6 ms·

Crime Visualization of San Francisco

105 points by ericd 16y ago

ericd 16y ago
This is a new visualization layer on PadMapper (an apartment hunting site) which shows the relative frequency of crime in different areas of San Francisco. It's not differentiated between nonviolent crime and violent crime currently (should be at some point). Red is bad, green is good, and nothing means very little crime reported for that area (even better than green within the bounds of SF, simply no data outside).
- pavel_lishin 16y ago
  It would be nice if you could filter by the type of crime, not even necessarily violent crime. I might care if someone's selling heroin outside my door, or cars are being stolen, but probably wouldn't care if prostitutes are running about or dogs are unleashed.
  - ericd 16y ago
    Good point. It currently needs to be precomputed as images, so it's hard to make it customizable, but it probably makes sense to make a category of unsavory crimes. I would assume that most people dislike living near the same types of crime.
    - bkrausz 16y ago
      How are you precomputing the images? I thought GMaps provided a way to input data and get a heatmap, but apparently I'm mistaken.
      - ericd 16y ago
        I couldn't find anything to that effect, so I wrote custom scripts. Basically, it creates an image pixel by pixel, with the pixel value corresponding to the crime density of that chunk of the map, blows it up, smooths it with a Gaussian kernel, and then uses some GIS tools to warp it and chop it up into tiles for different zoom levels.
      - dzuc 16y ago
        They do if you're using Fusion Tables: http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/javascript/overlays.html#FusionTablesHeatmaps http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/javascript/ov...
  - antongm 16y ago
    Personally, I'd be ok with pot and coke, but not heroin or meth. Also, preferably decent-looking prostitutes, not any of those skeezy ones you see outside the 16th street BART. Yeah, I think this needs a drugs checkbox selector widget, just like padmapper itself.
- niekmaas 16y ago
  That's an interesting feature for an apartment hunting site. However I think you have to add some information like the time-interval this goes back to. If it's only for a couple of days the statistic might be full of relative false-positives and false-negatives.
  - ericd 16y ago
    Ah yeah, I should specify that. The data window is the past 58 weeks or so.
dongle 16y ago
Wow, this is excellent. I'm looking at moving to San Francisco later this year and this is such important information. I knew that places like the Tenderloin were dangerous, but there's an unexpected hotspot in the middle of the Mission that I know to avoid now. Thanks.
- ericd 16y ago
  Cool. It's available on PadMapper itself as an overlay, so you can see where the apartment listings sit on the crime map. It's a bit buried - have to maximize Filters and then Super Secret Advanced Features.
klochner 16y ago
No luck getting the presidio data?
- ericd 16y ago
  That's very likely just a function of population density - this is raw crime density by land area. EDIT: There's a crime density cutoff below which areas are blank. Within the bounds of SF, blank means very low crime density.
- dougmccune 16y ago
  The presidio is actually a government property, so any crime within the presidio is actually a federal crime and is reported differently. Beware of committing any crime there, the consequences are far more drastic.
  - ericd 16y ago
    Thanks for clearing that up.
chaostheory 16y ago
So most of Hunter's Point is crime free? Is this data correct?
- starkfist 16y ago
  I would guess that people just don't call the cops as much in bayview/Hunter's Point.
  - chaostheory 16y ago
    Not so sure about that: http://www.crimereports.com/map?search=94124&searchButton.x=0&searchButton.y=0&searchButton=SEARCH http://www.crimereports.com/map?search=94124&searchButto...
- ericd 16y ago
  This is why I'd like to do violent/nonviolent versions. I've heard it described that the Tenderloin has a lot of non violent crime, and that Hunter's Point has much more violent crime. Ultimately, I'd rather be in the Tenderloin if that's the case. I believe the data is correct, but I'm not sure what the SF police's data policies are. There could be some withholding, etc. The data comes from http://sanfrancisco.crimespotting.org/ http://sanfrancisco.crimespotting.org/.
  - arebop 16y ago
    The San Francisco Police link to http://www.crimemapping.com/map/ca/sanfrancisco http://www.crimemapping.com/map/ca/sanfrancisco from their page at http://sf-police.org/index.aspx?page=1618 http://sf-police.org/index.aspx?page=1618 which has some discussion of their data policies.
- stellar678 16y ago
  Probably the issue is that Hunter's Point has a lower population density than many other parts of the city. The Tenderloin is chock full of huge apartment buildings, SROs, etc... so even if the per-capita crime rate is the same (or lower), the total number of crimes can be much higher.
