The cul de sac where Mayor Ed Lee lives in Glen Park saw three middle-of-the-night car thefts in three months earlier this year, and it's an indicator of an overall uptick in stolen cars, especially in the southern half of the city.
The Bayview and Ingleside police districts have seen the most stolen cars, but there's been a 10-percent rise in car thefts citywide so far this year, as ABC 7 reports. They even note that one of Lee's neighbors, whose Saturn was stolen, ended up spotting it herself, driving in front of her near the Bayview. She called police and those thieves were arrested.
Our booming economic times have still left many in their wake, and perhaps this is partly to blame for an overall uptick in petty crime or perhaps you just want to blame the SFPD.
In 2013, San Francisco had one of the highest increases in larcenies (non-violent, non-confrontational robberies, like pick-pocketing and cell phone theft) in the state, as the Examiner earlier reported.
And in the first four months of 2014, there's been a seven percent rise in burglaries citywide but a whopping 67-percent spike in burglaries in North Beach, Telegraph Hill, and Russian Hill (served by Central Station), and a 42-percent spike at Mission Station. As the Examiner notes via Supervisor David Chiu, there's been a particular rise in car break-ins on the street.
In the same period in 2013, there were 179 burglaries recorded at Central Station, but 299 burglaries from January to April of this year; in the Mission and Castro that number rose from 141 to 200.
And let's not forget all that SmartCar tipping!
The always alert Telegraph Hill Dwellers Association has noted increased "prowler" activity in the last year, and a surveillance camera outside a home on Mayor Lee's block caught footage of some very unhurried, "professional" car thieves, who according to one neighbor were not at all fazed by some motion-sensor lights shining on them.
Take the above crime stats with a small grain of salt though; the SFPD still hasn't totally got their CompStat system working that well yet.
