San Francisco

Public Safety

In 1995 San Francisco had a total crime index figure of 8,190 crimes reported to police per 100,000 residents. A total of 1,737 reports were violent crimes (murder, 17; rape, 69; robbery, 653; and aggravated assault, 998), and 6,713 were property crimes (burglary, 965; larceny, 4,625; and motor vehicle theft, 1,123).

In May 1999, the city of San Francisco, together with three other California municipalities and two counties, sued gun manufacturers for promoting the illegal sale of guns that are ultimately used to commit crimes. Three industry trade associations and 28 gun makers were named in the suit, which charged them with creating an illegal secondary market for guns and deliberately producing enough guns to perpetuate it; designing guns to make them attractive to criminals; falsely advertising the safety of their products; evading state and federal gun control laws; and selling defective and unsafe weapons. The gun-industry suit follows the precedent set in 1996 when San Francisco became the first city in the United States to sue the tobacco industry, also under California's unfair business practices law. Under the terms of the 1998 settlement of that suit, California became the only state in which cities were to receive direct compensation from the tobacco industry.