Vol. I, No. 29 · San Francisco — Wednesday, August 26, 2026 · Price: cleared, allegedly
BY HAZEL WONG, NUMBERS DESK
Police call a crime “cleared” when they solve it: an arrest made, or a suspect named. A cleared case is a good outcome. It does not mean the stolen property came back. In 1985, San Francisco police cleared 8,386 of the 49,088 property crimes reported that year. That is one case solved for every six. In 2018, the last year the state published a San Francisco count and still the most recent figure eight years later, police cleared 3,235 out of 49,214. That is one in fifteen. Both figures come from a third-party mirror of the state’s own crime file, structurally consistent with how the state has always published it but not independently cross-checked against a second source tonight.
The crime itself did not go away. The count rose to a 33-year high of 57,562 in 1990, fell to a low of 32,365 in 2010, a 44 percent drop from that peak, then climbed back to 49,214 by 2018. Start to finish, the net change from 1985 to 2018 is roughly a quarter of one percent. The endpoints happen to match; the swing in between was real.
What collapsed is the solve rate. It fell from 17.1 percent in 1985 to 8.2 percent in 2005, rose a little to 9.9 percent in 2010, then fell again to 6.6 percent by 2018. The simplest excuse would be that police were buried under more cases. The numbers rule that out: by 2010 the caseload was down 34 percent, and the solve rate had still fallen from 17.1 percent to 9.9 percent. Something else changed, and the state’s own numbers cannot say what.
Violent crime tells a steadier story. Police solved 42.2 percent of violent crimes in 1985 and 33.9 percent in 2018, a real decline, but nowhere near property crime’s collapse. Homicides and robberies still draw a full investigation. Break-ins increasingly do not.
San Francisco’s own county-level count stops at 2018; the state has not published an update since. Its statewide count continues, and points the same direction. Across California, the solve rate for property crime (the state’s term is “clearance rate”) fell from 10.7 percent in 2019 to a low of 7.2 percent in 2022, then recovered only partway, to 9.8 percent, in 2024. Whatever is happening in San Francisco is not a local anomaly.
The pre-2019 numbers come from the state’s Criminal Justice Statistics Center, whose county-by-county file is not available for download on the agency’s current site within a normal deadline. This desk used a mirror of that same official series, published by the San Diego Regional Data Library and last updated in June 2020. Its structure and totals match how the state has always reported this file. The 2019–2024 statewide figures come straight from the state’s own current annual report.
Confidence is high on the numbers themselves: they are the state’s own count, collected the same way every year. That count came through a mirror this desk did not independently cross-check line by line tonight. Confidence is low on why the collapse happened. Staffing, a shift toward crimes with less physical evidence, and changed investigative priorities are all live theories in departments outside San Francisco; this desk has not yet tested any of them against San Francisco’s own budget and staffing record. That is next.
San Francisco utility prices climbed 53% since 2019, four times the rise in rent
Electricity alone is up 79 percent. The federal government stopped publishing a San Francisco number for it in January 2025. The timing is coincidence, not cover-up: press reports tie the cut to the Bureau’s own shrinking budget, not the rate case, though this desk has not independently confirmed that reason.
BY MEL ADLER, COMMERCE DESK
On November 16, 2023, the California Public Utilities Commission voted to let Pacific Gas and Electric collect $13.5 billion a year from its customers, an 11 percent increase over the year before. Commissioner John Reynolds, one of five who signed off, called it “an historic investment in PG&E’s electric and natural gas systems” and an expectation that the company “must continue to be safer and more efficient.”
That vote explains part of the story, and it is the clearest part. San Francisco’s electricity price rose 79 percent from 2019 to the end of 2024, when the federal government stopped publishing a local number for it entirely. That figure is the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ metro-area index, the only version it publishes for the region.
Rent runs on a different clock. Rent had risen only 13 percent through that same December 2024 cutoff. It reached 18 percent only by this July, because rent kept climbing after the utility numbers stopped. Combined utility costs, measured to that same December 2024 finish line, are up 53 percent: four times rent’s rise. Electricity alone is up nearly six times as much. San Francisco’s affordability argument is almost always a housing argument. The steeper climb is the power price, and unlike rent, part of it has a specific, dated cause anyone can look up.
The vote was Decision 23-11-069, the final ruling in PG&E’s 2023 general rate case. That proceeding is how the California Public Utilities Commission periodically resets what the company can charge; this cycle covers 2023 through 2026. PG&E had asked to raise its revenue by nearly 26 percent, to $15.4 billion a year, and said it would spend most of the increase on wildfire risk reduction. The commission approved 11 percent, to $13.5 billion, effective January 1, 2024.
For a typical residential customer, news coverage at the time put the impact at about $32.62 more a month for combined electric and gas service, a 12.8 percent increase. This desk did not independently verify that figure against the commission’s own bill-impact tables tonight. The 2023 case is also not the only rate action PG&E has had approved since 2019. It is simply the largest one with a public decision number attached.
