After a year of historically low crime numbers, San Francisco has continued to see an impressive decline in crime so far this year. But a Chronicle analysis revealed that reports in one area aren’t seeing such a decrease: SoMa and Mission Bay.
The two neighborhoods, which are both in San Francisco Police Department’s Southern District, have both seen apparent increases in property crime in the first four months of 2025 compared with the same period last year, driven by upticks in larceny theft, which includes crimes like shoplifting and car break-ins.
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The numbers in both places are still lower than in most other years — the trend is far from a crime spike. But while the rest of the city, including areas with high property crime rates like the Mission, the Tenderloin and the Financial District, seems to be continuing to experience San Francisco’s precipitous crime decline, reported property crime was up 29% in SoMa and 52% in Mission Bay. (The per capita property crime rate is much lower in Mission Bay than in SoMa, which has the highest reported rates in the city.)
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Supervisor Matt Dorsey, whose district includes the neighborhoods, said that picking out the underlying reasons behind changes in crime data is “inherently speculative,” and that, particularly with property crime, it is impossible to know what goes unreported. In other words, it’s possible that what’s up is not just the larcenies themselves, but residents’ motivation to call the police.
But he also said that, as the police department cracks down on areas like the Tenderloin, where certain corner stores are required to close from midnight until 5 a.m., some of “the street-level bad activity” has moved into SoMa. Residents throughout the city have expressed frustration that targeted enforcement in hot spots has dispersed drug activity into smaller streets and other parts of the city…