Good ol’ Berkeley! I went to high school there, lived off Telegraph for a few years, then attended Cal as an older student. There is a lot of crime there, but as someone mentioned above, crime stats also depend on how they report it. You have to realize that there are “better” and “worse” parts of the city as far as crime goes. Living in Northside or off campus up toward Berkeley Hills? Not so much crime. There is more crime “Southside”, where the Units are located, because that where there’s more congregating. As you head toward Oakland, crime increases even more (except east of College Ave.) A rough dividing line would be Alcatraz St. – south of that and it’s not so good, but not many students venture there regularly. A lot of criminals are opportunistic in regards to students, so the majority of the time, you can avoid confrontations with just a little street smarts.
Cal students are (increasingly so) very vocal regarding sexual assaults, so I suspect, the stats are not increasing, per se, but are a direct result of more awareness. I highly doubt this differs from any other comparable university in the US.
My D1 is a sophomore at Cal, living in a house with 9 other young women. They use the phone notification system, Bearwalk, etc. and common sense. She walks in the dark just fine. If you’re not used to an economically diverse metropolitan area, then it may seem startling. However, I doubt places like U Chicago, USC, NYU, are much different. As far as on-campus crime goes, places like Claremont Mckenna, Pomona College and Hampshire (in Amherst, Mass) were in the top 25 “most dangerous” colleges (2015) on a % pop basis. Cal wasn’t even on that list.