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 August briefing, split evenly between one-month below-trend signals and sustained multi-month structural shifts. The overall shape is broadly downward across both property and violent crime, with no spikes and no rare events in the mix.
Vandalism is the strongest single-month signal, with the trailing 12 months at 182 incidents against 291 in the prior year, a 37.5% decline. Robbery and motor vehicle theft also ran below trend this month, and the 12-month totals reinforce the broader direction: theft from vehicle is down 51.1% year-over-year (208 vs. 425), and burglary has dropped 33.8% (96 vs. 145). Every other tracked category held within a similar downward range, with nothing moving against the grain.
Notable signals 3
Vandalism
The past 12 months saw 182 incidents — about 41% below the 306 average from prior years.
Robbery
The past 12 months saw 51 incidents — about 52% below the 105 average from prior years.
Motor Vehicle Theft
The past 12 months saw 123 incidents — about 45% below the 226 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 208, down 51% from 425 the year before. If the trend holds another quarter, it will pull the multi-year baseline down.
- Vandalism has reset to a lower baseline.
The trailing 12-month count is 182, down 38% from 291 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 96, down 34% from 145 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 August 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 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.”
Sunset/Parkside
184 incidents over the past 12 months — 2 above Western Addition's 182.
Open page →Nob Hill
168 incidents over the past 12 months — 14 below Western Addition's 182.
Open page →Hayes Valley
157 incidents over the past 12 months — 25 below Western Addition's 182.
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 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.