and its own commercial corridors along Irving, Noriega, and Taraval Streets.
Seven categories moved in Sunset/Parkside this September, all of them downward. Four ran below trend in the current month, and three reflect sustained structural shifts over the trailing 12 months. The pattern is broadly consistent: every tracked category is lower year-over-year, with no spikes or rare events anywhere in the mix.
The strongest single signal is robbery, which recorded 23 incidents over the past 12 months against 34 the prior year, down 32.4%. Vandalism and theft from vehicle both ran below trend as well, the latter showing a 12-month total of 203 against 402 the year before, a 49.5% reduction. Burglary and motor vehicle theft follow a similar arc, down 44.9% and 43.6% respectively, numbers that put the neighborhood's property crime picture well below where it stood two years ago.
Notable signals 4
Robbery
The past 12 months saw 23 incidents — about 56% below the 52 average from prior years.
Vandalism
The past 12 months saw 172 incidents — about 36% below the 270 average from prior years.
Theft from Vehicle
The past 12 months saw 203 incidents — about 68% below the 630 average from prior years.
Motor Vehicle Theft
The past 12 months saw 101 incidents — about 67% below the 308 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 203, down 50% from 402 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 108, down 45% from 196 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 101, down 44% from 179 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 September 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 Sunset/Parkside 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.”
Lakeshore
21 incidents over the past 12 months — 2 below Sunset/Parkside's 23.
Open page →Visitacion Valley
21 incidents over the past 12 months — 2 below Sunset/Parkside's 23.
Open page →Hayes Valley
26 incidents over the past 12 months — 3 above Sunset/Parkside's 23.
Open page →Recurring local terms (last 12 months)
Top terms in incident descriptions for Sunset/Parkside, 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.