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What’s amazing is that this shape was drawn by the city when they defined an “Urban Renewal Area.†The shape is available to download from the city’s GIS catalog. That shape was defined in 2002 as part of a federal Housing and Urban Development (HUD) program. One of the key goals in targeting that areas was to reduce crime. The following paragraph defines one of the five stated goals when the area was defined:
Reducing Crime
The City of San Francisco has a crime reduction strategy that is a multi-layered approach addressing: general crime prevention education; programs targeting at-risk youth (prevention); diversion programs; programs targeting incarcerated individuals to reduce recidivism; and post-incarceration programs to reduce recidivism.
That was almost 8 years ago, but the crime data in the image above is as recent as last week. There are of course many ways to interpret this data. It could indicate that the city is not making much progress reducing drug crimes within the Urban Renewal Area. Or it could mean that the city is actively targeting the area (which will lead to higher arrests) and that the indication of higher concentrations in the Urban Development Area is a good thing.
70% of all narcotics crimes occur in the Urban Renewal Area
Again, please keep in mind that the data only shows where the police are arresting people (see notes section below). And this is only one slice of time, from July 25 to September 20, so we don’t have the previous historical data to see any kinds of long term historical trends.
