It's A Mystery

Even in the worst of times, SF is a safe city. Mostly, there's a lot of low-level social crimes like prostitution and drug dealing, with the occasional spectacular act of depravity that comes from having the nation's highest number of lunatics per head as a percentage of the population. Still, no one was prepared for this: Violent crime rates drop dramatically in S.F.

Rates have fallen for almost every type of crime in San Francisco in the first three months of the year, and city leaders don't know why.

If you don't know why, stop thinking! You'll only screw it up!


Liberals are famously disdainful of traditional police-based crime fighting. They always have a million ideas about fighting crime, as long as they don't have to send more police into bad neighborhoods to arrest criminals. In fact, that's what the City did.

Police Chief Heather Fong said one possible explanation for the drop in crime is the city's new "zoned" policing, a program that started in February 2008 and involves focusing police resources in the most crime-ridden communities.

Authorities said two months ago that in the first year of the new policy, homicides dropped just 6 percent in the city overall, but fell 34 percent in the targeted communities - the Tenderloin, Western Addition, Mission, Bayview and Visitacion Valley.

I can't believe that worked! It's almost as if putting the police in the neighborhood makes it more difficult for criminals to operate with impunity! Note how they call this "zoned" policing, as if giving it a special name will make it seem different from the traditional "cop on a beat."


In a normal city, the mayor and chief of police would be knocking each other to the ground trying to take credit for a drop in crime. Not SF. It's almost like their embarrassed.