samps 16y ago
Unrelatedly, PadMapper is excellent (better than other Craigslist mappers I could find): it has a great filtering system, seems to fetch fresh results more often, and can alert you about new places. I found my current place using it.
- ericd 16y ago
  Thanks :-) Glad it was useful!
- AmericanOP 16y ago
  I concur. Padmapper gives me a quality of life advantage over my peers since I can find exactly what I want and monitor for deals while they're getting the luck of the draw off CList.
pg 16y ago
This is very interesting. A friend of mine who lived on Frederick St, just a few blocks up the hill from Haight, said that crime was much lower on her block. Her theory was that bad guys didn't like to climb hills. And in fact there seems to be a correlation between altitude and crime rate. There are probably other reasons too. E.g. that the hills are fancier neighborhoods. But her explanation makes sense. If you're walking around looking for someone to rob, why walk up steep hills?
- enf 16y ago
  Have you seen the one that plots crimes as if they were elevation? http://dougmccune.com/blog/2010/06/05/if-san-francisco-crime-was-elevation/ http://dougmccune.com/blog/2010/06/05/if-san-francisco-crime...
  - ericd 16y ago
    Very cool. Apparently prostitution is strikingly localized (which makes sense). It also seems that Hunters Point doesn't have much/any crime represented there either, yet it seems like people think of it as a very high crime area. I wonder why.
    - jberryman 16y ago
      > ...yet it seems like people think of it as a very high crime area. I wonder why. from wikipedia: "Bayview-Hunters Point is predominantly African-American. The neighborhood has a population of 20,322 and is roughly 60% African-American, the highest concentration of that ethnic group in San Francisco." The article on the community is quite lengthy and interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayview-Hunters_Point,_San_Francisco http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayview-Hunters_Point,_San_Fran... I've never lived in San Francisco and don't know whether this community has a bad rep. because it's mostly black or if it really is as crime-ridden as its reputation. I think we can all agree that this kind of data analysis is really important though, to understand where we live and shape public policy.
    - white_eskimo 16y ago
enf 16y ago
If you want more details, sanfrancisco.crimespotting.org has them, or you can download the raw data from datasf.org. The hot spot at 16th Street BART is drug dealers and in practice there is no reason not to go there.
- dongle 16y ago
  I'm going to have to disagree. Its accessibility via the muni and the bart, combined with the proximity to the hard-drug areas of town means that there are a number of quick and dirty smash-n-grab robberies of transient ne'er-do-wells. Admittedly I'm biased because I experienced a single one of those datapoints first-hand.
  - enf 16y ago
    OK, I shouldn't have dismissed it so quickly... there are some real issues there too. But I have spent a lot of time there without worrying about my safety.
- ericd 16y ago
  Yeah, it's definitely not all dangerous crime. I still wouldn't want to live in a drug dealer hotspot, though...
- rdouble 16y ago
  I would say the off streets right near the 16th street bart are pretty sketchy. I've seen lots of tweakers and crackheads fighting on Hoff and Capp. A crazy guy smacked me in the head "hit and run" style over there, and a roommate was mugged by 3 guys waiting for him in a car.
steadicat 16y ago
All I knew about SF crime was that the Tenderloin felt quite dodgy when I visited. So I opened the map ready to be suprised. Instead it turns out my feelings were right. Looks like the crime rate in SF is an inverse function of the distance from the Tenderloin.
chaosmachine 16y ago
I can't be the only one who took one look at this and thought: Hey, that's SimCity! http://imgur.com/V2Bvo.png http://imgur.com/V2Bvo.png
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- utexaspunk 16y ago
  Looks like the City of San Francisco and I employ similar strategies for fighting crime: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=CW1yGmTpak6DFVJmQAIdKAe0-CkhAGkAbZqFgDH_rXbwZxNQSg&q=jones+%26+eddy+San+Francisco,+CA&sll=37.77965,-122.414228&sspn=0.016332,0.033023&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Jones+St+%26+Eddy+St,+San+Francisco,+California+94102&ll=37.783901,-122.412887&spn=0.008166,0.016512&t=h&z=17&layer=c&cbll=37.783883,-122.412997&panoid=rO4uBWOPetgycW1rNGUFUA&cbp=12,122.62,,0,7.51 http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&#38...
- drv 16y ago
  That was my thought too - and I'd be curious to see something like SimCity's police station coverage map overlaid on this. It amuses me to imagine the mayor's desk with a selection of these maps, plus a little R/C/I readout.
mikeyk 16y ago
