When Gloria left her janitorial shift at a Financial District building in the dark early hours of the morning one day last summer, she quickly walked to her car, parked on a nearly empty street. 

A man walked up behind her and grabbed her in what she describes as a sexual assault. She yelled, turned to face him, and fought back. She doesn’t recall how long the struggle lasted, but it ended when a coworker pulled the man off.

They called the cops, and the man was arrested, says Gloria, who asked to go by her first name and withhold certain details of the attack to protect her safety. Though physically unscathed, she was psychologically and emotionally shaken. 

Like many Latinos in San Francisco, Gloria has a job — a service gig with shifts ending in the dead of night in the heart of the city — that can make her a target. 

Criminologists, community groups, and local politicians say Latinos are more likely to be crime victims in San Francisco for reasons related to their employment, economic status, and linguistic ability.

“Working during off-peak hours … relying on public transit during these vulnerable times, employment in cash-heavy businesses, longer commutes to work on public transit due to housing affordability issues, waiting at isolated transit stops, and working in positions with unpredictable public interactions — all increase your chances of being a crime victim,” said Jillian Turanovic, a criminologist at Colorado State University.

Latinos are more likely than any other ethnic group to fall victim to nonlethal violent crime in San Francisco. 

Though they comprise just 15% of the city’s population, Latinos were victims in roughly 29% of aggravated assaults, 34% of robberies, and 34% of domestic violence incidents reported to the San Francisco Police Department in the first three months of 2025.

The latest SFPD data — released quarterly since 2020 — has consistently shown that Latinos have been the victims of the most violent crimes aside from murder.

Residents in communities where most crime occurs tend to be victims of those crimes.

“We often think that those who experience crime and people who are accused of crime are two separate categories,” said Carina Gallo, who chairs the criminal justice studies department at San Francisco State University, “but in reality they are from the same communities.”

An example is the 16th Street and Valencia Street corridor, which is bustling with restaurants and nightlife. Lariza Dugan-Cuadra, executive director of the social service nonprofit Carecen, said Latino workers in the area have told her they’ve been targeted for their cash tips by thieves late at night.

High rates of crime against Latinos have become especially pertinent as the Trump administration targets immigrants and the cities that try to shield them from federal deportation efforts. In San Francisco, out of a total Latino population of more than 250,000, nearly half are immigrants, and a third are undocumented. 

Advocates say the data on Latino crime victims highlights the need for sanctuary policies, which encourage noncitizens to report crimes by preventing local cops from enforcing federal immigration laws.

“It shows the importance of sanctuary,” former Mission district Supervisor David Campos said. “If you move away from sanctuary, it will mean that the victims of crime will be less willing to actually engage law enforcement.” 

SFPD spokesperson Evan Sernoffsky said the department takes all crime seriously. “We want members of our Latino community — and all communities — to know that we investigate all crimes and advocate for every victim,” he said. 

Such assurances may ring hollow, especially in light of revelations about outside law enforcement agencies that illegally searched SFPD surveillance data on behalf of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.  

No matter what’s driving the trend, the political climate has made matters worse, according to San Francisco Democratic Central Committee member John Avalos.

“The immigration dragnet across the country creates real harmful conditions for the Latino community, who feel very vulnerable right now,” he said.

When it comes to homicides, however, an even smaller part of the city’s population is most likely to be victimized.

Black men accounted for two of the city’s four homicides in the first three months of the year, according to SFPD data. The other victims were Asian and Latino. There were 18 homicides this year through September, a 25% decline from the same nine-month period in 2024. 

Nationally, crimes against ethnic minorities are less likely to be solved. In 2020, CBS analyzed FBI crime data to find that police throughout the U.S. were 28% more likely to solve a case in which a white person is murdered than one with a Black victim.

A couple of years before that, a Washington Post analysis of about 50,000 homicides in the U.S. found that police made an arrest in 63% of cases with white victims, vs. 48% of those with Latino victims and 46% with Black victims. Equivalent data for San Francisco is unavailable.

White people in San Francisco, meanwhile, are more likely to face burglary and elder abuse, and Asians report being victims of hate crimes more than any other group.

The SFPD also releases some information on the racial and ethnic identity of criminal suspects in relation to victims.

In cases with Black victims in the first quarter of 2025, the suspect or suspects were also Black in 73% of incidents, according to the SFPD. For Latino victims, the corresponding figure was 50%; for white victims, 35%; and for Asian or Pacific Islander victims, 18%. 

More than a year after Gloria was attacked downtown, she has changed her habits.

She’s back to work as a FiDi custodian. But now, she always checks in with the security guards before leaving and again once she’s safely inside her car.