Gavin Newsom: Our violent crime rates keep going down but the violence related to uh, gang activity and particularly drug-related activity is going up.

Jim Newton: How many homicides do you have a year in San Francisco?

Gavin: Less than 100 consistently.

Jim: Is that right?

Gavin: Yeah. Eight-five...

Jim: Is that up or down from last year?

Gavin: Yeah, kind of in the range. You know we've been consistently under a hundred for the last 15 years. Eighty-five last year. Ninety-six was the peak in the last decade. Uh, this year we're pacing, uh, we were down 11% on homicides last year, which was an anomaly in the country. You know, most cities were either 1% or 2% down at most or — I mean if you're, you know Philadelphia, or Boston, uh Atlanta; I was with Shirley Franklin, I had no idea, close to a 50% increase, she's having a hard time — it's starting to go up in the bigger cities. But this year that's not the case. Our gang-related numbers are down. Black-on-black gang-related homicides have dropped 60.5% in the last four years. It's a curious anomaly, that the area where we were having traditional problems is, has actually seen tremendous results. But in other areas — domestic violence, murder/suicides, again drugs, drug-related violence. Younger and younger people using the same weapons of war that are being used in Iraq; I mean just a proliferation of guns. Everybody knows that. But it's, you know, 15-year-olds literally killing 16-year-olds. We had a 21-year-old who shot a six-week-old baby trying to kill his father. Uh, you know it's exactly the headlines here, and I talk to Chief Bratton often at various events. And he's been very helpful to us, which I appreciate. And we're all sitting there scratching our heads trying to figure this out. Because there's no rhyme or reason based upon sort of the macro-economic realities that have all been established in the past. Even the Freakonomics version that it was, you know, Roe v. Wade, uh, that dramatically reduced crime and violence in this country. You can't, you know, can't use those arguments right now.

Tim Cavanaugh: Is black-on-black crime declining along with pop-, with black population?

Gavin: Um that's a good question. We are analyzing that. We just did what we call a drill-down and determined that our census data, like census data across this country, are so far off, now, as to be almost trivial and irrelevant. We saw that in the population there were close to a quarter of a million people more than what the census data showed us.

Tim: That would be about a million people in San Francisco. Traditionally it's always 700,000 right?

Gavin: Exactly, just over 900,000. In fact next week I get the subset so I'll know in the African-American community, if this African-American flight has been accurately reflected or it's been overstated. And I imagine it's not been overstated because we've lost our middle class, which is a great challenge we face, losing families generally: cost of housing, quality of public education, primarily choice: We have some outstanding public schools but we just don't have enough of them.

David Hiller: Where does the black community move when it leaves?

Gavin: All over the Bay Area. The problem with San Francisco is, it's proximity. So you're just, you know, so many people commute in the size of the city practically doubles every day... There are tens of thousands who have left the city but still come in to enjoy the amenities...

And incidentally, that census number — and L.A. should be doing the same thing, and I hope they are — is profoundly significant in terms of state and federal dollars. We work out about $2200 a resident is the net benefit of actually having an accurate reflection of population, in terms of state and federal benefit that can be drawn down. California's never been aggressive, incidentally, on the census data, as other states have... The census data is really questionable, at best, and it just becomes sacrosanct, it becomes gospel. And it creates a framework for governance in this country. It's something we all need to be cognizant of...

Tim: How appealable is that, when you say "I know the census says this but we've run our own numbers?"

Gavin: Very much so. Particularly when they do the annual adjustments. When they do the annual adjustments you can appeal. We're about to do ours. So states, many states do it. Particularly smaller states are aggressive, because they understand the game. Larger states like California don't. We haven't in this state been as aggressive as we should in terms of making, making the case for our population. That's why I think all of these numbers, I won't say all of them, but I question numbers all the time.

Health care

Gavin: It reached a point where I was fed up with my own party, the Democrats, because I'd been to too many of these chicken dinners and lunches and rallies, and everyone just sits there and says "Universal health care," and everyone starts giving us a standing ovation. You know, five years ago everyone was saying "We'll get rid of Rumsfeld," and that's sort of the new applause line. And you know, things just get worse and worse. And to pay, you know the stats in California: 6.5 million, 7.1 million, it depends on the sources. We had last year we estimated we had 140,000 uninsured.

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