I made CrimeDeskSF (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/crimedesksf/id339706696?mt=8 http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/crimedesksf/id339706696?mt=8) to visualize some of this data on the iPhone, including a mostly-gimmicky-but-kinda-fun augmented reality view (drug bust 100ft away!). I'm using the datasf.org datasets for mine (not sure how they compare to the crimespotting ones, or if they're the same).
donaldc 16y ago
Is this normalized by the population density or foot traffic in an area? If not, it's going to be hard to use to estimate personal risk.
- ericd 16y ago
  It isn't. My theory is that crime density by land area alone probably gives a decent estimate of how the area feels to live in. IE: if there's an assault or robbery every week in a one block area where you live, it's going to feel like a seedy place to live regardless of your personal risk of being involved in a crime. I doubt there's an objectively right answer as to how to best normalize this - I think it just matters that it be understood by the user what it means. There are a number of ways to normalize it depending on what you care about.
larsalan 16y ago
http://www.floatingsheep.org/2010/06/mapping-crime-in-city-by-bay.html http://www.floatingsheep.org/2010/06/mapping-crime-in-city-b... //related
kgermino 16y ago
Very interesting. I would love to see someone build something similar for other cities, perhaps overlaid with Points of Interest and mass transit lines. I think it could be made to be useful for tourists and people who are new to an area. However even if it can't be made into a usable product it'd be very interesting to see.
- ericd 16y ago
  I used to have markers representing high-rated yelp locations on PadMapper, but they weren't too happy about having their data cached (which is necessary in order to make it smooth), so now it has to be pulled manually by the user. Transit lines are something that should go on PadMapper at some point. I hope Google opens up their transit layer sooner rather than later.
stretchwithme 16y ago
that is excellent. There's a 20 block area that is the reddest zone in the city and my guess is that's the Tenderloin. I wonder what impact an intense cleaning would have on the crime rate there. And enforcement of simple things like public urination laws. And maybe some decent bathrooms. I recall the kind of things New York did to restore a sense of order. Malcolm Gladwell talked about them in the Tipping Point. Surely similar measures would improve the crime situation in SF.
- hugh3 16y ago
  Most definitely, but you'll never get a Rudy Giuliani figure elected as mayor of San Francisco, at least not in the foreseeable future. My prediction: sometime in the next 30 years the tech industry will have drifted elsewhere, and San Franscisco will be the new Detroit. Right now it's a mixture of the sublime and the awful, but the sublime can always pack up and move to Portland/Austin/Seattle.
  - stretchwithme 16y ago
    Most of what is sublime about San Francisco can't move. But you're right. People in San Francisco don't seem to value public order enough to take the actions required to establish it.
mturmon 16y ago
The LAPD has a much more informative interface http://www.lapdcrimemaps.org/ http://www.lapdcrimemaps.org/ which separates out crime by types. You can clearly see patterns such as GTA's (car theft) along major streets in Hollywood.
arethuza 16y ago
About 10 years ago I had to go to SF for a week at short notice and left the booking of the hotel to our office manager - big mistake. It was on Geary, and a bit of a dive. First thing that surprised me was when I got into the taxi at the airport and the driver asked "Do you really want to go there?". Next sign that things were not too good was when the chap at reception said - "Do not walk along Geary to get to Union square, walk two blocks up the hill, along and back down to Union square. Of course, late one night I decided to walk directly back, after all how can it be (feeling reasonably safe going out in Glasgow - which is practically a war zone late at night). I only did this once - getting a taxi back after that! Turns out the hotel I was staying in is right in the orange zone there.
- nailer 16y ago
  I stayed in a Youth Hostel right in Tenderloin. The crack dealers I met were pretty much only interested in you if you were either interested in buying crack, or were obviously scared of them (at which point they'd make fun of you - hey I would too). The big surprise for me was how dirty downtown San Francisco was compared to LA. I'd never seen someone actually take a dump in the middle of a city sidewalk, or piss a level down into a train station before SF, and I haven't seen it since. My Full House illusions were well and truly shattered.
  - arethuza 16y ago
    I asked the taxi driver on the way to the airport if things were always like that and he gave an explanation about adjacent police districts taking it in turns to move these folks from one district to another - apparently this had just happened so things were a bit more lively than normal. I learned the lesson and booked my own hotel the nice time I visited - stayed somewhere very nice right next to Union Square. :-)

