San Francisco crime map

Where San Francisco’s reports come from

Every report on CrimePing’s San Francisco map is an incident report from the San Francisco Police Department, published through the City and County of San Francisco’s open-data program. CrimePing doesn’t add or edit reports. Your phone requests them directly from the city’s data.

San Francisco updates its data daily, so the past 24 hours and the past week are usually filled in. The city publishes each report’s location at the nearest intersection rather than an address, so a report reads like two crossing streets, and its pin sits on that corner.

An SFPD report in CrimePing shows the incident category, subcategory and description, the intersection, the neighborhood, the police district, the resolution and the report type.

What kinds of reports appear

SFPD’s incident categories include larceny theft, malicious mischief, assault, burglary, motor vehicle theft, fraud, robbery and drug offenses. The data also includes reports that aren’t crimes, such as lost property. CrimePing keeps SFPD’s category and sorts each report into one of six colored categories:

• Violent: assault and robbery.
• Property: larceny theft, burglary and malicious mischief, which is SFPD’s term for vandalism.
• Vehicle: motor vehicle theft, meaning a stolen vehicle.
• Fraud: fraud, forgery and similar offenses.
• Drugs: drug offenses.
• Other: everything else, including non-criminal reports such as lost property.

Car break-ins are filed by SFPD under larceny theft, so they appear as Property. Vehicle is for vehicles that were stolen. Color shows the type of report, not how serious an incident was.

How to check crime near a San Francisco address

1. Open CrimePing

   Tap Use my location on the welcome screen, or pick San Francisco to start near Civic Center.

2. Find the address

   Drag the map until the address is in the middle, then tap Search this area. CrimePing searches around a point on the map, not a typed address.

3. Choose a radius

   San Francisco is compact, about seven miles across, so a 2-mile radius covers a large part of the city and 5 miles covers nearly all of it. A quarter mile or half a mile keeps the focus on your own streets.

4. Choose a time range

   The data updates daily, so the 24H and 7D tabs are useful here. 30D, 90D and 1Y show longer stretches.

5. Read a report

   Tap a dot for the intersection, neighborhood, police district and the report’s resolution. Recent lists the same reports, and Trends compares this period with the one before.

6. Save a watch zone

   In Alerts, save Home, Work, School, Family or Gym with a radius of up to 2 miles, for all reports or violent reports only. When iOS allows, your phone checks it in the background and sends a notification about anything new.

Neighborhoods across the city

Search anywhere SFPD covers, from the Mission, SoMa and the Tenderloin to the Sunset, the Richmond and the Marina. Reports carry the neighborhood the city assigns for analysis, so SoMa appears under its full name, South of Market.

Daly City and the cities across the bay, such as Oakland, have their own police departments, so their reports aren’t in SFPD’s data.

Read the map with care

• Reports are preliminary. SFPD can reclassify or correct a report after it’s published, and the resolution shows the case status at the city’s latest update.
• Intersections, not addresses. A pin marks a corner. Don’t assume a report involves a particular building near it.
• A report isn’t a finding of guilt. It records what was reported to police, not what a court decided.
• Not everything is reported. Some incidents never reach police, so a quiet map isn’t a promise.
• It isn’t for emergencies. CrimePing can’t contact police. In an emergency, call 911.

San Francisco crime map: common questions

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• New York City crime map
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