SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — San Francisco crime rates dropped in almost every major category this year, according to a crime data study released this week. Drug offenses, however, are still rising as the city’s fentanyl epidemic continues without an end in sight.
San Francisco’s aggravated assault rate was 16% lower in the first half of 2025 than in the first half of 2024, sexual assault 16% lower, robbery 29% lower, carjacking 53% lower, and residential burglary 9% lower, according to the new study by Council on Criminal Justice.
Homicide rates also dropped. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office said, “When comparing crime rates in San Francisco before the COVID-induced crime surge, between 2019 and 2025, there has been a 45% decrease in homicides.”
In stark contrast to overall crime trends, San Francisco’s drug offense rate was 42% higher in the first half of 2025 than in the first half of 2024, and 114% higher than in the first half of 2019, the study found.
Earlier this month, a street ambassador was asking a man to stop using drugs outside a library in Civic Center Plaza when the ambassador was fatally shot. The homicide victim, 60-year-old Joey Alexander, worked for Urban Alchemy.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently described downtown as a “drug-zombie apocalypse.”
San Francisco’s drug offense rate is about 418 per 100,000 residents, according to the study.
A San Francisco Police Department spokesperson said the rise in drug crime reports is attributable to proactive work by the SFPD.
Starting in 2023, police began cracking down on drug users and drug dealers in an attempt to shut down open-air drug markets and dismantle drug trafficking networks. District Attorney Brooke Jenkins previously said drugs dealers profit “from death and holding entire neighborhoods hostage.”
The new study reflects SFPD’s ramped-up efforts to make arrests for drug-related offenses, SFPD spokesperson Evan Sernoffsky told KRON4.
“When our officers are doing enforcement operations, more reports are generated. The SFPD has devoted more resources to dismantling the drug markets in the Tenderloin, South of Market and Mission district than ever before. This year alone, we’ve seized 131,000 grams of narcotics, including 22,000 grams of fentanyl. Additionally, we’ve made 5,307 arrests so far in 2025 for drug-related crimes,” Sernoffsky told KRON4 Wednesday.
Nearly 500 people died from accidental drug overdoses between January – September in SF, according to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. Fentanyl caused 376 of the deaths.
The crime data study was released after President Donald Trump announced that he would consider dispatching National Guard troops to San Francisco in an effort to reduce crime.
On Tuesday, Gov. Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta announced California will file a lawsuit if Trump sends in members of the military. Newsom said, “We don’t bow to kings, and we’re standing up to this wannabe tyrant. The notion that the federal government can deploy troops into our cities with no justification grounded in reality, no oversight, no accountability, no respect for state sovereignty. It’s a direct assault on the rule of law.”
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