105 points by ericd 16y ago

ericd 16y ago

This is a new visualization layer on PadMapper (an apartment hunting site) which shows the relative frequency of crime in different areas of San Francisco. It's not differentiated between nonviolent crime and violent crime currently (should be at some point). Red is bad, green is good, and nothing means very little crime reported for that area (even better than green within the bounds of SF, simply no data outside).

pavel_lishin 16y ago
It would be nice if you could filter by the type of crime, not even necessarily violent crime. I might care if someone's selling heroin outside my door, or cars are being stolen, but probably wouldn't care if prostitutes are running about or dogs are unleashed.
- ericd 16y ago
  Good point. It currently needs to be precomputed as images, so it's hard to make it customizable, but it probably makes sense to make a category of unsavory crimes. I would assume that most people dislike living near the same types of crime.
  - bkrausz 16y ago
    How are you precomputing the images? I thought GMaps provided a way to input data and get a heatmap, but apparently I'm mistaken.
    - ericd 16y ago
      I couldn't find anything to that effect, so I wrote custom scripts. Basically, it creates an image pixel by pixel, with the pixel value corresponding to the crime density of that chunk of the map, blows it up, smooths it with a Gaussian kernel, and then uses some GIS tools to warp it and chop it up into tiles for different zoom levels.
    - dzuc 16y ago
      They do if you're using Fusion Tables: http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/javascript/overlays.html#FusionTablesHeatmaps http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/javascript/ov...
- antongm 16y ago
  Personally, I'd be ok with pot and coke, but not heroin or meth. Also, preferably decent-looking prostitutes, not any of those skeezy ones you see outside the 16th street BART. Yeah, I think this needs a drugs checkbox selector widget, just like padmapper itself.
niekmaas 16y ago
That's an interesting feature for an apartment hunting site. However I think you have to add some information like the time-interval this goes back to. If it's only for a couple of days the statistic might be full of relative false-positives and false-negatives.
- ericd 16y ago
  Ah yeah, I should specify that. The data window is the past 58 weeks or so.

dongle 16y ago

Wow, this is excellent. I'm looking at moving to San Francisco later this year and this is such important information. I knew that places like the Tenderloin were dangerous, but there's an unexpected hotspot in the middle of the Mission that I know to avoid now. Thanks.

ericd 16y ago
Cool. It's available on PadMapper itself as an overlay, so you can see where the apartment listings sit on the crime map. It's a bit buried - have to maximize Filters and then Super Secret Advanced Features.

klochner 16y ago

No luck getting the presidio data?

ericd 16y ago
That's very likely just a function of population density - this is raw crime density by land area. EDIT: There's a crime density cutoff below which areas are blank. Within the bounds of SF, blank means very low crime density.
dougmccune 16y ago
The presidio is actually a government property, so any crime within the presidio is actually a federal crime and is reported differently. Beware of committing any crime there, the consequences are far more drastic.
- ericd 16y ago
  Thanks for clearing that up.

chaostheory 16y ago

So most of Hunter's Point is crime free? Is this data correct?

starkfist 16y ago
I would guess that people just don't call the cops as much in bayview/Hunter's Point.
- chaostheory 16y ago
  Not so sure about that: http://www.crimereports.com/map?search=94124&searchButton.x=0&searchButton.y=0&searchButton=SEARCH http://www.crimereports.com/map?search=94124&searchButto...
ericd 16y ago
This is why I'd like to do violent/nonviolent versions. I've heard it described that the Tenderloin has a lot of non violent crime, and that Hunter's Point has much more violent crime. Ultimately, I'd rather be in the Tenderloin if that's the case. I believe the data is correct, but I'm not sure what the SF police's data policies are. There could be some withholding, etc. The data comes from http://sanfrancisco.crimespotting.org/ http://sanfrancisco.crimespotting.org/.
- arebop 16y ago
  The San Francisco Police link to http://www.crimemapping.com/map/ca/sanfrancisco http://www.crimemapping.com/map/ca/sanfrancisco from their page at http://sf-police.org/index.aspx?page=1618 http://sf-police.org/index.aspx?page=1618 which has some discussion of their data policies.
stellar678 16y ago
Probably the issue is that Hunter's Point has a lower population density than many other parts of the city. The Tenderloin is chock full of huge apartment buildings, SROs, etc... so even if the per-capita crime rate is the same (or lower), the total number of crimes can be much higher.

