City with more dead than alive has the best theft rate within the Bay Area

The small town of Colma in California is legendary for its cemeteries, the ultimate resting place of newspaper magnates William Randolph Hearst and Charles de Young, jeans manufacturer Levi Strauss, Wild West lawman Wyatt Earp and Baseball Hall of Famers Willie McCovey and Joe DiMaggio.

Although Colma's death toll, at 1.5 million, far exceeds the variety of living residents, tens of 1000’s of tourists flock to the town's bustling Serra and 280 Metro shopping centers and Serramonte Auto Row south of Daly City daily. And that explains one other strange fact: Colma has by far the best crime rate of any city within the Bay Area.

John Munsey, Colma's police chief for nearly 4 years, defends his department by saying that with so few residents, it doesn't take many thefts to drive up the crime rate per 100,000 residents. For this reason, the town's crime rate has often been the best within the region.

“There is no other city with only 1,700 residents but so many newcomers,” Munsey said. Well, actually, the yr is 2020 Census reports lower population of 1,507and that's the number the state Department of Justice uses to calculate the statewide crime rate.

But at a time when a spate of shoplifting incidents blamed on California's recent penalty-softening laws made headlines and led to a vote in November to toughen penalties, Munsey acknowledges that his city has been a goal for thieves.

“Theft and drug crimes have increased since 2014,” Munsey said, referring to the yr voters passed Proposition 47, which reduced penalties for drug and property crimes that were to be barely increased by Proposition 36 on the ballot in November. “The California Police Chiefs Association supported Proposition 36.”

According to the most recent 2023 California Department of Justice According to data, Colma had the best property crime rate per 100,000 residents within the nine Bay Area counties and the third highest for violent crimes. Most of the crimes reported in Colma in 2023 – 996 – were property crimes, a rise of 194 from 2022. The 24 violent crimes in the town last yr were 20 fewer than the yr before.

Examples are frequently posted on the Colma Police Department's Facebook page on “Misdemeanor Mondays” and “Felony Fridays.” Recent entries include: On July 26, a 27-year-old San Francisco woman was charged with stealing $947.36 value of merchandise from a store—a worth slightly below the felony limit set by Proposition 47. On July 26, a 45-year-old San Francisco man was arrested for attempting to buy a automobile at a Colma store using an invalid ID. A number of days later, on July 30, an 18-year-old Oakland man was arrested for stealing $1,844.96 value of belts from a clothing store.

Although the full variety of reported property and violent crimes (1,020) in Colma was lower than other suburbs equivalent to Antioch (4,078), Richmond (4,798), Vallejo (6,095) and Berkeley (7,809), Colma's small population catapulted it to the highest of Bay Area cities when it comes to crime rate per capita.

Across the bay, Emeryville, a city of nearly 13,000, had the region's second-highest property crime rate and fourth-highest violent crime rate. And neighboring Oakland, a city of greater than 440,000, had the best violent crime rate and fourth-highest property crime rate. Both the mayor and district attorney now face recall elections in November.

“The FBI ranks us as one of the most technically dangerous cities due to crime, but Emeryville is only 1.2 square miles,” said Baylee Worthen, police officer and public information officer for the Emeryville Police Department. The city borders Oakland and its population triples throughout the day as people commute to jobs at corporations like Peet's Coffee and Pixar Animation Studios.

This yr, the department began assigning officers regular patrols to scale back officer numbers, Worthen said.

“They are encouraged to get to know the business owners and residents, to get out and walk in the parks and basketball courts in their neighborhoods,” Worthen said. “They learn about crime trends and the problems that are occurring in their respective areas.”

The crime rate across the Bay Area is definitely barely lower in 2023 than it was a decade earlier—Alameda is the one county with the next rate in 2023 than it was in 2013. Most Bay Area cities showed similar patterns. But the crime rate in Colma has quadrupled in a decade, with a pointy increase since 2020.

Colma Chief Munsey attributed the sharp increase partly to a change in reporting protocols and data collection systems that got here with the implementation of California's incident reporting system between 2022 and 2023. San Jose, Oakland, Santa Clara and most other California cities have also made the switch.

Munsey said that under the brand new system, cases by which thieves agreed to return the stolen goods to the retailer after being caught would still be counted as thefts.

“Because we have the two malls that bring in the majority of our theft calls, we've been taking more cases than we used to,” he said. “That could explain the big discrepancy.”

Representatives of the Serra and 280 Metro shopping centers in Colma declined to comment on the crime and theft rates in the town.

Crime data has been factored into the controversy over whether Proposition 47 increased crime. Supporters of the 2014 measure indicate that crime rates in lots of places are lower or little modified than they were a decade ago, while critics argue that the lower penalties have discouraged retailers from reporting thefts and cops from responding.

Whatever the explanation, Munsey says he’s working to bring the theft rate back all the way down to earth.

“We're trying to add more staff, but so far we haven't been able to do that,” Munsey said. “But it's the way we target the criminals by looking at where they are at different times of the day so we can deploy our police officers in a way that will be most effective. We've also been working with our businesses and making sure they're constantly calling us.”

Here is the graph to examine the crime rates within the San Francisco Bay Area counties: