Three takeaways from our investigation into SFPD’s rape case crisis 61%
By Anya Schultz72%
7/20/2026, 1:00:00 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 17 faulty reasoning types, including Anecdotal, Ambiguity (Equivocation), and Appeal to Authority, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 19.6% saturation with 136 hits. Analysis detected 776 faulty-reasoning hits from 695 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 57.6% and a BS Rank of 61% (7,415 of 19,034 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 61.00% of the article peer group.
The Standard’s investigation into how the San Francisco Police Department handles rape cases revealed that a historically understaffed investigative unit is pursuing fewer cases than it has in years.
While the public was told the city’s rape-kit scandal had been cleaned up, another problem persists: Alleged rapists are rarely arrested, and alleged rapes are even more rarely prosecuted.
1.
Reports and medical diagnoses of rape are rising, but fewer cops are investigating those crimes.
In 2025, the San Francisco Women Against Rape crisis line received a total of 2,420 calls from around 1,100 people — a 15% increase from the year prior.
The number of adults who sought medical care after sexual abuse has roughly doubled over the past decade, according to the San Francisco Department of Public Health.
Meanwhile, the SFPD’s Special Victims Unit, which investigates rape and other crimes against the city’s most vulnerable, has been hollowed out at more than twice the rate of the rest of the shrinking department.
In 2019, the SVU had 60 investigators.
Today there are 31, the smallest the unit has been since at least 2012, a year after it was formed.
The pool responsible for all domestic violence, sexual assault, child abuse, and elder abuse cases comprises 22 investigators.
Last year, their cases required more than 60,000 hours of work, according to the SFPD’s methodology — twice as much as the pool can handle.
2.
With fewer investigators, police rely on victims to extract confessions from their alleged rapists.
In interviews with The Standard and in complaints filed with the Department of Police Accountability, victims and advocates described a similar playbook for cases of alleged sexual assault: a victim reported a rape, an investigator took a report and asked if there was other evidence, then suggested a recorded phone call in which the victim tries to draw a confession from their alleged attacker.
If the victim is unsuccessful in this “pretext call” — or declines to make one — the case is often marked as inactive.
The SVU’s heavy reliance on pretext calls is documented in complaints to the DPA from sexual assault victims whose cases were closed following unsuccessful call attempts.
The department responded that pretext calls are “extremely common” and “a technique they often use” when investigating alleged sexual assaults.
The SFPD declined to comment on its use of pretext calls or other investigative techniques in sexual assault cases.
“Disclosing these methods publicly can jeopardize current and future investigations,” spokesperson Evan Sernoffsky said.
3.
The SFPD closes rape cases at a rate less than half the state average and about half the national average.
According to the California Department of Justice, San Francisco’s rape case clearance rate has dropped sharply over the last decade.
In 2015, the county cleared 38% of rape cases.
By 2023, the rate had fallen below 10%.
Last year, San Francisco cleared 14% of reported rapes, according to the FBI.
The city’s clearance rate is half the national rate, well below the California average, and a third of the rate of Denver, a city with twice as many reported rapes.
Over the past five years, San Francisco cleared rape cases at the lowest rate of any large California county.
A cleared case can mean that the suspect was arrested or that the case was closed for another reason, such as being referred to another jurisdiction or because the victim declined to proceed.
The SFPD rarely arrests anyone for a sex crime.
Over the past four years, the department has arrested an average of 34 sexual assault suspects per year, according to public records.
Those cases almost always go to prosecutors.
That near-perfect referral rate suggests a higher bar for making any arrest, not better investigating.
In 2025, records show the district attorney’s office was presented with 52 rape cases and filed charges in 37.
Just five rape cases went to trial in the city in 2025.
The SFPD disputes this analysis.
“The SFPD has the same legal standard as every law enforcement agency in California,” said Sernoffsky.
“We work closely with prosecutors to ensure justice is served in every case.”
Analysis
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