samps 16y ago

Unrelatedly, PadMapper is excellent (better than other Craigslist mappers I could find): it has a great filtering system, seems to fetch fresh results more often, and can alert you about new places. I found my current place using it.

ericd 16y ago
Thanks :-) Glad it was useful!
AmericanOP 16y ago
I concur. Padmapper gives me a quality of life advantage over my peers since I can find exactly what I want and monitor for deals while they're getting the luck of the draw off CList.

pg 16y ago

This is very interesting. A friend of mine who lived on Frederick St, just a few blocks up the hill from Haight, said that crime was much lower on her block. Her theory was that bad guys didn't like to climb hills. And in fact there seems to be a correlation between altitude and crime rate. There are probably other reasons too. E.g. that the hills are fancier neighborhoods. But her explanation makes sense. If you're walking around looking for someone to rob, why walk up steep hills?

enf 16y ago
Have you seen the one that plots crimes as if they were elevation? http://dougmccune.com/blog/2010/06/05/if-san-francisco-crime-was-elevation/ http://dougmccune.com/blog/2010/06/05/if-san-francisco-crime...
- ericd 16y ago
  Very cool. Apparently prostitution is strikingly localized (which makes sense). It also seems that Hunters Point doesn't have much/any crime represented there either, yet it seems like people think of it as a very high crime area. I wonder why.
  - jberryman 16y ago
    > ...yet it seems like people think of it as a very high crime area. I wonder why. from wikipedia: "Bayview-Hunters Point is predominantly African-American. The neighborhood has a population of 20,322 and is roughly 60% African-American, the highest concentration of that ethnic group in San Francisco." The article on the community is quite lengthy and interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayview-Hunters_Point,_San_Francisco http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayview-Hunters_Point,_San_Fran... I've never lived in San Francisco and don't know whether this community has a bad rep. because it's mostly black or if it really is as crime-ridden as its reputation. I think we can all agree that this kind of data analysis is really important though, to understand where we live and shape public policy.
  - white_eskimo 16y ago

enf 16y ago

If you want more details, sanfrancisco.crimespotting.org has them, or you can download the raw data from datasf.org. The hot spot at 16th Street BART is drug dealers and in practice there is no reason not to go there.

dongle 16y ago
I'm going to have to disagree. Its accessibility via the muni and the bart, combined with the proximity to the hard-drug areas of town means that there are a number of quick and dirty smash-n-grab robberies of transient ne'er-do-wells. Admittedly I'm biased because I experienced a single one of those datapoints first-hand.
- enf 16y ago
  OK, I shouldn't have dismissed it so quickly... there are some real issues there too. But I have spent a lot of time there without worrying about my safety.
ericd 16y ago
Yeah, it's definitely not all dangerous crime. I still wouldn't want to live in a drug dealer hotspot, though...
rdouble 16y ago
I would say the off streets right near the 16th street bart are pretty sketchy. I've seen lots of tweakers and crackheads fighting on Hoff and Capp. A crazy guy smacked me in the head "hit and run" style over there, and a roommate was mugged by 3 guys waiting for him in a car.

steadicat 16y ago

All I knew about SF crime was that the Tenderloin felt quite dodgy when I visited. So I opened the map ready to be suprised. Instead it turns out my feelings were right. Looks like the crime rate in SF is an inverse function of the distance from the Tenderloin.

chaosmachine 16y ago

I can't be the only one who took one look at this and thought: Hey, that's SimCity! http://imgur.com/V2Bvo.png http://imgur.com/V2Bvo.png

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
utexaspunk 16y ago
Looks like the City of San Francisco and I employ similar strategies for fighting crime: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=CW1yGmTpak6DFVJmQAIdKAe0-CkhAGkAbZqFgDH_rXbwZxNQSg&q=jones+%26+eddy+San+Francisco,+CA&sll=37.77965,-122.414228&sspn=0.016332,0.033023&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Jones+St+%26+Eddy+St,+San+Francisco,+California+94102&ll=37.783901,-122.412887&spn=0.008166,0.016512&t=h&z=17&layer=c&cbll=37.783883,-122.412997&panoid=rO4uBWOPetgycW1rNGUFUA&cbp=12,122.62,,0,7.51 http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&#38...
drv 16y ago
That was my thought too - and I'd be curious to see something like SimCity's police station coverage map overlaid on this. It amuses me to imagine the mayor's desk with a selection of these maps, plus a little R/C/I readout.

mikeyk 16y ago

I made CrimeDeskSF (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/crimedesksf/id339706696?mt=8 http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/crimedesksf/id339706696?mt=8) to visualize some of this data on the iPhone, including a mostly-gimmicky-but-kinda-fun augmented reality view (drug bust 100ft away!). I'm using the datasf.org datasets for mine (not sure how they compare to the crimespotting ones, or if they're the same).

donaldc 16y ago

Is this normalized by the population density or foot traffic in an area? If not, it's going to be hard to use to estimate personal risk.

ericd 16y ago
It isn't. My theory is that crime density by land area alone probably gives a decent estimate of how the area feels to live in. IE: if there's an assault or robbery every week in a one block area where you live, it's going to feel like a seedy place to live regardless of your personal risk of being involved in a crime. I doubt there's an objectively right answer as to how to best normalize this - I think it just matters that it be understood by the user what it means. There are a number of ways to normalize it depending on what you care about.

larsalan 16y ago

http://www.floatingsheep.org/2010/06/mapping-crime-in-city-by-bay.html http://www.floatingsheep.org/2010/06/mapping-crime-in-city-b... //related

kgermino 16y ago

Very interesting. I would love to see someone build something similar for other cities, perhaps overlaid with Points of Interest and mass transit lines. I think it could be made to be useful for tourists and people who are new to an area. However even if it can't be made into a usable product it'd be very interesting to see.

ericd 16y ago
I used to have markers representing high-rated yelp locations on PadMapper, but they weren't too happy about having their data cached (which is necessary in order to make it smooth), so now it has to be pulled manually by the user. Transit lines are something that should go on PadMapper at some point. I hope Google opens up their transit layer sooner rather than later.

stretchwithme 16y ago

that is excellent. There's a 20 block area that is the reddest zone in the city and my guess is that's the Tenderloin. I wonder what impact an intense cleaning would have on the crime rate there. And enforcement of simple things like public urination laws. And maybe some decent bathrooms. I recall the kind of things New York did to restore a sense of order. Malcolm Gladwell talked about them in the Tipping Point. Surely similar measures would improve the crime situation in SF.

hugh3 16y ago
Most definitely, but you'll never get a Rudy Giuliani figure elected as mayor of San Francisco, at least not in the foreseeable future. My prediction: sometime in the next 30 years the tech industry will have drifted elsewhere, and San Franscisco will be the new Detroit. Right now it's a mixture of the sublime and the awful, but the sublime can always pack up and move to Portland/Austin/Seattle.
- stretchwithme 16y ago
  Most of what is sublime about San Francisco can't move. But you're right. People in San Francisco don't seem to value public order enough to take the actions required to establish it.

mturmon 16y ago

The LAPD has a much more informative interface http://www.lapdcrimemaps.org/ http://www.lapdcrimemaps.org/ which separates out crime by types. You can clearly see patterns such as GTA's (car theft) along major streets in Hollywood.

arethuza 16y ago

About 10 years ago I had to go to SF for a week at short notice and left the booking of the hotel to our office manager - big mistake. It was on Geary, and a bit of a dive. First thing that surprised me was when I got into the taxi at the airport and the driver asked "Do you really want to go there?". Next sign that things were not too good was when the chap at reception said - "Do not walk along Geary to get to Union square, walk two blocks up the hill, along and back down to Union square. Of course, late one night I decided to walk directly back, after all how can it be (feeling reasonably safe going out in Glasgow - which is practically a war zone late at night). I only did this once - getting a taxi back after that! Turns out the hotel I was staying in is right in the orange zone there.

nailer 16y ago
I stayed in a Youth Hostel right in Tenderloin. The crack dealers I met were pretty much only interested in you if you were either interested in buying crack, or were obviously scared of them (at which point they'd make fun of you - hey I would too). The big surprise for me was how dirty downtown San Francisco was compared to LA. I'd never seen someone actually take a dump in the middle of a city sidewalk, or piss a level down into a train station before SF, and I haven't seen it since. My Full House illusions were well and truly shattered.
- arethuza 16y ago
  I asked the taxi driver on the way to the airport if things were always like that and he gave an explanation about adjacent police districts taking it in turns to move these folks from one district to another - apparently this had just happened so things were a bit more lively than normal. I learned the lesson and booked my own hotel the nice time I visited - stayed somewhere very nice right next to Union Square. :-)