SAN FRANCISCO—Last week, news reporters began reflecting on the 2016 homicide rate in San Francisco, comparing it to those of previous years as well as other metropolitan cities in the United States.

On December 29, there were 57 recorded San Francisco homicides in 2016. However, a double shooting that occurred in the Tenderloin neighborhood that evening (which took the lives of 39 year-old Laurice Barrett on the 200 block of Golden Gate Avenue, and 39 year-old Mathew Fiame on the 200 block of Valencia Street) brought the number up to 59.

The 2016 homicide count is about 7 percent higher than that of 2015, whose count was 53. The SFPD reported the following rates for San Francisco murders in previous years (as noted by SFist):

  • 45 in 2014
  • 48 in 2013
  • 68 in 2012
  • 50 in 2011

Homicide rates in the past five years have decreased since those in years prior to 2009 (during which there were 45 homicides). SFist reported 96 in 2005, 100 in 2007, and 98 in 2008.

Reports also compared other metropolitan cities’ 2016 homicide rates to that of San Francisco. There were 334 in New York (according to the New York Daily News), 294 in Los Angeles (according to the Los Angeles Times), and 762 in Chicago (the year’s highest count, as well as the highest rate in two decades, and a 57 percent increase from 2015’s rate).

In September 2016, Mercury News posted a list of recorded homicide victims (and incidents) in San Francisco and surrounding Bay Area cities.