The pandemic changed crime in San Francisco. Except for motor vehicle theft, it’s getting back to normal.

Since 2020, many events have shaken up San Francisco’s crime landscape. Progressive District Attorney Chesa Boudin took office, got recalled, and was replaced by former employee Brooke Jenkins (who supported the recall). The SFPD experienced attrition and recruitment issues. But none of these events had even close to as significant an impact on crime in the city as the pandemic.

Starting in March 2020, when COVID-19 lockdowns began, crime patterns in the city went haywire. Reported assaults, larceny thefts and robberies declined, while burglaries and motor vehicle thefts soared.

At their peak, in the second quarter of 2020, burglary rates were more than 60% higher than in the first quarter of 2018. Auto thefts were up 80% in the fourth quarter of that year. But assaults, robberies and larcenies went down by 21%, 38% and 46%, respectively.

As of the end of the third quarter of 2022, robberies and larcenies are still slightly below pre-pandemic rates, while assaults and burglaries are slightly above. These crime types are approaching the normal range of quarterly rates seen in 2018 and 2019, before the pandemic began. But motor vehicle thefts have stayed high.

These trends refer to overall citywide crime patterns, but previous Chronicle analyses have found that the pandemic has impacted crime rates differently depending on the neighborhood. For example, wealthier neighborhoods were more likely to experience spikes in money-motivated crimes than lower-income ones.

It’s also important to keep in mind that while police data can be useful in measuring trends, it measures only crimes reported by(and to) police, and thus may not accurately measure crime rates, particularly for lower-level crimes like petty theft.

Changes to the homicide rate are harder to measure on a quarterly basis, because so few happen. But so far it appears that San Francisco’s homicide trend remains different from the rest of the nation; that is, while homicides did increase slightly since the beginning of the pandemic, they did not increase on par with other major cities.

In 2021, San Francisco reported 56 homicides — an increase from 2018 and 2019, when it experienced two of the lowest homicide years on record since 1985(and the lowest rates by population), but the same number as 2017.

As of the end of the second quarter of 2022, the most recent quarter with complete data available, San Francisco’s year-to-date homicide count was similar to that in recent years. In contrast, neighboring Oakland has seen a dramatic spike to its homicide rate that has continued into 2022.

But like other parts of California and the U.S. overall, San Francisco has continued to see a highly elevated rate of motor vehicle thefts. The city reported nearly 1,850 auto thefts in the third quarter of 2022, 42% more than the approximately 1,300 thefts reported in the third quarter of 2018.

The neighborhood that saw the biggest increase in auto thefts was Bayview-Hunters Point, which also had the highest rate before the pandemic began. Only one neighborhood — the Financial District, which also saw its commuter population plummet — had a decreased auto theft rate.

San Francisco’s auto-theft increase is even higher than in other California cities. Of the 27 law enforcement agencies in the state that reported at least 1,000 auto thefts in 2018, the average increase between 2019 and 2021 was 20%. San Francisco’s auto theft rates increased by over 40% over that same period, according to data from the California Department of Justice.

Researchers in Chicago have found that increases in carjacking (a subset of auto theft) were likely initially driven by young people, particularly those who lived in areas with poor internet access and school attendance, after schools shut down and the pandemic led to layoffs and economic struggles for many lower-income families.

Additionally, pandemic-era supply chain disruptions have constrained the supply of new cars, driving used car prices to record highs. As of August, used cars are selling for 50% more than they were when the pandemic began in March 2020, according to the Consumer Price Index.

“Given (the) dramatic increase in used car values, that’s a possible factor contributing to the increases,” Magnus Lofstrom, senior researcher at the Public Policy Institute of California, previously told The Chronicle.

The role of economics in San Francisco’s theft patterns are clear when comparing rates of different types of car-related theft.

Car break-ins plummeted at the start of the pandemic, and remain a bit lower than their pre-pandemic rates, though increases to in-person work and tourism have meant more opportunities for theft and subsequently more reported cases.

Meanwhile, thefts of cars and license plates (often committed by people who have also stolen cars) have increased. Incidents described as theft of “auto parts,” such as catalytic converters and other high-value parts, have skyrocketed. From the first three quarters of 2019 to 2022, auto-part thefts increased by more than 400%, from 42 to 221 incidents.

While San Francisco’s crime rates have many influences, it’s unlikely that the city’s controversial recent district attorneys have had much of an impact, as previous Chronicle reporting has shown. The dramatic changes to San Francisco’s crime patterns began in March and April, several months after Boudin took office and right as the pandemic began. The appointment of Jenkins, Boudin’s successor, appears to have been followed by a spike in reported drug crime but otherwise little change.

Additionally, a preliminary study by crime economics researcher Jennifer Doleac found that the election of reform-minded prosecutors, like Boudin, did not have a “statistically significant” impact on crime rates.

Susie Neilson(she/her) is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: susie.neilson@sfchronicle.com

Susie Neilson is a data reporter for The San Francisco Chronicle. Previously, she was a science fellow at Business Insider, covered COVID-19 and criminal justice for KQED and worked as a private investigator at the Mintz Group. Her work has also appeared in NPR, Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting and The New Yorker, among other publications. She is a 2019 graduate of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, where she studied investigative and multimedia reporting.

Read more about the data team and their work.