Henry Grabar

2025 will go down as one of the safest years in our city's history.

For the first time in five years, San Franciscans believe we're moving in the right direction.

There's a new report from the Council on Criminal Justice that reports the U.S.

homicide rate was lower in 2025 in 35 cities than it has been in more than a century.

I think the most likely explanation for why this is happening now is that there was an enormous amount of federal funding sent to cities and towns over the post-pandemic period, which they were able to invest not just in public safety programs, but also in community infrastructure and housing and stuff like that.

And I think that has probably had a sizable effect on community well-being.

The fact is, when we see declines that are this widespread across this many cities, and we know that the police are understaffed in many places and nationally, it cannot just be the result of this or that amazing work by a single police force.

The mayor told me that it's in part because they have this ARPA-funded violence interrupter program, which reaches out to people who they think are likely to commit crimes and sort of intervenes and tries to get them access to public services.

The city has also spent a lot of money on housing, on infrastructure, on public services, and that those things are likely also responsible for keeping people safe.

The mayor told me the police alone cannot be responsible for the crime rate in this city.

What's not coming back is this Biden level of stimulus funding that went into shoring up all these public services, violence interrupter programs and so on.

The Trump administration has already cut funding for some of these public safety grants.

And this is the last year that that ARPA money can be spent on initiatives like blight reduction, summer jobs for teenagers and so on.

So if that is, in fact, what has been driving this crime decline down, then we might expect that to reverse as this funding dries up and cities have to make difficult choices about what they want to spend money on.

President Trump was charged because the evidence established that he willfully broke the law, the very laws he took an oath to uphold.

Today on Something You Should Know, if you drink coffee in the morning, you might want to take a whiff of it too. Then, parking your car. Parking has changed the way we live and taken up a lot of our space.

Today on Something You Should Know, if you drink coffee in the morning, you might want to take a whiff of it too. Then, parking your car. Parking has changed the way we live and taken up a lot of our space.

Today on Something You Should Know, if you drink coffee in the morning, you might want to take a whiff of it too. Then, parking your car. Parking has changed the way we live and taken up a lot of our space.

You know, we could pave a small state with the amount of land we have dedicated for parking. There are between four and nine parking spaces per vehicle in this country. There is more space for parking each car than there is for housing each person.

You know, we could pave a small state with the amount of land we have dedicated for parking. There are between four and nine parking spaces per vehicle in this country. There is more space for parking each car than there is for housing each person.