Crime drops to new lows

But progress in Bay Area uneven, FBI report says

Crime continued to fall last year in the Bay Area and around the country, dipping to historic lows despite fear of growing danger on the streets, according to the FBI.

If crime is rising, as some believe, the trend didn’t show up in 2014. Property crimes like burglary and auto theft decreased 5 percent in the U.S., falling for the 12th year in a row. Violent crimes like robberies and assaults were off 1 percent and have been nearly cut in half in the past 20 years.

In the Bay Area, the improvements were uneven, with some cities slashing their crime rates and others losing ground.

But the overall picture was positive: Last year, 222 people were slain in the region’s 15 most populous cities — a large number, but one

that represents a nearly 30 percent drop over two years and a nearly 40 percent plunge since 2007, according to a Chronicle analysis.

The FBI’s “Crime in the United States” compiled statistics from nearly 18,500 law enforcement agencies around the country. It comes amid fear that a spike in homicides this year in several cities, including Baltimore and St. Louis, will mark a dark turn and a reversal of hard-fought improvements.

In California, the recent gains have occurred amid reforms that have thinned the prison population.

Over the long term, Bay Area crime rates mirror national trends — punching up significantly in the 1970s and 1980s before dropping off for reasons mostly unexplained.

“It’s unfortunate that crime isn’t lower, but on the other hand, it’s fortunate that crime is a lot lower than it was 25 years ago,” said Robert Weisberg, co-director of the Stanford Criminal Justice Center.

While many of the statistics can defy analysis, here are some of the biggest Bay Area takeaways from the report:

Mixed news in Oakland

The FBI report could be read in two ways in Oakland.

The city recorded nearly 17 violent crimes per 1,000 residents last year, far outpacing other places in the Bay Area. The city had 80 homicides, 3,140 assaults, 3,481 robberies and 209 rapes — ranking No. 3 nationally in violent crime per capita behind only Detroit and Memphis.

But Oakland saw improvement in almost every category, with violent crime down 15 percent and property crime down 5 percent. There were 10 fewer killings, after recent efforts by police and community leaders to target gangs thought to be responsible for much of the city’s gun violence.

The second-most dangerous city in the Bay Area was Vallejo, with 8.65 violent crimes per 1,000 residents. Among cities with at least 25,000 people, San Pablo, San Francisco and Antioch filled out the top five.

Big swings in the bay

Oakland wasn’t the only city with something to celebrate.

In East Palo Alto, a city of less than 30,000 people that once made headlines as one of the nation’s murder capitals, violent crime dropped 65 percent from 2013 to 2014. Much of the improvement was due to a staggering plunge in reports of aggravated assaults — from

248 to 56.

In Richmond and Berkeley, violent crime also fell hard in 2014. Richmond enjoyed a 25 percent dip, while Berkeley was close behind at 24 percent.

Meanwhile, Pacifica and Martinez each experienced a nearly 36 percent increase in violent crimes. San Pablo was up 20 percent, Santa Rosa 16 percent.

“Really it comes down to partnerships and relationships with the community,” said Richmond Police Chief Chris Magnus, whose department investigated 11 homicides last year — a far cry from the 62 killings that ravaged the city in 1991.

In Berkeley, a police spokeswoman, Officer Jennifer Coats, said, “We try to look at the data and respond the best way we can. In some cases, when we were having a series of robberies, we deploy officers in robbery suppression units to focus on crimes in a certain area.”

Crime trends are hard to pin down, and Berkeley’s decline in violent offenses hasn’t continued, Coats said.

While the city has suffered no murders in 2015, robberies were up 53 percent and aggravated assaults 44 percent in the first six months of the year.

S.F.’s theft problem

The nation’s continuing drop in property crime accentuates what is going on in San Francisco, where burglaries and thefts have been skyrocketing in recent months.

San Francisco saw an 8.5 percent drop in property crime last year, but the larger trend hasn’t been as rosy since 2010, according to the FBI figures. And according to city figures released in June, property crime was up 47 percent in San Francisco compared with the previous year.

Police have pledged to combat the problem and have put together an auto burglary task force to go after serial offenders.

As for violent crimes in San Francisco, the news was good in 2014. The city had nearly 1,000 fewer robberies than in 2013 and about 500 fewer assaults.

Police staffing an issue

Many Bay Area police departments are still working to boost staffing after the economic downturn five years ago forced cutbacks in law enforcement.

“The most significant thing that happened to crime control was the recession,” Weisberg said. “It was a horribly serious blow to county and city funding.”

The FBI report shows that although San Francisco maintained a bigger police force per capita than any other Bay Area community, staffing levels are down from a decade ago.

A recent study found that as the city’s population grew 12 percent between 2004 and 2014, the number of sworn officers dropped 3 percent.

San Francisco leaders, like those in other communities including San Jose and Vallejo, are pushing to bring their police ranks back to historically high levels.

Keeping crime low

When the city of Los Altos, population 30,000, saw a spike in home robberies in February, more than 300 people showed up at a pair of community meetings. It’s that engagement, said Police Chief Tuck Younis, that has helped keep crime down.

Los Altos ranked as the safest Bay Area city last year among those with at least 25,000 residents, according to the FBI data, recording 0.23 violent crimes per 1,000 residents. That’s two rapes, three robberies and two assaults.

“We have a very informed and engaged community that works with an incredibly professional police department,” Younis said.

The city’s affluence, marked by high home values and income, played into the low crime rate, as it did in other places with little violence, largely escaping the socioeconomic problems that experts say drive crime.

Marijuana arrests ... up?

Surprisingly, the number of arrests across the U.S. for marijuana possession rose in 2014, to 619,809, after years of steady decline, according to the FBI report. The uptick coincided with a general easing of marijuana laws, including legalization in Colorado and Washington.

Local statistics were not available.

“It’s hard to imagine why more people were arrested for marijuana possession when fewer people than ever believe it should be a crime, said Mason Tvert, a spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project. “These numbers refute the myth that nobody actually gets arrested for using marijuana.”

To read the FBI report go to http://1.usa.gov/1YL1KLM.