On one occasion a homeless person smashed passenger windows on ~8 cars parked on La Playa @ Judah in front of Java Beach. My mx-5 happened to be one of them. When I confronted him about it, he claimed some passers by called him a faggot and that's why he broke all the windows. No ashtray incentive needed when you've got Crazy to make up for it.

On another occasion a homeless person reached into my mx-5 and broke the center console door's latch while I was in Safeway in San Mateo. I had left the back window zipped down with the rag top up as I was going to be quick, nothing was left visibly out. I came out of the store to see her crawling out from the back window and run away.

These happened > 7 years ago, I'm sure it's worse now.

Not that I think car alarms would have made any difference here. People commit petty crimes in broad daylight throughout SF with impunity. It's surreal. We watched a bicycle chop shop operate in broad daylight for over a month from the CoreOS office windows, SFPD drove past constantly without doing anything about it.

Edit: Just remembered my ex's mx-5 had its new rag top cut into for the contents of its center console months after she moved to the inner sunset, parking on the street around 7th and Judah. That'd be about 10 years ago. I'd just installed that top, still raises my blood pressure to think about it.

Edit:

For those unaware SF downgraded a ton of (formerly felony I believe) property crime to low level misdemeanors with very light sentencing guidelines (termed "catch and release" by many) which results in nearly zero law enforcement action being taken against them . The result of this is that all sorts of petty theft and theft adjacent behavior (like breaking into cars) is far more rampant than in many other cities because (obviously).

I support treating petty property crime as petty but you can't accidentally allow "crime with a victim" type crime to go unenforced in the process. Victimizing other people can't be an activity that has positive ROI in the long term.