SFPD 96A.5 Victim and Suspect Demographic Dashboards

This webpage lets users explore this data beyond printed reports, through interactive dashboards. A dashboard is a tool that visualizes information in the form of charts, tables, and filters. There are two dashboards to choose from:

  • The first dashboard shows the number of Victims and Suspects for specified crimes by demographic group and police district.
  • The second dashboard shows the number of Victims and Suspects involved in Hate Crimes by bias type, bias, demographic group, and police district.

You can interact with this information by clicking on or hovering over the visuals in each dashboard. For more information, review the Additional Resources section at the bottom of the page.

Victim and Suspect Demographics of Specified Crimes

 

Hate Crime Victims and Suspects by Demographic Groups

 

Background

San Francisco Board of Supervisors’ Ordinance 40-20 (PDF file) (opens in a new window) amended the San Francisco Administrative Code Chapter 96A to include 96A.5, “Quarterly Crime Victim Data Reporting.” The ordinance mandated the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) to provide quarterly reports regarding victim demographics pertaining to victims of Hate Crimes and other specified crimes. 

As part of our commitment to the community we serve, SFPD staff worked diligently and in close coordination with relevant SFPD bureaus to compile the crime victim information required for this report. 

It is important to note, however, that as cited by the Board of Supervisors’ Budget and Legislative Analyst, SFPD would need to modify its current Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) system if the proposed ordinance required tracking and reporting of additional crime data prior to the estimated National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) implementation date of March 2022. Based on an estimate of two full-time equivalent (FTE) consultants, the Department projected a minimum cost of approximately $960,000, with potential increases depending on the actual scope of work required to modify the current UCR system. (Source: Budget and Legislative Analyst Memo for the February 6, 2020, Government Audit and Oversight Committee Meeting, Feb. 3, 2020 (ASHX file) (opens in a new window)) 

As no additional funding was allocated to allow for the extraction of this data from our primary records management system, Crime Data Warehouse (CDW), staff worked within the constraints of the current resources to aggregate the needed data from CDW as it stands. As a result, readers must be aware that SFPD data is not structured for this reporting method.

The Uniform Crime Reporting (opens in a new window) (UCR) Program is the national repository for crime and law enforcement data. Data collected under the UCR Program is used to monitor crime level variations, evaluate policies, and regulate staffing levels. UCR reporting requires all law enforcement agencies to report the most severe crime under the Uniform Crime Reporting requirements, as stated by the FBI Summary Reporting System manual:

 “In cases where more than one offense occurs in an incident, only the highest ranking Part I offense is counted.” This “hierarchy rule” has led to the development of a system (born many decades ago), and migrated to the current state, structured for the purpose of counting the “highest ranking” offense.   As such, the number of victims of certain crimes is not mandated for reporting by UCR, nor is the age, ethnicity, gender, or location for any crime. 

For example: 

1. An individual can be a victim of multiple crime types in a single reported incident – that person may be counted in each crime type. 

2. In a single incident with multiple crimes and multiple victims, SFPD summary reporting cannot provide how many people were victim to any individual crime.  All victims in the incident show up in each crime.

As a result, for this report, the adopted methodology counts any victim or suspect associated with a reportable incident under each applicable mandated crime category, rather than only under the highest-ranking charge. This approach ensures that all relevant offenses and victimizations are represented, even when multiple crimes occur within a single incident. 

For example:

  1. An incident involving burglary, hate crime, and domestic violence charges would result in the individual being counted in all 3 mandated reporting categories - not just the highest-ranking offense. 

This information was previously presented in the under the Quarterly Activity and Data Report (QADR), as the Victim Data Demographic Report, published on the SFPD website. By transitioning the presentation of these data from a static quarterly paper report to a quarterly interactive set of dashboards, we hope to increase transparency, context, and understanding of these data. The data that informs these dashboards can be found at DataSF, our data transparency partner.

 

Additional Resources

This section contains resources for users to learn more about these topics. It includes related reports, policies, laws, and datasets. If you have questions about anything on this webpage, please reach out to the San Francisco Police Department at: sfpd.datarequest@sfgov.org.

Reports and Policies

Legislation

Data