Snatching Supervisor Scott Wiener's phone at 16th and Valencia was "not a very well-thought-out crime," or so the politician told San Francisco magazine.
Indeed, the suspiciously tall Castro Supervisor was able to recover his device briefly after its capture on Friday, first by lowballing the (bumbling) thieves and then by catching them on video.
That evening, a woman grabbed Wiener's phone with two men in tow, demanding $500 for its return. "I told them that, for $500, they could just keep the phone," Wiener remembered. Pricing them down to $200, the Supervisor went to an ATM. They followed."It was an opportunity to get them on video," Wiener said. "She said if I yelled or gestured to anybody she'd mace me and she showed me a black canister," Wiener told the magazine. "She indicated one of the guys had a gun."
A Wells Fargo security guard saw some of those threats or at least something suspicious and called the police. Wiener revealed that the woman who made the initial theft was apprehended, but he didn't add much more about the ongoing investigation.
In the end, he's not too crestfallen — "I had made it 45 years without being victimized" he said. The real crime might have been one of stupidity. It was "Not... well-thought," as Wiener said, and you can almost hear his political mind working.
Would it have killed these thieves to put in a little more forethought? This is Scott "long-term" Wiener we're dealing with. With a little more planning anything — transportation, housing, even petty theft — is doable!
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