PORTLAND, Ore. — The two candidates for Multnomah County District Attorney, incumbent Mike Schmidt and challenger Nathan Vasquez, met last week for a debate ahead of the May 21 election. During the back-and-forth, Vasquez at one point asserted that Portland has seen more homicides so far this year than Seattle and San Francisco combined, repeating a point that his campaign has repeatedly raised in ads.
"We're in a situation where right now, as we sit here today — this year, to date — we have more homicides than Seattle and San Francisco combined. That's a terrible place to be," he said.
KGW viewer Robert McGuirk reached out to contest that claim, noting that Portland did not have more homicides than Seattle and San Francisco combined in 2023 or 2022, and accusing the Vasquez campaign of cherry-picking the date range in order to make the comparison more unfavorable to Portland.
THE QUESTION
Has Portland had more homicides than Seattle and San Francisco combined so far in 2024?
THE SOURCES
THE ANSWER
Yes, Portland has had more homicides so far this year than Seattle and San Francisco combined, based on police data from each city for the first three months of the year.
The viewer's counterpoint is also correct: Portland did not exceed the combined total of the other two cities in 2023 or any prior year on record, so the first three months of 2024 have been unique in that respect. But Vasquez only spoke about 2024 so far, so his claim as stated in the debate is accurate.
WHAT WE FOUND
The Portland Police Bureau, Seattle Police Department and San Francisco Police Department all maintain online dashboards that track crime statistics and totals on a monthly basis, and those sources do show that Portland had more homicides than the other two cities combined as of March 31, the most recent date for which all three cities have published data.
Portland had 22 homicides in those first three months, while Seattle had 9 and San Francisco had 8, for a combined total of 17.
Those totals would seem to suggest that Seattle and San Francisco are both on track to see significant declines in their homicide counts this year, while Portland is on track to remain in the same ballpark as the last few years. But PPB data from previous years shows that the homicide count can fluctuate significantly from month to month, so a given three-month period isn't necessarily a good indicator of how the full year will play out.
The data also shows that Portland has not exceeded the combined total of the other two cities in any prior full year, although the police dashboards do show that the Rose City has seen the highest annual homicide count of the three since 2020, which is a sharp change from where things previously stood.
The Seattle dashboard data goes back through more years than the Portland and San Francisco dashboards, but the gaps can be filled in from other sources such as a recent PPB report, SFPD CompStat reports and news coverage in San Francisco that cited earlier police data, creating a comparison of the three cities dating back to 2009.
For reference, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates Portland's population at about 635,000 as of 2022, compared with about 749,000 for Seattle and about 808,000 for San Francisco.
San Francisco consistently had the highest annual number of homicides from 2009 through 2019, typically ranging from around 40 to 60 per year. Portland and Seattle were practically in lockstep during that time period, with both cities hovering at around 20 homicides per year and neither city consistently worse off.
Portland and Seattle saw their counts increase after 2016 while San Francisco's rate declined, putting all three in the same ballpark by 2019. All three then saw a jump in 2020, but Portland's spike continued for another two years to hit a high of 97 in 2022, while San Francisco leveled off at 56. Seattle fell back to 43 in 2021 but then rose for the next two years.