Western Addition Crime Rate Trends — San Francisco
The Western Addition is a residential neighborhood west of City Hall whose history is inseparable from the Fillmore jazz era and the postwar urban-renewal projects that displaced thousands of its residents. Today it remains a culturally significant district, with Alamo Square's Painted Ladies, historic places of worship, and an evolving mix of long-standing and newer residents.
Six categories moved in Western Addition this month — three one-month below-trend signals and three sustained structural shifts. The pattern is broadly downward across both violent and property crime, with no spikes and no rare events anywhere in the mix.
Robbery, motor vehicle theft, and vandalism all ran below trend in March 2026; robbery's 12-month total of 51 incidents sits against a prior-year count of 69, down 26.1%. Theft from vehicle and other larceny carry the heaviest sustained-shift weight — 272 and 351 incidents respectively against prior-year totals of 461 and 575, declines of 41.0% and 39.0%. Every other tracked category also ended the 12-month window below its prior-year level.
Notable signals 3
Robbery
The past 12 months saw 51 incidents — about 53% below the 108 average from prior years.
Motor Vehicle Theft
The past 12 months saw 131 incidents — about 43% below the 229 average from prior years.
Vandalism
The past 12 months saw 225 incidents — about 27% 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.
- Other Larceny has reset to a lower baseline.
The trailing 12-month count is 351, down 39% from 575 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 272, down 41% from 461 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 131, down 30% from 186 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 Western Addition 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.”
Bernal Heights
52 incidents over the past 12 months — 1 above Western Addition's 51.
Open page →Excelsior
50 incidents over the past 12 months — 1 below Western Addition's 51.
Open page →Nob Hill
41 incidents over the past 12 months — 10 below Western Addition's 51.
Open page →Recurring local terms (last 12 months)
Top terms in incident descriptions for Western Addition, 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.