So here's the numbers: in the three years that Gavin has been Mayor and Heather Fong the Police Commissioner, San Francisco has averaged 90 homicides and 23.5 homicide arrests a year. That's about 25 percent. For comparison, under Willie and his Police Commissioner, Fred Lau, there was an average homicide rate of 65 homicides a year with thirty-two arrests for homicide. That's a little under 50% percent.

Okay, so here's where we bust out our High School remedial math class to give you a visual low down of how this thing would work. If one were to look at this in chart form, one line would be shooting up to the upper right hand corner while another line would be shooting down to the lower-right hand corner. We think the technical mathematical term for this would be "not very good."

Also, neighborhoods that have seen new crime fighting initiatives introduced-- Bayview, Western Addition and Mission districts-- have had the number of homicides remain constant or have increased. Similarly, neighborhoods that haven't been the focus of police crime fighting measures have had a decrease in violent crime.

Okay, in Gavin and Heather's defense, murder rates are up everywhere, not just in San Francisco. And the number of homicides did drop from 2005 to 2006. It's just that those numbers are still much higher than before. Also, not-so violent crimes like robbery and burglaries are down.

It's things like this that are the reasons for all the verbal noogies between the Board of Supervisors, the SFPD, and the Mayor. In fact, we went to do a search through SFist for stories about said conflict and got so many that we decided to not link to any of them because we're lazy. But you remember when the police showed up wearing t-shirts making fun of Chris Daly? Good times...good times. Anyways, the Examiner, however, does provide a decent recap of anti-crime measures the city has been trying as well as the battles between Gavin and the Supes.