Context for our crime ‘wave’

Crime is personal, and statistics are scant consolation to its victims, whether their loss is as small as a car window or as incalculable as a loved one. It’s one reason visceral anecdotes drive crime news and perceptions: the viral video of a man brazenly loading goods into a garbage bag at a San Francisco Walgreens; the attempted robbery interrupting a television interview of Oakland’s head of violence prevention.

It’s also why we have a huge, costly system dedicated to punishing the perpetrators. The trouble is that perceptions of crime can be harnessed for political advantage and policy changes, most of which have tended to further expand that criminal justice system whether or not it has the desired effect of preventing crime. Given the political realities of the Bay Area, highprofile crimes can also be leveraged to counter nascent efforts to shrink police departments in favor of services that might do more to stem lawbreaking and violence.

To inform such decisions, however, we should have more than a headlinegrabbing homicide, a troublingly violent weekend or an ephemeral uptick in one category of crime.

So is the Bay Area in the midst of any statistically identifiable crime wave? In a word, no.

Crime fell slightly across California’s largest cities last year compared with the year before, remaining near a halfcentury low, according to a study by the California Policy Lab at UC Berkeley. Violent crime changed little in San Francisco and Oakland last year, while property crime fell.

Preliminary statistics for the first half of this year are more mixed but not much more striking. Through June, violent and property crimes have fallen slightly in San Francisco compared with last year; in Oakland, violent crime is up 13% over the first half of last year, while property crimes are down substantially, for an overall decrease of 15%.

The most disturbing facet of the data over the past year and a half concerns homicides, which increased 30% last year over the year before across California’s largest cities, in keeping with a nationwide trend. San Francisco has seen a small increase in homicides since 2019; Oakland saw killings increase more substantially last year, followed by a steeper rise of more than 80% through midJune compared with the first half of 2020. Cities in the Bay Area and California have also seen anomalous increases in vehicle theft since 2019 even as total property crime has declined.

The higher homicide rate is alarming, and devastating to the families affected, but difficult to assess beyond that. Homicides are relatively rare, making up less than 2% of violent crimes in Oakland, for example, and an unreliable measure of overall crime. The latest figures are also in the context of longterm lows in the homicide rate as well as the disruptions of the pandemic and nationwide protests over police violence. Last year’s lockdowns appear to have diminished opportunities for some crimes, such as burglary, and boosted others, such as auto theft.

Homicides and assaults appear to have dropped with the shelterinplace orders but rebounded as they were lifted.

That was before any reductions in police spending were underway and while the lawandorder Trump administration was still in place. While the widespread increase in homicides and a few other crimes over the last two years deserves attention, it’s difficult to draw any broad conclusions from such complex trends in an unprecedented era. We should be wary of anyone who does.

Yalonda M. James / The Chronicle The scene of a shooting last month in Oakland is sealed off by police. The city is one of many where homicides have increased since 2019. Overall crime rates in California’s largest cities are near 50year lows, according to one study.