Why does San Diego have such an insanely low crime rate, and San Francisco so sky high? (how much, neighborhoods)

[destroycreate]

I was looking at the statistics per capita of violent crime in SF and was shocked to see how much higher they are for the city than they are in San Diego. San Diego is actually one of the safest cities in all of the US for a population of 1 million.

What makes SF such a violent city, hell, it's more violent than LA! What is it that San Diego is doing right, that SF could learn from? It's a shame that such a wonderful city is quite a dangerous city compared to LA and SD.

[kettlepot]

One reason is actually pretty easy to give. A significant part of San Diego consists of the suburbs San Francisco couldn't annex because SF couldn't expand outside the County limits. If you added Marin County into the City of San Francisco, SF's crime rate would probably drop quite a bit. Whether it would be enough to make the difference though, I don't know.

[rah]

Originally Posted by kettlepot

One reason is actually pretty easy to give. A significant part of San Diego consists of the suburbs San Francisco couldn't annex because SF couldn't expand outside the County limits. If you added Marin County into the City of San Francisco, SF's crime rate would probably drop quite a bit. Whether it would be enough to make the difference though, I don't know.

True...though SF alone already has more crime than SD in terms of raw numbers too, not just rates (except for rape):

San Diego (1,271,655):
murders - 55 (4.3/100k)
rapes - 376 (29.6/100k)
robberies - 2,019 (158.8/100k)
aggravated assaults - 3,597 (282.9/100k)
violent crime total - 6,047 (475.5/100k)

San Francisco (798,144):
murders - 99 (12.4/100k)
rapes - 166 (20.8/100k)
robberies - 4,108 (514.7/100k)
aggravated assaults - 3,801 (476.2/100k)
violent crime total - 8,174 (1,024.1/100k)

(2008 stats)

Despite having 60% the population of SD, SF had 35% more violent crimes in 2008.

[Boompa]

Originally Posted by rah

True...though SF alone already has more crime than SD in terms of raw numbers too, not just rates (except for rape):

San Diego (1,271,655):
murders - 55 (4.3/100k)
rapes - 376 (29.6/100k)
robberies - 2,019 (158.8/100k)
aggravated assaults - 3,597 (282.9/100k)
violent crime total - 6,047 (475.5/100k)

San Francisco (798,144):
murders - 99 (12.4/100k)
rapes - 166 (20.8/100k)
robberies - 4,108 (514.7/100k)
aggravated assaults - 3,801 (476.2/100k)
violent crime total - 8,174 (1,024.1/100k)

(2008 stats)

Despite having 60% the population of SD, SF had 35% more violent crimes in 2008.

San Francisco is an Urban City, San Diego is a Suburb desity wise

[andyadhi01]

I guess several factors play a role:

1. Wealth gap: SF has a large under class and small percentage of wealthy
2. Demographics: Not too many working families
3. Cultural acceptance of drug addiction, homelessness etc
4. Large number of young, transient, self-centered population who are completely apathetic to the living conditions around them.

[NYSD1995]

If you normalized San Diego to it's urban, just-postwar boundaries, you would end up with a similar population (about 750k) and a much higher per-capita crime rate. As Kettlepot said, San Diego's city limits include many far-flung suburbs with net zero effective crime and relatively high populations, which dilute the per-capita crime rates.

[matt345]

It's laughable to hear Californians talk about how much of a "dangerous" city San Francisco is. Could the crime situation here be better? Of course. But some perspective would be useful before branding SF a dangerous city. Spend some time in Detroit, New Orleans, Cleveland, Buffalo, Miami, DC, St. Louis, Chicago, or my hometown of Baltimore where it seems like there is around 1 homicide per day...in a city with 200,000 less people than SF. As others have said, San Diego has annexed large swaths of land throughout its history and today is largely a suburban city.

[gogetta]

Originally Posted by matt345

It's laughable to hear Californians talk about how much of a "dangerous" city San Francisco is. Could the crime situation here be better? Of course. But some perspective would be useful before branding SF a dangerous city. Spend some time in Detroit, New Orleans, Cleveland, Buffalo, Miami, DC, St. Louis, Chicago, or my hometown of Baltimore where it seems like there is around 1 homicide per day...in a city with 200,000 less people than SF. As others have said, San Diego has annexed large swaths of land throughout its history and today is largely a suburban city.

There are neighborhoods in SF that are certainly no joke. These neighborhoods are just as bad as any in Detroit in my own personal experience.

[skyway31]

A few of the above posters have it right. San Francisco city limits consist only of what is essentially the urban core of the entire metro Bay area. Due mostly to geography (water), SF is only 49 square miles, which is a fairly small portion of the entire bay area. And, it's the urban core of that area. A lot of the area counted in SD's stats is suburban sprawl a good distance away from the urban downtown core. La Jolla, for example, counts in SD's official city stats.

[skyway31]

Regardless, I don't think slums being bad is what one should use to gauge overall crime in an entire city. Slums are....slums. They suck everywhere. Anybody and everybody looking to avoid crime and with any means to do so can stay out of the slums. The biggest issue should be how pervasive is crime throughout the relevant parts of the city? What percentage of the city is essentially a slum? How avoidable are those slums? SF doesn't necessarily score very well in those categories. Still, it's a bit misleading to compare its crime rate to most other cities due to the reasons described above.