San Francisco crime problem runs deeper than rosy statistics from city, expert says

San Francisco crime statistics compare favorably to other major U.S. cities on the surface, but one expert argues the city's numbers have covered up a problem for over a decade.

"Crime is worse than the data shows," Charles "Cully" Stimson, Heritage Foundation senior legal fellow and former prosecutor in San Francisco, told Fox News Digital. 

"People do not report these crimes because when you have a DA who's pro criminal and not going to enforce the law, the cops aren't going to go out and arrest somebody when they know the case is going to be no papered."

Stimson's comments come in the aftermath of the killing of tech executive Bob Lee, who was fatally stabbed in an area of San Francisco typically thought to be one of the city's safest and most upscale.

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The shocking murder brought San Francisco's crime situation back into the national spotlight, with the city earning scorn from critics such as Elon Musk, who opined after the killing that San Francisco's "violent crime" problem "is horrific."

The high-profile crime and Musk's comments sparked widespread discussion of San Francisco's crime problem, with many pointing out that the Twitter CEO's argument doesn't align with statistics.

"San Francisco is close to the bottom of the list of major cities, with 6.9 homicides per 100,000 people," one article from ABC 7 said, citing FBI and San Francisco police data.

The data, reviewed by Fox News Digital, does show San Francisco coming in at a lower homicide rate than other major cities, with its murder rate checking in below St. Louis, Detroit, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Atlanta, Chicago, Oakland, Minneapolis, Houston, Miami, Los Angeles, Austin and Washington, D.C.

Other forms of violent crime such as rapes and assaults have also remained relatively stable in San Francisco over the last four years, the data shows, while murders have ticked up slightly. Property crimes, on the other hand, have risen sharply since 2019.

But, according to Stimson, going back further paints a clearer picture of the problem that has recently plagued San Francisco.

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The first problem, according to Stimson, was the election of a Soros-backed D.A. with a reputation as soft of crime.

Stimson was referring to former San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón, who served in that role from January 2011 until October 2019. Stimson argued that Gascón's term ushered in a new era of rising crime in San Francisco, which had been experiencing nearly two decades of tumbling crime rates at the same time as many other major cities across the country.

Stimson argued that as Gascón's policies started to take hold in the city, crime started to rise around 2015 and 2016. The city's residents got no reprieve from the problem when Gascón left office, thanks to similar policies of former District Attorney Chesa Boudin from January 2020 until he was recalled in July 2022.

"Those policies include not prosecuting any misdemeanors, watering down most felonies to misdemeanors, not asking for long prison sentences even for people who are convicted of the worst crimes, never asking for bail," Stimson said.

Citing FBI and Justice Department data, Stimson pointed out that in the five years before Gascón took office in 2011, there were 757 reported rapes, an average of 151 per year, in San Francisco. But in Gascón's last five years in office, the city had a total of 1,731 reported rapes, or 346 per year.

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"You always know with rape … the number of people actually raped is much higher than the number of people who report that they were raped," Stimson said.

He also pointed to aggravated assaults, which, in the five years before Gascón's tenure, tallied up to 11,921 reported incidents, or 2,384 per year. In the last five years of Gascón's term, that number jumped to 13,070, or 2,614 per year. 

Such policies continued under the watch of Boudin, producing crime numbers that continued to hover well over pre-2011 rates.

San Francisco's crime issues did not stop with violent crime. The city has also had a surge of retail thefts that have forced many businesses to close their doors in recent years.

"Gascón and Boudin refused to prosecute retail thefts," Stimson said, citing a policy in which retails thefts under $1,000 went unprosecuted.

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"You've seen the videos of people just engaging in the five-finger discount, walking into Target, walking into Nordstrom Rack … and just walking out during daylight with $950 worth of stuff," Stimson said. "They refused to prosecute any of that."

The lack of any serious threat of prosecution led many city residents and businesses to stop reporting the crimes altogether, a reality that has resulted in what is likely a vast undercount of such crimes in available statistics, he claimed.

"Dozens of Walgreens just up and left, and they said publicly the reason they're leaving is because the rampant theft," Stimson said. "Their employees were in danger. Other stores just shuttered in San Francisco, which obviously deprives a lot of the inner city residents a place to buy their groceries and other necessary items."

Other issues have continued to plague the city in the last decade, Stimson pointed out, including the "defund the police" movement and sanctuary city policies.

"In San Francisco, in particular, you have a sanctuary city problem," Stimson said. "City leaders refuse to cooperate with ICE, refuse to turn over people who have been convicted and sentenced to state prison."

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But with Boudin being recalled from office, Stimson expressed optimism things could begin to turn around for the city, though he cautioned that any changes will take time to reverse the damage done over the last decade.

"There is hopefully a better ending to this story," Stimson said. "They're starting to arrest people. They're starting to roll up the tents where all these rapes and sexual assaults are happening. … But it's still a sanctuary city, so illegal aliens, who represent a good percentage of people who have been arrested, they aren't being turned over to ICE even after they're convicted."