San Francisco, CA – Today, Mayor London Breed, Police Chief Bill Scott and District Attorney Brooke Jenkins pledged to continue and expand local law enforcement efforts that have led to a significant reduction in auto burglaries in San Francisco over the last three months. Expanded operations that have included the use of bait cars, plainclothes officers and aggressive prosecutions have contributed to a 50% reduction in car break-ins over since September.
The goal for City leaders is to sustain these efforts and build on them. Right now, Mayor Breed is pushing legislation at the Board of Supervisors that will allow the city to deploy 400 Automated License Plate Reader cameras at 100 intersections across the city. These cameras will help with a number of crimes, including auto burglaries. The City has also reached a 5 year high in applicants to join SFPD, which is essential for adding more police officers back.
“Our police officers and our prosecutors have been doing incredible work tackling the difficult challenge of disrupting auto burglaries,” said Mayor London Breed. “We will remain focused and we will continue to give our officers the tools they need to do this work effectively across our entire city. We want San Francisco to be a safe city for residents and visitors, and we want people to know if they come here to break into cars, they will be arrested and prosecuted.”
“Recognizing the severe impact that auto burglary as a crime has had on San Francisco for many years now, my office is committed to ensuring that there are real consequences for those who commit this crime,” said District Attorney Brooke Jenkins. “There must be consistent accountability for auto burglars to set a new tone in San Francisco that this conduct is not tolerated here.”
"I'm optimistic about the progress we've made in reducing the number of auto burglaries in San Francisco, but this is just a start," Chief Bill Scott said. "I want to thank our officers for their tireless work. The SFPD hopes to build on this progress with additional tools, like automated license plate readers, to continue making arrests and holding perpetrators accountable."
On August 26th, 2023, City leaders made an announcement about expanding different auto burglary strategies. This included SFPD bait car operations, plain clothes operations, increased patrols, and investigations against the organized rings committing the large volume of these crimes. When that announcement was made at the end of August, auto burglaries were flat year over year from 2022. Since then, the City has seen a 50% decrease in car break-ins compared to the previous year.
SFPD’s expanded enforcement strategies have yielded key arrests. Police investigators have said that when just one auto burglary crew is pulled off the street, they can see an immediate drop of as much as 10% in break-ins. That’s because the high-volume crime is driven by a few organized rings. The DA has increased prosecutions of these burglars, including seeking detentions in prolific cases, which keeps these rings from returning to the street. A recent example is the prosecution of an individual for auto burglary in an Alamo Square auto burglar, that then led to an arrest and prosecution of an individual involved in a fencing operation.
Broader Trend on Property Crime
These decreases in auto burglaries are reflective of the decreases we are seeing in retail theft. A recent study by the Council on Criminal Justice found that in the first six months of 2023 San Francisco saw the largest decrease in shoplifting (35%) of any city in the study from the previous year. San Francisco also just experienced a 75% drop in larceny thefts over the Black Friday Holiday weekend from the previous year.
The goal for the City is to sustain these efforts and build on them. Right now, Mayor Breed is pushing legislation at the Board of Supervisors that will allow the city to deploy 400 Automated License Plate Reader cameras at 100 intersections across the city. These cameras will help with a number of crimes, including auto burglaries. The City has also reached a 5 year high in applicants to join SFPD, which is essential for adding more police officers back.
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