Tips for curbing car break-ins pour in
It doesn’t seem like fixing the city’s outrageous car break-in problem should be this difficult. It’s a pretty simple, straightforward crime. It happens in broad daylight.
Police know what to look for: paper license plates and cars that circle the same blocks again and again. They know where the stolen goods end up: thrown out of the getaway car if they’re not valuable, often taken to Seventh and Market streets to be hawked if they are. So what’s the problem? That’s the confusing part. Remember my column about the man smashing a car window and making off with a backpack right in front of me and a Chronicle photographer on Lombard Street? Despite clear Chronicle photos that show the man’s face and car appearing on the front page of the paper and sfchronicle.com, after more than two weeks police have made no progress in the case.
It’s almost hard to believe so little is being accomplished in combatting this epidemic. And don’t tell me, hey, it’s just a low-level property crime committed by desperately poor people, and nobody’s getting hurt. Not true.
In just the past couple of weeks, a car break-in suspect ran over a police officer with his vehicle at Alamo Square, and another car break-in suspect smashed a window, grabbed a Chihuahua out of the vehicle and hurled it to its death from atop a seven-story parking garage. So what can be done? Readers of my columns on car break-ins seem to like playing Columbo — remember the frumpy detective from the old television show? — and have offered up many ideas.
Some are just plain nutty.
No, I don’t think pit bulls should be hidden under blankets in the back seats of cars and trained to lunge at thieves. Nor should snipers with paint balls be placed on rooftops to spray identifying paint on the perpetrators — although that one does sound kind of fun.
But many of the ideas seem so obvious, it’s hard to believe the San Francisco Police Department isn’t implementing them already.
Some ideas readers have for the Police Department:
Start pulling over cars with blank paper plates or no front license plates whenever you see them.
Use bait cars and watch as thieves smash the windows — then make the arrest. Or put a tracking device on an expensive gadget like a laptop in the bait car and see where it ends up.
Put more officers at Seventh and Market streets and other known fencing locations.
Offer any victims of car break-ins a thorough investigation including dusting for fingerprints if they bring the vehicle to the station.
I took your smart ideas to David Stevenson, spokesman for the Police Department, who declined to address them one by one.
“The SFPD is working closely with fellow law enforcement agencies, business groups and community members and organizations to strategize on effective means to address auto burglaries,” he wrote in an email. “We are looking at a number of different approaches to deter, investigate and arrest auto burglars.”
In the meantime, Stevenson pointed out, the department has doubled the number of foot patrol officers at break-in hotspots. Police regularly conduct undercover operations, and there are now officers at all 10 district stations focusing on preventing and investigating property crimes.
He said the department is also working on new education campaigns for residents and tourists alike about not leaving anything in their vehicles and said the campaigns will roll out in the spring.
“The San Francisco Police Department is committed to trying new strategies to effectively address this pervasive problem that impacts our city and other cities throughout the region,” Stevenson wrote.
Readers aren’t the only ones throwing out suggestions for dealing with the car breakin epidemic. Mayoral candidate and Supervisor Jane Kim gained some attention for a recent tweet about her solutions, saying we need to “eliminate the inventory,” which she told me is a phrase borrowed from the Police Department itself and means, simply, that residents and tourists alike need to stop leaving anything in their cars. Some of Kim’s followers on Twitter said that amounts to victim blaming, and that it’s not always possible to leave absolutely nothing in your vehicle.
“I know that’s a frustrating response for people, but police really strongly believe if you eliminate the incentives, break-ins will go down,” she said.
She also wants the Police Department to return to a centralized unit focusing on property crimes, rather than setting up mini-units at district stations, and for the district attorney’s office to create a specialized unit of prosecutors focused on the crime, too.
“No one’s seeing the bigger picture and the larger patterns,” she said, adding police have told her car break-ins are on the rise because drug dealing has become less lucrative now that prescription painkillers have flooded the market. Professional criminals have simply refocused from dealing drugs to committing car break-ins, which can net them more money and be simpler to carry out, she said.
Kim also called in her tweet for “youth ambassadors” to address the problem. Apparently, some merchants in Chinatown have asked the city to fund a program in which teams of teens would roam the neighborhood with walkie-talkies, looking for breakin suspects and notifying police if they see the crime in action. Hey, it’s no worse than the paintball idea.
Got ideas of your own? I’m all ears. After all, the status quo is as broken as one of those familiar shattered windows.