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 tracked signals surfaced in Western Addition this April — three one-month below-trend drops and three sustained structural shifts. The shape is broadly downward across both violent and property categories, with no spikes or rare-event signals in the mix.
Robbery, vandalism, and motor vehicle theft each ran below trend this month; robbery's 12-month total of 55 incidents sits well under its multi-year baseline of 107.39. The sustained-shift signals add longer context: theft from vehicle is down 44.9% against the prior 12 months (250 vs. 454), other larceny is down 29.1%, and motor vehicle theft is down 26.8%. Everything else tracked this period was within normal range.
Notable signals 3
Robbery
The past 12 months saw 55 incidents — about 49% below the 107 average from prior years.
Vandalism
The past 12 months saw 217 incidents — about 29% below the 307 average from prior years.
Motor Vehicle Theft
The past 12 months saw 134 incidents — about 41% below the 228 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 250, down 45% from 454 the year before. If the trend holds another quarter, it will pull the multi-year baseline down.
- Other Larceny has reset to a lower baseline.
The trailing 12-month count is 355, down 29% from 501 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 134, down 27% from 183 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
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 — 3 below Western Addition's 55.
Open page →Excelsior
52 incidents over the past 12 months — 3 below Western Addition's 55.
Open page →Nob Hill
44 incidents over the past 12 months — 11 below Western Addition's 55.
Open page →Do crime spikes here spill over to adjacent neighborhoods?
Western Additiondoesn't have enough spike history in any single category for a stable spillover rate yet (we want at least 5 events). The table below lists what we have.
| Category | Spike events | Same-category spillover |
|---|---|---|
| Other larceny | 2 | — too few |
Each row shows Western Addition's historical spike events for that category, and how often any of its 7 adjacent neighborhoods spiked the same category within the next 3 months. A high same-category rate suggests a shock that travels (e.g. theft crews moving across San Francisco); a low rate means spikes here tend to be local to the neighborhood. Categories with fewer than 5 historical spike events are listed but their rates are suppressed.
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 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.