SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — Car burglaries and homicides decreased in 2018 across San Francisco, according to a new report released today by the police department. 

“Though we are encouraged by our year-end numbers, one life lost is one life too many,” said Police Chief William Scott in a statement. “Through close collaboration with our community-based anti-violence partners and the establishment of our Crime Gun Investigations Center, we saw a decrease in gun-related violence last year.” 

The city saw an 18 percent decrease in homicides and a 17 percent decrease in car burglaries compared to 2017, the report showed. 

The residents, KRON4 spoke to today say the new numbers are good news. 

“I’m happy to hear it,” said San Francisco resident Caitlin Nielson. “If crime is going down, that’s never a bad thing I suppose.”

The statistics also show property crime was down as car burglaries dropped 17 percent. Auto theft went down by 13 percent and larceny theft decreased by 10 percent. 

The police chief cites the department’s ‘Park Smart’ campaign in detering car burglaries, which allowed the department to put more officers on city streets and discourage crimes of opportunity in ‘hot spots’ across San Francisco. 

“Going forward in 2019, we will continue to listen to the public we serve and use data to strategically assign our officers to address our City’s public safety challenges,” Scott said. 

Colin Hart, who lives in the city, says despite these numbers, he’s still seeing a significant amount of package thefts and auto break-ins happening. He says people need to take responsibility to report crimes when they happen. 

“I think that we’re ignoring a lot of these problems where it’s getting unreported or another thing to say not reporting it in the first place. I think that’s the biggest problem,” he said. 

In addition to reduced homicide and car burglaries, the city also saw decreases in homicides by fire arm, non-fatal shootings, aggrevated assault, car theft and larceny theft, according to the new report. 

WHAT OTHERS ARE CLICKING ON:

>>MORE STORIES