Homicides plummet in San Francisco

[Auggie]

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, 12-30-09

No one can quite account for it, but San Francisco is poised in 2009 to have the biggest one-year drop in homicides on record.

The Police Department has logged 45 homicides in the city this year - a decline in lethal shootings, stabbings and bludgeonings of more than 50 percent from both 2007 and 2008, when the city recorded 98 and 97 homicides, respectively. If it holds through the rest of the year, it will mark the lowest number of homicides since 1961, when there were 39.

"This is a remarkable reduction," Mayor Gavin Newsom said Tuesday. "It's the lowest it's been in nearly half a century."

As homicides plummeted, the Police Department's expanded homicide unit caught up on its work. The newly expanded unit solved roughly 70 percent of killings in 2009, about twice the rates of both 2007 and 2008 and the Police Department's best figure in memory.

RED MORE: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/12/30/MNIG1B1NGJ.DTL&tsp=1

[EFerrari]

1. Wow. That's great news. I wonder what they did right. n/t

[CreekDog]

2. Two things they point to: 1) 4 detectives per homocide not 2 2) police presence after a homocide

they said that having 4 detectives per homocide means they are covering all the bases more quickly and when the homocide is fresher.

they also said that police presence in the vicinity of the homocide in its aftermath reduces retaliation.

and two other issues they point to as helpful:

1) Federal crackdown on MS-13 gang

2) increased targeting of gang activity in the Bayview and Mission districts.

on track for lowest homocide rate since 1961. wow.

:hi:

[EFerrari]

3. The increase in detectives makes perfect sense to me.

And I hope this is a real stat. Remember when Gavin's PR people said homelessness was down 63%? That was about three years ago.

[CreekDog]

4. I don't think the homocide numbers can be tinkered with

:shrug:

[EFerrari]

5. Taraval Sta, the guys in whose precinct I lived, were real pros.

I'd trust them with just about anything.

Not so much the Ingleside guys and the Parkside guys were sort of uneven.

In any case, Gavin has less of a stake in fooling around with numbers now. This is very encouraging.

[mackerel]

6. Decrease of low income housing ...they moved to

Oakland, Richmond and Vallejo where crime miraculously shot up.