Only 13 arrests in 7 years of SF online auto break-in reports, DA says

When I interned in San Francisco in 2012, living on Harrison St between 3rd and 4th streets, the auto break-ins were so bad and happened so regularly that every single Friday and Saturday night if I passed someone getting out of their car as they parked on my street, I'd slow down and try to tell them that every single car on our street would have it's windows broken and anything in sight stolen by the time they got back from the club at 2 or 3. And every Sunday and Monday morning I'd see the piles of broken glass on the street where each car had been parked. I think it would have been better if that broken glass hadn't been swept away, so that people parking there the next week might have noticed and decided to park elsewhere. And multiple times I saw groups of people crying outside of their car after returning to find their purses and laptops stolen, I saw multiple people have their work and lives thrown into chaos. Thesis papers lost or possessions they couldn't afford to replace gone. And yet I never saw a single police officer on my street, ever.

I often thought about how fun it would be to get a paintball gun with a scope and camp out on a roof some night, knowing that there'd be someone who I could reap some karma with.

Oh and we also had a homeless guy who literally slept on our buildings doorstep. So there were mornings where we literally had to step _over_ him to get outside.

May have been a factor in my decision to not move there after graduating.

Now I live in NYC where I can live in a working class neighborhood with project buildings scattered all around Brooklyn, and yet I don't ever notice any auto break-ins. And you see NYPD everywhere.

This all stems from the residents themselves. They vote against policing and for people who basically take the view that we should feel bad for the criminals because they have turned to a life of crime. There’s only a Rudy Giuliani between here and there but SF will never elect him or her.

My car was broken into in SF near a school. The school had a camera pointing at it, and when I asked they said they'll happily share the footage with police.

What did police do? Told me "it was probably a homeless person and the homeless have it bad enough" so they'll do nothing!

If professionals are committing 80% of the crimes, then investigating a few would make a big dent.

The majority of the people in San Francisco just don't see auto break-ins as a priority. In fact, they sympathize with the people who break into cars, as they seem them as an underclass that is forced to do this to survive.

How hard would it be to plant a car with a camera and mic in it with police in an unmarked van a couple blocks away? It almost seems like they’re taking advantage of a lack of police effort in this area.

the number of SWAT unit deploys probably exceeds this number by some absurd ratio