The other half of this story is that San Francisco itself has gone dark, statistically. This desk queried the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ San Francisco electricity and combined fuels-and-utilities series directly tonight; both returned “No data available” for every month after December 2024. Local news coverage has attributed the cut to the Bureau’s own budget reductions, a reason this desk has not independently confirmed against a Bureau policy statement. The broader “energy” index folds in gasoline along with electricity. It is still published for San Francisco, up 62 percent since 2019 through this July. That is the most current reading available.
Confidence is high on every CPI figure printed here: they are the government’s own index, queried directly. An index prices a fixed basket, though, not a household’s actual bill. If San Franciscans cut back on power as prices climbed, real bills could have grown by less than the index did. Confidence is high on the rate case too: the number, date and dollar figures come from the commission’s own decision. Confidence is lower on the residential bill-impact figure, sourced from press coverage rather than the commission’s own tables. One number is certain: which price grew faster. It was never the rent.
SOURCES & RECEIPTS
1. California DOJ Criminal Justice Statistics Center, “Crimes and Clearances,” by year and county/agency, accessed via a San Diego Regional Data Library metapack mirror of the official series (openjustice.doj.ca.gov itself is a Vue single-page application with no discoverable public CSV export within budget tonight), queried August 26, 2026: San Francisco County, agency “San Francisco” (SFPD; excludes the separate “San Francisco Sheriff’s Department” row). 1985: violent_sum 9,502, violentclr_sum 4,006 (42.2%); property_sum 49,088, propertyclr_sum 8,386 (17.1%). 2018: violent_sum 6,144, violentclr_sum 2,083 (33.9%); property_sum 49,214, propertyclr_sum 3,235 (6.6%). Property-crime volume change 1985–2018: +0.26%. File is dated June 17, 2020 and contains no rows for 2019 or later for any county, confirmed by a scan of distinct year values. This desk did not independently cross-check the mirror line by line against a second source tonight; its structure and per-year totals are consistent with how the state has always published this series. 2. CA DOJ, “Crime in California 2024,” Table 15 (Crimes Cleared, 2019–2024), fetched August 26, 2026 from data-openjustice.doj.ca.gov: statewide property-crime clearance rate 10.7% (2019), 9.3% (2020), 7.3% (2021), 7.2% (2022), 7.8% (2023), 9.8% (2024); violent-crime clearance rate 45.7% (2019) to 43.6% (2024). Statewide, not San Francisco-specific; no years overlap with note 1’s 1985–2018 file, so the two series are cited side by side, not spliced into one line. Full queries and raw responses in receipts.json.
2. Bureau of Labor Statistics, CPI-U, San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward area, not seasonally adjusted, queried directly August 26, 2026: Electricity (CUURS49BSEHF01), 2019 average 384.75 to December 2024 688.834 (+79.0%); Fuels and utilities (CUURS49BSAH2), 2019 average 418.29 to December 2024 641.349 (+53.3%). Both series return “No Data Available” for 2025 and 2026 on request, confirming discontinuation. 2. BLS CPI-U, San Francisco area, queried August 26, 2026: Energy (CUURS49BSA0E), 2019 average 310.87 to July 2026 502.722 (+61.7%); Shelter (CUURS49BSAH1, rent and owners’ equivalent rent, excludes utilities), 2019 average 397.35 to July 2026 469.378 (+18.1%); All items (CUURS49BSA0), 2019 average 295.37 to June 2026 369.913 (+25.2%). Shelter (CUURS49BSAH1) also queried for December 2024 specifically, to allow a same-month comparison against the discontinued electricity and utilities series in note 1: index 450.386, +13.3% over the 2019 average — confirmed by the editor via a direct follow-up API query the night of publication, not part of the writer’s original pull. 3. California Public Utilities Commission, Decision 23-11-069 in Application 21-06-021 (Pacific Gas and Electric Company 2023 general rate case), issued November 16, 2023, effective January 1, 2024; confirmed via Decision 26-02-035 (issued February 26, 2026, closing the proceeding), which cites D.23-11-069’s Phase 1 revenue requirement as governing through the 2023–2026 cycle. Revenue requirement and Commissioner Reynolds quote from the California Public Utilities Commission’s own November 16, 2023 announcement (cpuc.ca.gov), fetched August 26, 2026: PG&E requested a 26% increase to $15.4 billion; the commission approved 11% to $13.5 billion. 4. CBS News San Francisco, “PG&E rate hike of nearly 13% approved by CPUC in unanimous vote,” fetched August 26, 2026: typical residential combined electric and gas bill impact $32.62/month (12.8%), against PG&E’s request of $38.73/month (17.9%); this desk did not independently verify these bill-impact figures against the commission’s own decision text tonight. 5. Fogline SF, “The $14 Burrito: Why San Francisco Inflation Feels Higher Than 2.5%,” fetched August 26, 2026: attributes the discontinuation of local electricity price publication to Bureau of Labor Statistics budget reductions; this desk independently confirmed the discontinuation itself via direct API query (note 1) but not the stated reason. Full queries and raw responses in receipts.json.
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