SFPD Data Dump Exposes Where Crime Is Shifting — and Where It Isn't

San Francisco police released a fresh batch of neighborhood-level crime data Thursday, and the picture it paints is uneven in ways that will matter for city budget negotiations heading into fall. Auto burglaries in the South of Market district climbed 18 percent in the second quarter of 2026 compared with the same period last year, driven heavily by smash-and-grab incidents along the Howard Street and Folsom Street corridors near the Moscone Center convention complex.

The timing of the release is not accidental. The Board of Supervisors is set to hold an August 12 hearing on SFPD staffing levels, and both the department and Mayor Daniel Lurie's office have been under pressure to produce hard numbers rather than anecdotal claims about whether the city's long-running street-safety investments are paying off. The data arrives as San Francisco is also bracing for a surge in Fourth of July foot traffic this weekend across Fisherman's Wharf, the Embarcadero, and Crissy Field.

Where Things Got Worse — and Where They Improved

The SoMa numbers stand out. Patrol officers logged 1,142 vehicle break-ins across the district between April 1 and June 30, up from 967 in the same window of 2025. Rental car parking lots within three blocks of the Moscone Center account for a disproportionate share of those reports, according to the data. The Tenderloin posted 214 violent-crime incidents over the same stretch, a 6 percent drop from Q2 2025 — a modest decline that SFPD's Tenderloin Station commander attributed in department notes to the continued presence of the City Attorney's Office drug market intervention teams operating on Turk Street and Golden Gate Avenue.

The Outer Sunset and Inner Richmond both recorded property crime totals at their lowest since Q2 2022. Beat officers in those districts credit, at least in part, the expansion of the SFPD's Community Ambassadors program, which added 14 civilian positions in western neighborhoods last November. The Mission District saw a mixed result: assaults were down 9 percent year-over-year, but commercial burglaries on 24th Street's Valencia corridor ticked up, particularly in the stretch between 16th and 20th Streets.

The Fentanyl Factor and What the Numbers Don't Capture

Drug-related incidents remain a stubborn variable. Narcotics arrests citywide fell to 1,890 in the second quarter, down from 2,340 in Q2 2025, but that drop reflects a policy shift more than a change in street conditions. The DA's office confirmed earlier this year it was deprioritizing low-level possession charges in favor of supply-chain prosecutions, so raw arrest figures no longer track the same behaviors they once did. Overdose calls handled by the San Francisco Fire Department, a separate dataset, held essentially flat at roughly 480 per month through the spring.

The Civic Center plaza and the UN Plaza blocks along Market Street continued to generate a volume of service calls wildly out of proportion to their geographic footprint. The two-block zone between Seventh and Ninth Streets on Market logged more than 300 calls to 311 in June alone, covering everything from encampment complaints to reported assaults. The Department of Public Health's Street Crisis Response Team, which pairs a paramedic with a behavioral health clinician, responded to 68 calls in that corridor in June — about 12 percent of its total citywide deployment for the month.

For residents and small business owners trying to make practical decisions, the SFPD's CompStat dashboard was updated Friday morning and reflects data through June 28. The department says it now refreshes neighborhood-level breakdowns every two weeks rather than monthly, a change that took effect in March after sustained criticism from the Mission District Merchants Association and the SoMa Leadership Council. Anyone filing a property crime report this holiday weekend can track case status through the department's online portal; SFPD has also confirmed that Central Station, which covers the Embarcadero and Fisherman's Wharf, will run double staffing shifts Friday through Sunday in anticipation of the holiday crowd.