The San Francisco car-burglary epidemic – arrests elusive
Posted: Mar three 2016 05:02PM PST
Updated: Mar three 2016 06:35PM PST
Picture Gallery two PHOTOS
These two studs were caught on surveillance movie cracking into a vehicle belonging to KTVU and stealing a briefcase.
Amazingly, it happens seventy times a day in San Francisco. In 2015, there were almost 26,000 auto burglaries in the city.
One man casually looks into the back, looking for valuables. Even as cars pass by, they attempt to break open a back window.
They then get back into their Monte Carlo, drive away, only to come right back and park on the other side. One of the boys cracks into a front window to snatch a briefcase which, along with its contents, is worth about $Five,000.
The car then quickly leaves.
KTVU viewers say they’re fed up with a crime problem that seems to have affected almost everyone in the city in some way.
Darlene Gutierrez had two backpacks stolen from under her car seat
“You gotta pay for the violated window and everything else. Whatever else is stolen, and you don’t get anything back for it,” Gutierrez said.
KTVU determined to go after our own burglary case through the system, to see how difficult it can be for the average person to get justice.
Our team filed a police report online the day of the burglary.
A week later, like many of you, we still hadn’t heard anything, so we returned to the scene of the crime and tracked down this surveillance movie, which we transferred over to police.
“The movie is enormously helpful,” said San Francisco police Lt. Jason Sawyer, who oversees investigations at the Park District police station. “It’s a high-definition movie. We were able to extract the plate from the movie. We are working on identifying the suspects and locating the car as we speak.”
The movie clearly shows the car, the plate and the picture of the suspects.
But almost seven weeks later, no arrests.
So we asked: what was taking so long?
“There’s a process to doing all the identification to make sure that we get the right people,” Sawyer said.
We pressed them as to whether police had gotten warrants for the boys’s arrests.
“Again, I don’t want to get into specifics on this case, albeit we do have leads that we are following up on,” Sawyer said.
KTVU has been attempting to find out why the car burglary program has reached epidemic proportions. Several months ago, the chief of police and the DA told us that there are cracks in the system.
“They’re still not getting any time,” said San Francisco Police Chief Greg Suhr. “They’re just going straight to probation. And then they’re re-offending.”
District Attorney George Gascon said: “The reality is that we have a problem that has enhanced tremendously in the last year, and there has not been a significant police act on it. About two percent of those cases result in an arrest.”
Over the last four years, the number of car burglaries in San Francisco quadrupled to almost 26,000 break-ins last year alone.
The DA’s office says they took activity on 80-percent of the cases they were given. But that number is still only 1.Five percent of all the car burglaries that occurred.
But there’s another problem before cases even get to a courtroom.
Sometimes police can only prove that a suspect has stolen property, which is a just a misdemeanor if the value of the property is less than $950.
“The mere possession of stolen property doesn’t necessarily mean that they committed the burglary,” Sawyer said.
The chief says many of these thieves are getting off with light sentences, and doing it again and again.
“If we can put them in jail and have them there for a while it sends a indeed clear message to the rest of them that we’re not horsing around,” Suhr said.
But in the case of our news squad burglary, the reporter’s briefcase and contents are worth thousands. Which means these guys are on the hook for two felonies, if they ever get caught and prosecuted.
We’re following the investigation, and just like thousands of victims across San Francisco, we want to know – what does it take to get justice?
“I think they’re getting away with it,” Gutierrez said.