Kyle Schmidbauer
Published:December 15, 2021
-Daily Caller
Amid an uptick in car burglaries, car owners in the San Francisco Bay Area have begun taking drastic measures to deter break-ins, ABC News 7 reported Wednesday.
Car owners are leaving doors unlocked, rolling down their windows down and leaving their trunks open in order to show possible thieves that there are no valuables inside, according to ABC News 7.
San Francisco Sees 3,000 Car Break-Ins in 1 Month; ‘It’s Out of Control’
In the month of November, city data shows there were 3,375 reports of larceny theft in San Francisco – the overwhelming majority of those were car break-ins.@KPIXtv @SFPD https://t.co/3hAnk5OSjH pic.twitter.com/2MOlVLPnAH
— Betty Yu (@BettyKPIX) December 8, 2021
Former San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) Deputy Chief Garret Tom expressed his surprise at the drastic measures car owners are taking to protect their property.
“We’re in different times … that’s unbelievable,” he told ABC News 7. “[Thieves] could steal your batteries, your tires,” he said. “They could go into your glove compartment and find out where you live.”
However, interim SFPD Deputy Police Chief Drennon Lindsey remarked that “it doesn’t really surprise [her].”
“It’s out of control. We have people that are doing this – are breaking into cars in Nob Hill, then they go down to Fisherman’s Wharf, then they come out here. Then they go to another part of the city and the police can’t chase the cars, it’s considered a misdemeanor,” San Francisco Patrol Special Police Officer Alan Byard told CBS San Francisco.
CBS San Francisco previously reported that the city sees roughly 3,000 car burglaries per month, or an estimated 74 per day — a 32% increase since 2020, according to local police.
San Francisco Mayor London Breed, a Democrat, has begun to denounce far-reaching criminal justice reform policies advocated for by progressives amid calls for a citywide crackdown on crime.
“It is time that the reign of criminals who are destroying our city … to come to an end. It comes to an end when we take the steps to be more aggressive with law enforcement, more aggressive with the changes in our policies and less tolerant of all the bullshit that has destroyed our city. We are going to turn this around,” Breed said at a Tuesday press conference .
